Latest / Rusty's Garage / Ed Ordynski - Part 1

Transcript

Ed Ordynski - Part 1 · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:17
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust, and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:28
  For this episode, I'm in South Australia, in the hills outside of Adelaide, on the eve of the penultimate round of the 2024 Australian Rally Championship.
• 0:36
  The roads here are fast, and one man who knows them well, having driven them for decades, is Ed Ordinsky.
• 0:43
  It's like his backyard.
• 0:45
  South Aussie champion, Australian champion, a driver with an enviable record in international events too,
• 0:52
  who garnered lots of respect in the WRC for what he did, especially in production-based Group N machinery.
• 0:59
  Ed's story isn't just for rally enthusiasts, though.
• 1:02
  You'll also hear some yarns on supercars, including a little-known offer from the Holden Racing Team and his part in the famed Round Australia trial with the great Peter Brock.
• 1:13
  20,000 grueling Ks in a Commodore, and Ed was tailor-made for it.
• 1:19
  Ordinsky was rightly inducted into the ARC Hall of Fame a decade ago, and around that time, he shared some of the secrets of his success.
• 1:28
  That evening was the only time that he's really done that.
• 1:31
  But today he wants to impart some of those learnings for our listeners, what it takes to be the complete package.
• 1:38
  So if there are young competitors listening to this pod or you know maybe an aspiring driver or co-driver, this is a great chance for them to soak up some really sage advice.
• 1:49
  And most of it has nothing to do with driving.
• 1:52
  He's approaching 70.
• 1:53
  He doesn't look it.
• 1:55
  And Ed and his lovely wife, Kath, have invited me round for lunch before we get going.
• 1:59
  It's been a while since we caught up.
• 2:01
  My memories of him in iconic Rally Art Lancers in the early 2000s are very vivid when the sport was going through this golden period with Possum Bourne in a Subaru, Neil Bates in Toyotas, and emerging stars like Dean Herridge, Cody Crocker, Scott Petter, and more.
• 2:17
  He might sound softly spoken, but you will find yourself hanging on.
• 2:21
  on his every word.
• 2:23
  Now, I need to put my hand up here.
• 2:25
  In the course of the chat and recounting some of the different cars, the many cars that he's rallied, I dived for some notes and I brought up Volvo.
• 2:32
  I was intrigued by that on his CV, but of course, that was circuit racing, a project that he did with some legends.
• 2:39
  He politely set me straight there too.
• 2:40
  Thank you, Ed.
• 2:41
  It's another of the great stories in this feature ep.
• 2:45
  Ed has also written for magazines, driven in eco-challenges from Darwin to Adelaide and a whole lot more.
• 2:52
  It is a motorsport life well lived.
• 2:55
  He still loves it.
• 2:56
  And it's amazing how drawn to it he was from a very early age.
• 3:01
  Almost three hours flies by here.
• 3:03
  So we have split it into three parts for you.
• 3:06
  Listen at your leisure.
• 3:07
  We hope you enjoy the convo.
• 3:12
  I want to start with your early years, if I can.
• 3:14
  Did you tell me today, while we were having a bit of lunch here, that you actually originally came from England?
• 3:19
  Is that right?
• 3:20
  Yeah, that's correct.
• 3:21
  And you know, the thing I most get asked these days is, it's really a statement people I meet at car clubs or whatever say, you were so lucky in your career that your dad was able to buy you a Gallant VR4 for your first rally.
• 3:33
  And I think 1989, no, and my dad didn't buy it.
• 3:38
  I actually think rallying really started for me as a child.
• 3:43
  It's a funny thing to say, but I was a prolific reader as a kid in England, and I followed minis in particular.
• 3:49
  I was born in 1955 and 1959.
• 3:53
  The Mini came out, I thought, an amazing car.
• 3:57
  And so I was interested in seeing what cars were around the place.
• 4:02
  When a Mini came down our street in England, it was a big day to see that.
• 4:06
  And then on the boat from England, because we migrated here in 1963 as 10-pound Poms, there was a magazine, one of those British motorsport magazines, with the 1963 Monte Carlo rally being covered.
• 4:21
  And the minis came third and sixth with Rauno Altanen and Paddy Hopkirk, little 997 CC Coopers.
• 4:28
  And I thought, you know, I can remember as a kid thinking, I would love to do that.
• 4:31
  That'd be fantastic.
• 4:32
  And of course, once we got to Australia, minis were winning everything in sight, you know, winning Bathurst first season.
• 4:39
  Nine places.
• 4:41
  So a magazine is what sort of sparks a bit of the fire.
• 4:45
  When was the first time you either spectated, watched a bit of rallying?
• 4:50
  What was the thing when that really then crystallised or cemented it for you where you thought, you know, this is me, I love this?
• 4:58
  Well, I loved rallies from reading car magazines because that was your only information about them.
• 5:04
  I guess Timo Mackinnon winning Thousand Lakes rally in a Mini Cooper S, with some incredible footage of it over jumps with the bonnet coming up.
• 5:13
  I just thought that was unbelievable.
• 5:14
  I was in year six or seven when that happened.
• 5:17
  But 1968, first year high school for me, London to Sydney Marathon, I persuaded London.
• 5:22
  my family to take me up to see the cars go through the Flinders Ranges.
• 5:27
  So 12, 13 years of age, seeing those cars come.
• 5:31
  They came through in the dark, so it was early hours of the morning.
• 5:35
  Roger Clark and Lotus Cortina coming from the back of the field, having had problems, I just...
• 5:40
  hearing those Weber carburetors sideways into sight.
• 5:44
  Yeah, and, you know, on that event up in the Flinders Range was a guy from the same high school as me, Blackwood High School, Andrew Hunter.
• 5:53
  And we were actually in the same class, but I'd never had much to do with him.
• 5:56
  And we met up there at the Flinders Ranges.
• 5:59
  And, you know, we've been best mates ever since, still best mates today.
• 6:03
  And he was my first co-driver.
• 6:05
  Amazing.
• 6:05
  Let's talk a little bit about first proper competition thing.
• 6:10
  Was it a rally sprint, a Kana Cross?
• 6:13
  Was there a little sort of introduction to driving perhaps on gravel in some way?
• 6:19
  Certainly motor carners, you could afford to do those.
• 6:22
  So motor carners, I did a tiny little bit of karting.
• 6:25
  A friend of mine, David Melanie, had go-karts and we did some kart racing together, which I loved.
• 6:31
  I would like to have gone tarmac racing as well, but rallying is much easier to start in than circuit racing.
• 6:37
  Certainly was back in that era.
• 6:39
  So motor carners, my first car was a mini deluxe 998cc, and I did motor carners and some hill climbs in that before rallying.
• 6:48
  The rally car.
• 6:49
  You start your incredible career in a Toyota.
• 6:52
  I think you spend 200 bucks on it which is probably quite a lot of money for what were you then university student?
• 6:59
  First year uni for my Corolla yes.
• 7:01
  What were you studying back then?
• 7:03
  I was doing a Bachelor of Education because the you know really the only way I could afford to go to uni or my family could afford because we're a family of five children and
• 7:13
  single wage etc from my dad was to get a scholarship so I was fortunate to get a scholarship from the education department so I paid your uni fees plus an allowance to live on and then I worked in a service station to get the money to buy for Corolla KU10 1968 model as you say $200 I spent nearly $700 in total to make it rally worthy
• 7:36
  So I got that going in 1970, built that in 73, 74, yeah.
• 7:45
  What mods were either on it, what mods did you make to it and so on?
• 7:49
  Well, over a three-year period, a few, but first rallies completely standard.
• 7:55
  There was a Flinders, I went to Flinders Uni, there was a university car club.
• 7:59
  I met a guy a year ahead of me at uni who was competing in a Renault 10, David Vaudry.
• 8:06
  And my little Corolla kept dropping onto three cylinders before I even took it to a rally.
• 8:11
  And he said to me that he had a guy who had just come out from England called Mick Wooding at Wollonga in South Australia, had a workshop and was helping him with the Renault.
• 8:20
  I should bring it down there.
• 8:21
  So I drove down in the Corolla.
• 8:23
  Mick had a look and said he thought, you know, he was in trouble with valves and it was low compression in one cylinder.
• 8:31
  and there was the rally I'd hoped to go in was coming up like a week and a half later he said look let's just you could drive it in the rally and make it all the way through but I'll bring my car and trailer just in case you don't go very far and I went in the rally it made it all the way through no particularly great result but Mick prepared with me every single rally car from then
• 8:55
  Rally Art had Mick come out and do events and he was at my very last rally.
• 8:59
  It was a wonderful relationship and Mick's 80 now and it's fair to say I wouldn't have been able to go rallying without that meeting through David Vaudry.
• 9:10
  Amazing.
• 9:11
  You have, when you look at your career, lots of things stand out in terms of longevity.
• 9:17
  Longevity of partnership with Mitsubishi.
• 9:20
  You talked about the early meetings and friendship around co-driving and so on, what you've just detailed.
• 9:26
  Then that's, I think, a reflection of Ed Ordinsky, the person, clearly.
• 9:32
  I think it's, it is.
• 9:34
  It's also, for sure, you know, that's been the case.
• 9:38
  Absolutely, I can see that pattern.
• 9:40
  But, you know, a big factor is being able to build a team around you and whether that's professional level or as amateurs out of necessity.
• 9:49
  Motorsport is a team sport.
• 9:51
  You know, you can't just front up and drive and not be looking after the people who are working on your cars and you get that reciprocated.
• 9:59
  Of course you do, you know, so...
• 10:02
  Yeah, I always viewed it as a team sport, and I think to chance Discovery, Mick, who is fantastic, it worked for Lotus in the UK and all sorts of things, you know, was terrific.
• 10:13
  His son single-handedly prepared our VR4 that we took to a Rally Australia win in 1991 because, you know, we were competing overseas at the time and that car needed to be done and his son Mark took care of that car, you know, so it was just terrific.
• 10:32
  When did it go from, actually, come back a little step.
• 10:35
  The Eddardinsky I've always known has always been well presented in the way you speak, the way you dress and so on.
• 10:41
  What was the 1970s university spec Eddardinsky like?
• 10:45
  Are we talking, you know, flares and long hair?
• 10:48
  What were you like back then?
• 10:49
  I have very long hair, handbrake turns everywhere, trying to drive my Corolla as sideways as possible.
• 10:59
  Look, I am renowned as being a straight, tidy driver, but the Corolla, I soon realised...
• 11:07
  you know, 1,100 cc, 60-odd horsepower or something.
• 11:11
  Every time you threw it sideways, you came out two gears slower, you know, out of the corners.
• 11:16
  So I did have to drive that really, really straight and tidy.
• 11:20
  But a big turning point from that point of view is when I changed from the Corolla to a rotary Mazda.
• 11:25
  And I went to the Mazda because, you know, every rally driver wants to be backing it in and...
• 11:30
  power oversteer and all that kind of stuff.
• 11:32
  What are we talking here, RX2 Capella?
• 11:34
  RX2, yeah.
• 11:35
  So, you know, I thought, what's the fastest, cheapest car I could get?
• 11:38
  And those rotary Mazdas, as collectible as they are nowadays, they weren't worth anything back then.
• 11:43
  You know, you could buy them for a couple of hundred dollars.
• 11:46
  And they were fast, you know, really, really quick cars.
• 11:49
  So I got the Mazda, I drove it sideways everywhere.
• 11:53
  People used to go, you know, you're driving and the Mazda is awesome.
• 11:57
  So you're getting, you're constantly getting feedback that
• 12:00
  You're fast.
• 12:00
  But I still wasn't up the front of state championship or anything in it.
• 12:05
  And then there was – I might have been top three or four or something on a couple of events, but I used to break things on it all the time and go through tyres like everybody you hear about, isn't it?
• 12:15
  But there was a rally school organised here by Ivor Stinellis as a young man back then and Jeremy Brown.
• 12:23
  And they had Colin Bond, George Fury and Greg Carr as the instructors.
• 12:27
  What a roll-up of instructors.
• 12:29
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 12:30
  And that was in the days of the works escorts and Nissans.
• 12:34
  And I was assigned to Colin Bond initially.
• 12:37
  And the way it worked was the instructors had a drive of your car and then you took them for a drive in your car.
• 12:45
  And I think they drove your car just to make sure it was safe to get in.
• 12:48
  So Colin was my instructor and he walked over to my master, which by then had a ported 13B rotary with a big downdraft Weber and limited slip diff.
• 12:59
  still fairly standard car but it was fast like seriously quick and we walked over and he said is that your road car and i had actually been driving it to work and it had standard seats in it this orange it was lime green with orange seats like the standard car and colin got into drive and the seat belt was a little bit too tight for him he's slightly bigger than me and he said i don't think i'll bother with that
• 13:24
  And he put it in first gear and fired it up.
• 13:28
  And he just floored it and sidestepped the clutch.
• 13:33
  And it launched.
• 13:35
  It was a little tarmac start onto a gravel road.
• 13:37
  It launched so savagely, he jammed the brakes on and said, I think I'd better put the seatbelt on straight up.
• 13:43
  Because it had 240 horsepower.
• 13:45
  So it was probably like a BDA in power, but nowhere near the brakes or handling.
• 13:51
  But he had real trouble driving it because it was overpowered, underbraked, terrible suspension.
• 13:56
  And he got it back and he goes, I'm interested to see your driving because, you know, your car needs so much work.
• 14:04
  You know, it's difficult.
• 14:05
  And I took him around.
• 14:06
  I could manage it because I've been driving it.
• 14:08
  You know, I don't blame him for not being able to.
• 14:10
  But he basically said, you know, I don't know what to say until we sort that out.
• 14:13
  But Greg, Greg Carr, has done a rally in a Rotary Mazda.
• 14:17
  You should speak to him in the lunch break.
• 14:19
  I'll get him to come over.
• 14:20
  And Greg spoke to me and said, you know, the problem with those Mazdas, you can't, it's really hard to drive them straight.
• 14:28
  And you're fast if you go straight.
• 14:30
  And people would go, Greg, car in an escort straight.
• 14:32
  He goes, I'll go sideways and all the spectator.
• 14:35
  areas but it's such a powerful easy to go sideways you've got to control that all all the time and drive as straight neat as you can and he said at the end of the school you know we all got rides in the works cars was incredible school and greg said make sure though you're with colin make sure come over and come for a ride because i'll take you not for the
• 14:56
  awesome ride, I'll give you the straight as if I'm competing ride.
• 14:59
  And it was an incredible lesson.
• 15:01
  You know, it was just so committed, so letting it load up on the front wheel, not backing it in.
• 15:06
  You know, every time he stood on the throttle and it moved sideways, he'd correct, kill the slide straight away, throttle control.
• 15:13
  You know, it was just, that made a big difference to me.
• 15:16
  So, you know, the Corolla taught me that you've got to be neat and tidy.
• 15:21
  I didn't realise how tidy the real Top Guns were in the really powerful cars until that ride with Greg and talking to him.
• 15:30
  So I kind of thought from that day, I'm going to turn, you know, being neat and tidy into a fine art.
• 15:37
  And so, you know, that really started me on that trajectory in the late 70s to...
• 15:43
  to being tidy.
• 15:43
  And you know after that school I won my first ARC stages in the same Mazda outright against the BDAs and the Works Nissans.
• 15:53
  I won two stages in South Australia here, won rounds of the state championship, so it was a real turning point and I was focused on driving straight.
• 16:02
  What a great yarn that you've just shared then because clearly that piece of advice really resonated with you and it became one of the hallmarks of your career and what you did.
• 16:14
  What transpires here, because in this early phase for you between Corolla, Mazda and so on, there is a bit of a roll call of cars, isn't there?
• 16:22
  I mean, there's Datsun 1600s, there's maybe a 1200 coupe and all sorts, isn't there?
• 16:27
  Yeah, I went Datsun 1600 after the Mazda because reliability was the big issue with the Mazda.
• 16:33
  And I could see the guys running Dados, you know, they were so much more reliable.
• 16:39
  And a guy called Barry Burns was a state champion here in 1600s, gave me a drive of his, and I thought it was slower than the Mazda, but it was so forgiving and good over the rough stuff.
• 16:50
  So I built up what you'd probably call very much, you know, Clubman spec Datsun 1600s.
• 16:55
  So.
• 16:55
  So what are we talking, two-litre twin-side draft weathers?
• 16:57
  What did you have?
• 16:58
  Yeah, I bought a brand-new L20B engine from the factory because the Bluebird was still in production.
• 17:05
  And it was, I don't know, $600 or $700 for a brand-new engine.
• 17:09
  So it started with a brand-new engine.
• 17:11
  I had a Hollinger three-gear gearbox, which is where you could get from Peter Hollinger first, second and third gear cut to be close ratio, but you still had your fourth gear.
• 17:22
  and fifth gears of the standard car, because in South Australia, you need really good top speed.
• 17:27
  So the fast roads here.
• 17:28
  The fast roads, yeah.
• 17:30
  So you couldn't have a one to one fifth or something and a limited slip 4.875 LSD in it.
• 17:37
  And in that car, I just thought, I want to have three seasons where there's no reliability issues and I can just focus on the craft of rallying.
• 17:46
  And that was kind of the first time I thought, you know,
• 17:50
  Having won some ARC stages, maybe I can do this.
• 17:53
  You know, I might be okay as a driver, but what can I do to kind of try and be a champion when I haven't got access to the fastest cars or the budgets to run?
• 18:05
  Yeah.
• 18:06
  And that's the first time I can kind of recall sitting down and thinking, you know, what really makes you a champion over and above being a fast driver in a fast car?
• 18:14
  I've got this nice, easy to drive, forgiving car that's capable of being in the top three or four.
• 18:21
  What can I do to kind of get some wins out of it that is not modifying the car and...
• 18:26
  working on it night and day and all of that well i needed sponsorship and i needed to keep building a team around me other than mick wooding you know and my mates with trailers and so on so that's what i focused on in with the datson 1600 it was the first time i really thought you know what are some things i can do to um try and win events without and i never touched the vehicle modification wise in three years
• 18:50
  But this is, I think, going to be a reoccurring theme in this conversation, and it's wonderful that you are headed down this path.
• 18:57
  Firstly, the sporting mindset is what intrigues me here because one of the takeaway things of what you just said was about being a champion driver, not just being a fast driver or a stage-winning driver or whatever.
• 19:10
  It's a couple of things that obviously started or began to stand out for you that you needed to do.
• 19:17
  Is that right?
• 19:17
  Yeah.
• 19:18
  And the first of those was pace noting.
• 19:21
  In South Australia, we had pace notes even in my rotary Mazda.
• 19:25
  So I realised, obviously, the benefit of pace notes, but really studying the craft of how to make pace notes work for you.
• 19:34
  Did you have a system?
• 19:34
  What was yours?
• 19:35
  I was one to ten.
• 19:36
  So I'd studied what systems were being used overseas, and people in Australia were tending to use that craft.
• 19:44
  one to six system with the direction before the number, so left five into right six.
• 19:51
  But I was looking at what they were doing in Finland and all over the place, and it seemed to be a rule of thumb you could see across all the systems, because even those with one to six have halves and things, that maybe ten was good.
• 20:03
  And I thought I would put the...
• 20:06
  I mean, I wasn't the first to do this, but I thought I would always put the number first.
• 20:09
  I think in Australia I've been, you know, I'm the first person I know of who did that.
• 20:13
  There may well have been others.
• 20:16
  But to me, the number needed to come first for a couple of reasons, is that
• 20:22
  you usually can see where the road's going.
• 20:24
  So right to left is not as critical as the grade of the corner.
• 20:28
  You know, you can rarely tell the grade of the corner, but you can usually tell the direction.
• 20:32
  So I'd like to hear that first.
• 20:34
  And that's a big factor because sometimes in the heat of the moment and the noise in a rally car, you might just hear nine or ten, but you...
• 20:41
  I'll go on left to right.
• 20:42
  You'll just get it.
• 20:44
  The left or right, I'll work it out, but I need to know whether I can stay hard on.
• 20:48
  And actually, by your input then, pace notes are about making you go fast, not find out where the sharp bits of the road are, the dangerous things.
• 21:00
  If you've got to slow down for a hairpin, well, just slow down.
• 21:02
  You win rallies on the eights, nines and tens.
• 21:05
  You win by being the fastest rally.
• 21:08
  So this is all to do with pace noting.
• 21:09
  You know, you win by being the fastest down the straights and the fastest over the high speed corners, crests, etc.
• 21:18
  You'd never win a rally on the hairpins.
• 21:20
  But what does a typical rally person think?
• 21:23
  It's all about, you know, the big Scandinavian flick into a hairpin, isn't it?
• 21:27
  You know, where the spectator points are.
• 21:29
  But in reality, if you ever...
• 21:31
  data log your speed in the middle of a hairpin, you know, your grandmother could drive around just about as fast.
• 21:37
  You know, usually the cars are almost stationary for a moment, but it's you win on these, you know, where you can still keep going 180 or whatever.
• 21:43
  So you need that in your pace notes.
• 21:45
  So it's far more than just your number system.
• 21:48
  It's about
• 21:49
  So you want, first and foremost, your co-driver to tell you, is there a big straight coming up over this blind crest?
• 21:56
  Have I got 300 metres?
• 21:57
  So you always want to have 10 right over crest 300 emphasised.
• 22:02
  So my co-drivers would always say that, nine right over crest 300 means get ready to...
• 22:09
  be really tidy through this corner.
• 22:10
  He's got 300 metres of speed the other side.
• 22:13
  And they're really relaxed in bringing it down when you're braking for a hairpin or something.
• 22:17
  So you don't ever have in good pace notes all these cautions for off-camber for tight corners because you might as well just hear, slow down, you idiot.
• 22:24
  There's a sharp corner.
• 22:26
  That's all you need because it's not a speed-up scenario.
• 22:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:28
  So that whole, in the Datsun, I really studied that whole scenario of how to get your pace notes to get you to enter the Straits as fast as possible and win down the Straits.
• 22:40
  We're going to bounce around each of the topics as we float through the conversation here.
• 22:45
  Firstly, the thing that immediately springs to mind is this is probably early 1980s.
• 22:50
  How are you kind of figuring out what they were doing in Finland and places like that with this sort of system?
• 22:56
  I can remember seeing a great old story, and it might have been from the Group B rally era,
• 23:01
  And one of the drivers talking about how the co-driver paints this almost movie script for you, the driver, and you have to commit to that movie script knowing what is going to almost unfold in front of you.
• 23:15
  That was like a great description, I thought, of what was coming up ahead on the road.
• 23:20
  They're telling you the movie script more or less in some respects, aren't they?
• 23:23
  Yeah, exactly, because they can't, you know, if the co-driver can see what they're calling, it's too late, it's no use, because you can see it yourself.
• 23:29
  So you are creating that mental picture.
• 23:32
  And I guess what I was referring to just a moment ago is more saying that mental picture needs to be grabbing you by the scruff of the neck and saying, wake up, there's an opportunity to go fast after this corner, after this, whatever the obstacle is, corner, crest, creek, crossing.
• 23:47
  If it's going to be speed up,
• 23:49
  now pay attention.
• 23:50
  If it's going to be speed down, I'm going to speak quietly and just slow up and listen to whatever it is.
• 23:54
  So it's as much about the note as it is the delivery of the co-driver and how the voice is used in that process.
• 24:01
  Absolutely.
• 24:01
  And you had to work with your co-driver to say, we're going to set this as the priority.
• 24:06
  If there was somebody out with a radar gun on every straight, we want to be the fastest car through that at the peak speed.
• 24:12
  And if there's a radar gun on the corner, we want to be fastest entering the street.
• 24:16
  How do we write and say pace notes that cause us to do that?
• 24:20
  And, you know, I still think majority of competitors still aren't writing their notes with that perspective.
• 24:25
  They're still just focused on getting the shape of the road right and making sure they don't fire off into the shrubbery on sharp, difficult things.
• 24:35
  There's lesson number one.
• 24:36
  So play along as we go here in the podcast.
• 24:39
  As I move forward a little bit in terms of your life and time, right, are you now working as a schoolteacher?
• 24:44
  Where are you?
• 24:45
  This is sort of weekend pursuit still.
• 24:47
  Is it almost at the point where you're starting to think about, I'd really like to make this, you know, more professional than that?
• 24:56
  You mean back then?
• 24:57
  Back then, you know, in the early 80s, I'm assuming we're at this stage.
• 25:02
  Always a dream.
• 25:03
  So if I went from the end point, my dream was to compete in a round of the world championship.
• 25:12
  And we didn't have one in Australia in those days.
• 25:14
  So it would have been a dream to go to Finland.
• 25:16
  I didn't think that was realistic necessarily.
• 25:18
  But I was thinking how I couldn't see a path to get there.
• 25:23
  But it was a dream.
• 25:24
  And your dreams are important to you, aren't they?
• 25:27
  That was it.
• 25:28
  How could I, in terms of turning it professional, I certainly thought about that with the Datsun.
• 25:35
  But how do you make that?
• 25:37
  How do you make that jump?
• 25:38
  How can you make a career out of this?
• 25:41
  And one thing you have to be able to do, and this is one of the hardest things, is you're spending all your time.
• 25:48
  all your time doing your regular jobs, you can afford to go rallying, and then your spare time is spent working on the car and getting it ready for events.
• 25:56
  You know, how do you get rid of the working on the car one?
• 25:58
  Because you can't get rid of your job.
• 26:00
  You've got to keep working.
• 26:02
  So, you know, part of that is that whole team building thing and working with sponsors, certainly with the Datsun.
• 26:09
  I got my first sponsors for good product, but it's not true sponsorship compared to cash.
• 26:17
  You've got to start somewhere learning how to knock on doors like that, learning that business side of motor racing.
• 26:26
  And that's another thing that a young driver needs to learn, basically, doesn't it?
• 26:30
  Yeah, correct.
• 26:31
  And I got some initial sponsorship from Pedder's, from Kevin Pedder in South Australia.
• 26:37
  And when I built the Datsun, and this was a good lesson for sponsorship as well, the only event left in the season when I built that was a rally sprint at Truro.
• 26:47
  It was a one-off, might have been run twice or something.
• 26:50
  And it was called the Bridgestone Truro Sprint.
• 26:52
  And I didn't have any tyres for my data, so I went to the Bridgestone store in the city and asked,
• 26:58
  a guy there, Morrie Button, who was the store manager.
• 27:02
  And it was a company-owned store.
• 27:03
  You know, if I could get some Bridgestone Tire singers, they were sponsoring the event.
• 27:06
  And so I got them.
• 27:07
  He said, I'm going to be at the event because we're the sponsor.
• 27:10
  I'm giving out the trophies, et cetera.
• 27:14
  I won the event and, you know, he said on the presentation podium, you know, the only car in the top 10 on Bridgestone tyres and it's one.
• 27:23
  And afterwards he said, you know, come in and we'll talk to you about doing some sort of deal.
• 27:27
  So from, you know, I had Bridgestone on my cars for a very long running sponsorship around Australia Commodore or everything.
• 27:33
  So that grew to be successful.
• 27:35
  you know, professional sponsorship with endorsement services and all that kind of stuff later in my career, but it still grew from buying the sponsor's product on an event.
• 27:55
  Another recent rally addition to Rusty's Garage is Rob Herry to once let WRC legend Ari Vartan and drive his championship-winning Subaru.
• 28:04
  I'm thinking I wouldn't be changing this here because there's another corner coming up.
• 28:08
  And I'm thinking, that was pretty good effort.
• 28:10
  So, and he only went fast in front of the cameras.
• 28:13
  The rest of the time we were just talking and I'd say he was a good guy.
• 28:18
  There's some fun stories in this three-parter.
• 28:21
  What is it with the rally guys?
• 28:22
  They love a chat.
• 28:24
  Back to Ed and Rusty now.
• 28:27
  What did you learn from understanding providing return or value for the sponsor, even contractual responsibilities and things like that, I suppose, too?
• 28:37
  Yeah.
• 28:37
  Kevin Petter was really instrumental in helping me with that, too.
• 28:40
  I knew sponsorship wasn't stickers on cars or giving you product.
• 28:46
  But Kevin was really good at directing me down the path of how to try and measure return on investment.
• 28:53
  And I guess that's because Pedder's was sponsoring a lot of people.
• 28:57
  Kevin himself was a very good rally driver.
• 28:59
  But how do you measure that return on investment?
• 29:03
  And that's still the ongoing question, isn't it, with Toyota in the championship now?
• 29:07
  How are they going to be measured at the end of each season?
• 29:11
  With rallying, I learned in that era that making yourself available, having the car on display and giving rides in the cars was what separated you from any other sport, from sponsoring Boy Scouts, Girl Guides or, you know, whatever it might be, the local cricket.
• 29:29
  You could actually take people for a ride in the car, take out on events, you know, so the one-to-one,
• 29:36
  experiential stuff.
• 29:38
  Yeah, yeah.
• 29:38
  It's because we've got a unique form of motorsport where you can actually put people in the cars and that doesn't exist in most other forms.
• 29:47
  Before we get to some all-wheel drive machinery, can we just, you've talked RX2, you've talked Atson 1600.
• 29:52
  One thing we haven't spoken about that I reckon is on there, Volvo 850, am I right?
• 29:59
  Did you rally one at one point in time and did that thing stand out in service park?
• 30:03
  What was that thing like?
• 30:04
  Well, no, it was circuit racing.
• 30:05
  Oh, circuit racing, of course.
• 30:06
  Go, yes.
• 30:07
  Yes, it was.
• 30:08
  So later in my career, so that was Volvos being run by George Shepard.
• 30:14
  And it was the year also where I think Jim Richards was running like a station.
• 30:19
  In the Super Tour or something like that, was it?
• 30:20
  Yeah, yeah, so that Volvo was around, but they prepared some cars for the Bathurst 12-hour race.
• 30:26
  Sorry, no, for the 12-hour race held at Eastern Creek.
• 30:31
  Correct, thank you.
• 30:33
  95, I would have thought.
• 30:34
  Dick Johnson would have been in a Mazda RX-7 along with John Bauer and things like that.
• 30:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 30:38
  So the team was Peter Brock in one car and myself and Wyn Percy in the other one.
• 30:49
  So, you know, I was teamed with Wyn, which was extraordinary.
• 30:53
  But by then my career was well and truly professional.
• 30:56
  So the 850 T5R was front-wheel drive, turbocharged and fast.
• 31:03
  Terrible in other respects.
• 31:05
  Right.
• 31:06
  No, it wasn't a bad thing.
• 31:07
  I think they're actually highly sought after now.
• 31:09
  Yeah, OK.
• 31:10
  So Manual Trends 850T 5R.
• 31:14
  And, no, we were...
• 31:16
  I think we were running maybe sixth or seventh overall when our car failed with the heat from the turbocharger melted the steering rack boots.
• 31:26
  Both cars failed with that.
• 31:29
  Brock's car failed long before ours, but I think we were...
• 31:33
  we might have been almost fighting for fifth or sixth place so behind the sort of supercars and certainly in the lead of our class which was against mainly wrx's we led the wrx's all all the time but you know there's good lessons in that too in that win percy joined the team and was a master of endurance racing so when we first met to do testing and so on and win started as a rally driver do you know
• 31:56
  No, I didn't know that.
• 31:57
  Yeah, so that was the first thing he said.
• 31:59
  He walked into the team meeting.
• 32:01
  He arrived after me and said, you know, where's my rally driver?
• 32:05
  Because I hadn't met him at that point.
• 32:09
  And for those who don't know, you know, he was an incredible world standard touring car and sports car driver and everything.
• 32:16
  So absolutely top of the range competitor.
• 32:20
  But, yeah, he said, you know, we shook hands and he said, you know, I started in rallying in a Ford Anglia.
• 32:25
  And so we talked rallying for a while.
• 32:27
  But he was inspirational to the whole team.
• 32:30
  And there it is, that team building thing, isn't it?
• 32:32
  You know, he was really like Brock was, too, no doubt about it.
• 32:36
  But he was the one who was really pushing for, we've got to coincide, do some testing, see what the tyre wear is like, and make sure we coincide our fuel stops with tyre change requirement.
• 32:47
  And that'll almost certainly mean you've got to drive to a lap time to minimise the number of stops in the pits over the course of the race.
• 32:53
  So he and I drove to that pattern, and, you know, our teammates didn't.
• 33:00
  And so they ended up getting out of sync between needing tyres and fuel, and you could see how catastrophic that was for their...
• 33:06
  their progress in the race compared to us just following this relatively easy drive where you had to just you know you could you could lap probably two seconds a lap quicker but you killed the tires and by being a little more conservative you coincided fuel and tire strategy
• 33:21
  Thank you for correcting me there.
• 33:22
  We bounced around a little bit to a bit of circuit racing.
• 33:25
  Can I rewind the clock back to 86?
• 33:29
  Was that, I mean, you talked about the win there before and Bridgestone and so on for, I think it was a rally sprint, but I'm talking about state title now here in South Australia.
• 33:38
  Was that the first kind of major piece of silverware in the cabinet at that stage for you?
• 33:44
  That actually came with my next car, Subaru RX Turbo.
• 33:47
  But the Datsun was, I was runner-up in the state championship, I think, every single year with that, to Barry Lowe, who became a double national champion.
• 33:56
  It's really interesting.
• 33:56
  You know that rally school I mentioned with Colin and George and Greg as the instructors, you know, Barry Lowe was at that school as well.
• 34:04
  And, you know, only two South Australians have won the national title and we were both at the same driving school, you know.
• 34:10
  So it says a lot, I think, for taking education.
• 34:13
  But Barry, he was the pinnacle at state level.
• 34:17
  And he had a Datsun 1600 with a rotary engine in it.
• 34:21
  And our rotaries used to be built by the same.
• 34:23
  When I had a Mazda rotary, we had the same engine builder.
• 34:26
  But he built the most incredible cars.
• 34:29
  And his car, no doubt, was a step above my 1600.
• 34:32
  And I'm not making excuses.
• 34:35
  I didn't have the wherewithal to build a car as fast as him.
• 34:38
  If I could, you know, I occasionally beat him on events or stages, but, you know, I was not any real threat, but we were first and second both times.
• 34:49
  Sorry, all times that I ran the Datto.
• 34:51
  So he was a really good benchmark.
• 34:52
  And so that's what focused me to really work on those things to try and get as close to Barry Lowe as I could with the Datto.
• 34:59
  I studied physical fitness.
• 35:01
  I thought, well, if I can't have as fast a car as Barry, I'll try and be fitter.
• 35:06
  Because you had long events through the night.
• 35:08
  I mean, can I win the stages at 3 o'clock in the morning?
• 35:11
  And all of that.
• 35:12
  So physical fitness became one of my top things that I studied.
• 35:17
  Did that help you from a, you know, because it's such a concentration game, right?
• 35:22
  So to be at, you know, your most agile at 3 a.m. in the morning.
• 35:26
  And what sort of things were you doing to, you know, now we look at the sort of training they do in Formula One and things.
• 35:31
  I mean, it's quite detailed training.
• 35:34
  What sort of things had you learnt or pioneered even?
• 35:37
  Yeah, well, you know, obviously physical fitness, running, going to the gym, all of that kind of stuff.
• 35:42
  Anything, any training that was good for endurance, you know, I was willing to give it a go.
• 35:47
  And I was, you know, I'm kind of getting distracted here because I'm thinking, you know, I can't say I was ridiculed for it.
• 35:55
  But you have to remember that at this time, that era, rallies finished with a...
• 36:01
  big bonfire and everybody getting drunk and driving, you know, and all that kind of stuff, out in the middle of nowhere.
• 36:08
  And to be the guy who was lightly built, well-groomed, quietly spoken, taking care of himself, you were very much an outsider, very different.
• 36:17
  But I believe, you know, you only had to look at the people who were really doing well in WRC to see that they were super fit, trained athletes.
• 36:26
  And so...
• 36:27
  you know, that was the path I wanted to go down.
• 36:28
  So there were plenty of books on that.
• 36:29
  You know, you can look up how to do that.
• 36:31
  Exercises every day, the whole bit, because the whole concept of physical fitness is to be able to do what it is you want to do with little effort, as effortlessly as possible.
• 36:42
  So, you know, if you were getting tired at three in the morning, well, you weren't fit enough for the job.
• 36:48
  Is that the kind of...
• 36:49
  I don't know where we are on our little checklist here, but we're, you know, we've covered the importance of pace noting, properly understanding that.
• 36:59
  You've just tackled fitness.
• 37:01
  You've loosely touched on team building, but obviously that and having a good group of people around you and the longevity that you've enjoyed with some of that, so that breeds trust and understanding and all those sorts of things.
• 37:15
  Did you...
• 37:16
  recognize very early on just how vital that was for you too.
• 37:20
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 37:21
  And you've got to, you know, when Mick and I were working together all the time and the people that we brought on board along with us, you know, you've got to give those people a chance to grow and educate themselves as well.
• 37:33
  You know, one of our very best mechanics
• 37:35
  A guy called Craig Weber was the apprentice of the year at a Subaru dealership, and we spoke to the Subaru dealers if we could borrow him for events.
• 37:44
  And he went on to work in sports cars and open wheeler cars in the UK.
• 37:48
  You know, so you want to inspire people.
• 37:52
  Les Haldane, a great mechanic here, won the Clubman Championship when we won the state championship.
• 37:58
  And he went on to become, I think, the best Evo transmission builder in the country.
• 38:04
  So...
• 38:05
  And that doesn't just happen because they fiddle around.
• 38:08
  You've got to create the opportunities and all of that sort of thing.
• 38:11
  If you want to build a team, it's not just about the driver, even though we all have the big ego once the flag drops.
• 38:19
  You've got to give people opportunities to do things.
• 38:22
  So you touched on Subaru there a moment ago and having an RX Turbo.
• 38:27
  I mean, this is at a point where probably in this country, the sport is morphing from really good quality two-wheel drive cars into four-wheel drive spec machinery.
• 38:40
  Was there a potential opportunity for you to have a bit of a blue path?
• 38:44
  You've had this amazing chapter with Mitsubishi and done all sorts of things, but did that maybe have a few moments where you were knocking on the door with Subaru and so on?
• 38:52
  Well, I'm really grateful to Subaru because that whole RX Turbo program in the 1980s, which Barry Lowe was a recipient as well, they essentially brought in 24-wheel drive Turbo Subarus, the Leonie shape, so pre-WRX, pretty agricultural cars.
• 39:09
  And they were pretty much offered to the people who were up the front of their state championships first.
• 39:15
  So you applied to be able to buy one for, I think,
• 39:19
  Like, you know, the car retail was maybe, you know, $22,000 and you could buy them for about $10,000 from Subaru.
• 39:26
  But more importantly, they gave you this incredible package of spare parts.
• 39:30
  You put up a bond, but the parts were supplied at landed cost, you know, so ridiculously cheap.
• 39:37
  So the car, you know, I think I probably paid, let's say I paid $10,000 for the Subaru.
• 39:42
  You know, I sold my Dato 1600 for close to that.
• 39:45
  And the parts for the Subaru were cheaper than parts from the Wreckers for the Datsun.
• 39:50
  So it was a way to get the brand established in Australia from Subaru's point of view.
• 39:56
  There's that return on investment, isn't it?
• 39:58
  Let's get the cars out there in the hands of drivers who are already winning events.
• 40:02
  Barry's role was he had the resources through Peders and through Autosport to do the national championship.
• 40:10
  And I had sponsorship from Peders and the support of Subaru to do the state championship.
• 40:15
  And, you know, the...
• 40:16
  There was no turning back once you went down that path.
• 40:18
  Nick Senior was the guy putting that program together.
• 40:21
  And as you know, he became managing director and oversaw the whole Possum-Born era of Subarus in Australia.
• 40:27
  So Nick was the guy I reported to back then from a return on investment point of view.
• 40:34
  And we won every single round of the state championship in that.
• 40:36
  car so you know it was um i suddenly had a fast car the sponsorship and you know i had all of these other things in a row that could make you a champion you know i was fit and you had a pace note i had a good team around me etc etc and you had to look after the sponsors um so the subaru really uh i was you know earning a living from driving in the subaru i was still doing some
• 41:06
  full-time so you'd had dreams of of finland or international competition at some stage are you now starting to set goals to say righto my next thing is australian championship or key events in this country and then then maybe we might go to a new zealand or whatever are you starting to to think a bit like that are you noting it down on a on a board in your office or something what are you doing there
• 41:30
  Yeah, very much so.
• 41:31
  So I was going for the dream of doing a round of the WRC and I spoke to Kevin a lot about that.
• 41:39
  He was a mentor to me, no doubt about it.
• 41:42
  So the Subaru with the job was to win the state championship.
• 41:45
  After that...
• 41:46
  How's that going to help me get into a round of the WRC?
• 41:49
  No idea.
• 41:51
  So I didn't have the resources to do the whole ARC, but I was able to get individual sponsorship to go and do selected events.
• 41:59
  So if you look back on my career, I did odd ARC rounds here.
• 42:03
  Was it a Sander, Rally Canberra and stuff like that too?
• 42:05
  I did a Sander, yeah.
• 42:06
  Yep, I did that with Mark Nelson, with whom I went to win the ARC with in 1990.
• 42:11
  But Kevin and I did a lot of work on trying to get over to the Olympus Rally in the United States because we thought there's an opportunity to do... Because Kevin was on board with doing a round of the WRC...
• 42:24
  We thought, you know, being a first event in USA or a unique event, we could get the money together to do that and take the Subaru across and do it.
• 42:34
  And, you know, I really thought it was going to happen, but we failed at sort of the last post with getting the budget fully together and the logistics.
• 42:42
  And it was around about, it was very shortly after that, that the first WRC for Australia was being discussed.
• 42:49
  So talking 87 thereabouts.
• 42:51
  So, you know, I just suddenly thought, well, there's an interesting thing.
• 42:55
  If we get around at the WRC here, then that's the goal.
• 42:59
  You know, how do we get to that?
• 43:01
  And it's fair to say, you know, even while I was still competing with the Subaru, that's what I was working on.
• 43:07
  Tell me before we move to Mitsubishi here in the next phase, what that Subaru was like, because compared to a modern-day WRX, it was probably very early in the stage of them around four-wheel drive technology, a very different beast to what you'd driven in terms of the 1600 or even further back in the RX2.
• 43:25
  Did it naturally seem to suit you, that style of car, the all-wheel drive and so on?
• 43:32
  I want to say yes and no.
• 43:34
  It's yes because of my learned driving style.
• 43:38
  So the Subaru rewarded the keeping the momentum up, driving straight.
• 43:42
  You know, everyone at heart is a throw it around, want to slide.
• 43:46
  So from a natural, not.
• 43:49
  But did the cars I had been driving, including the Mazda, so I can say Mazda Rotary actually taught me to drive really straight.
• 43:55
  It's incredible to say that because it's the most sideways car you've ever driven in your life.
• 44:00
  But by then I was so committed to the driving straight.
• 44:03
  But I never, you know, I don't think anyone until they've driven a four-wheel drive car realised just how straight you can drive and still be so fast and committed in them.
• 44:15
  And the straighter you can drive them, the more it rewards you.
• 44:19
  And you just have to resist that.
• 44:22
  rally drivers of my era and age, you know, coming, you all come from a blind rally era, and you put the car sideways, night time mapped events, because you didn't know where the road was going, so that you didn't fly off, you were already starting to turn.
• 44:36
  But, you know, really, in an ideal world, you would drive like a circuit racing driver.
• 44:40
  I mean, imagine on a, if you were trying to qualify for Bathurst, and you backed it in everywhere, you'd be utterly hopeless.
• 44:45
  And
• 44:45
  The same applies on gravel.
• 44:47
  It's just you only get the one shot and you want to be on the limit, so you do overstep the mark a little bit so you know where the limit of adhesion is because if you don't get to it, you know, you can't just guess where the limit is without creating the slide.
• 44:59
  So that's the only reason you should be sliding.
• 45:01
  But that kind of 15-degree slide or something is the maximum you should go to, and the Subaru is great at that, you know.
• 45:08
  It had an open front diff, a limited slip in the back, and no centre diff, so totally locked in the centre.
• 45:13
  So it was terrible at taking hairpin corners.
• 45:16
  There's a good thing.
• 45:17
  They were winning everything, but the handbrake was on the front wheels and the diff was locked.
• 45:22
  So, you know, every...
• 45:24
  Every rally driver wants to be tipping it into hairpins at the spectator points.
• 45:27
  Well, can you imagine?
• 45:28
  It's like a Hilux locked in four-wheel drive.
• 45:31
  They were abysmal at that.
• 45:34
  And it just goes to show that that actually doesn't matter, does it?
• 45:36
  You still win rallies.
• 45:37
  If you can't get around hairpins, it doesn't matter.
• 45:40
  And interestingly, down the track, we had a lot of trouble with Evo 7.
• 45:43
  So I'm jumping now to the 2000s, where the centre diff in those cars, the homologated centre diff, was nowhere near strong enough.
• 45:51
  So they used to, you know, when the centre diff is not strong enough, the car breaks traction at one end or the other.
• 45:57
  So you have this understeer or oversteer.
• 46:00
  And to get across that, to get Mitsubishi to pay attention to that, I got Rallyart to pump the hydraulics up in the diff so hard that the centre diff was totally locked.
• 46:12
  It could no longer take a hairpin corner or do a handbrake turn, and we won an event.
• 46:17
  Amazing.
• 46:18
  So the Subaru...
• 46:19
  Taught you that.
• 46:20
  ...made me...
• 46:21
  They were like, are you nuts wanting to lock the centre diff?
• 46:24
  And I said, lock it.
• 46:25
  If you can lock it, lock it, and I'll deal with it.
• 46:29
  And it was incredible.
• 46:31
  On the test road in New South Wales, Spencer Lowndes was usually my teammate.
• 46:36
  He was usually quicker than me in testing.
• 46:37
  Mm-hm.
• 46:38
  They locked, we both went up and down the road as best we could, got our time, line ball, but he was a bit quicker.
• 46:44
  And it was a short test road, maybe, you know, not even 2km.
• 46:47
  So I went three seconds quicker with the diff locked.
• 46:51
  So chalk and cheese, you know.
• 46:53
  So Mitsubishi finally realised that the centre diff in those cars wasn't man enough for the job and, you know, homologated, produced, updated versions, etc.
• 47:01
  But it was never really good till Evo 8.
• 47:03
  Evo 8 had a total transformation of the way that centre diff worked properly.
• 47:09
  Evo 7 was always slower than Evo 6 on the test road, but for marketing reasons, I had to drive the 7.
• 47:14
  7, yeah.
• 47:15
  Well, come back to some of this.
• 47:16
  The technical insights are fantastic.
• 47:18
  Thank you.
• 47:18
  Quickly, you've just sort of piqued my interest around nighttime stages, right?
• 47:23
  Because I've been at an event in New Zealand a couple of months back where they ran some really early morning stuff and some nighttime stuff on the Friday.
• 47:32
  And just the way the game is now, we don't see a lot of that.
• 47:36
  Did you enjoy that?
• 47:38
  You know, I mean, it's such a spectacle.
• 47:40
  It reminded me doing that on the South Island of New Zealand.
• 47:44
  It just takes rally fans back to what it used to be like, doesn't it?
• 47:49
  It is.
• 47:50
  It's fantastic.
• 47:50
  I think it's been...
• 47:51
  They're coming back in a few night stages, as you say, but, you know, the loss of that from most events, I think, changes the sport enormously.
• 48:00
  I sound like an old guy saying that, and maybe people don't want to be doing long events, or maybe the spectators don't want to be out there in the cold and rain at night.
• 48:07
  But it was wonderful to drive in that.
• 48:09
  You know, there's nothing like being on pace notes in cresting mountainous country in the dark.
• 48:16
  in the tunnel of light and just kind of like, you know, having that experience of the speed and the just committing to all the corners and the one little bit of road you can see is just the best reward.
• 48:28
  You know, it's fantastic.
• 48:30
  And, you know, coming back to some of that other stuff we spoke about, like sponsorship, you know, they were the things you could do with your rallying too.
• 48:37
  You know, I had a very long-term personal sponsorship with Hella and we used to do our corporate rides at night.
• 48:44
  And people who came to those still talk about it.
• 48:46
  You know, they would have a... Rather than having the launch of a new product in daytime, you had it at dinner at night and then went out in the rally car afterwards on the gnarliest road you could find with the lights on, and it was just terrific.
• 48:58
  You know, everybody stayed out there.
• 49:00
  We couldn't get people to get in the bus to leave the day.
• 49:02
  They wanted more rides and stand around the fire and, you know, all that kind of thing.
• 49:06
  So there's so many things you can do with rallying, and I think if I was still doing it now, you know, when I think...
• 49:12
  the work I had to do in my career with no social media, you know, how good would it be to be able to do the things you can nowadays?
• 49:26
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with Australian rally champion Ed Ordinsky.
• 49:30
  But we have so many stages of his life still to cover.
• 49:35
  From his international Group N success at some iconic WRC events, to a chance meeting with his hero on some famous roads in Finland, working with Peter Brock and tackling the Round Australia trial, to some miles for HRT,
• 49:51
  and the supercars conversations that followed, plus the cool cars in the shed and the industry work that he did when he called time on professional rally driving.
• 50:00
  That's all ahead in parts two and three here on Rusty's Garage.