Latest / Rusty's Garage / Warren Luff (Part 2)

Transcript

Warren Luff (Part 2) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:19
  G'day, it's Rusty here, all set for part two of my podcast with stunt driver, coach and racer Warren Luff.
• 0:26
  If you haven't already checked out part one, head back to the garage library and give it a listen.
• 0:31
  From roaring up sand dunes in Sydney to meeting the great Ayrton Centre, driving and racing at the daunting, legendary Nürburgring, growing up at Oran Park, working alongside Mark Webber and wowing the crowds at Movie World.
• 0:46
  That's only part of his journey.
• 0:48
  We'll pick up part two by continuing our chat about the Stone Brothers.
• 0:52
  Now, Warren raced for them in 2005, co-driving for Marcus Ambrose.
• 0:57
  The Bathurst race was a flashpoint, what fans remember as Balaclavagate, being penalised for allegedly not adhering to rules that mandated the use of them for safety.
• 1:09
  And, of course, Marcus's crash with Greg Murphy, which remains one of the most talked about in history.
• 1:15
  What you may not know is that Warren had quite a medical battle in the weeks leading up to the Great Race.
• 1:22
  So I think it was like probably three weeks out from the race.
• 1:25
  I went to bed one night, was feeling fine, woke up the next morning and like my throat was on fire.
• 1:31
  Like I've gone from sort of like going to bed feeling great to woken up feeling like, wow, like felt like a truck had hit me.
• 1:37
  Like my whole body was run down.
• 1:39
  My throat was on fire.
• 1:40
  I could hardly swallow.
• 1:41
  So obviously knowing that we're three weeks out from Bathurst, I was a little bit kind of like, well, this isn't good.
• 1:47
  I better go to the doctor and sort of just get some antibiotics or just like really knock this on the head pretty quickly.
• 1:52
  So I went to the local doctor.
• 1:54
  He sort of had a bit of a look.
• 1:55
  Oh, yeah, like, look, you're probably just a bit run down.
• 1:57
  You probably just need some rest.
• 1:58
  And I'm like, I don't have time to rest.
• 2:02
  I need to get this under control.
• 2:05
  So he gave me some antibiotics and...
• 2:08
  Basically said, look, go home, rest, drink some water, you'll be fine.
• 2:12
  Over the following days, like my health deteriorated massively to the point where like I could hardly swallow.
• 2:17
  I was in so much, like to try and take painkillers or antibiotics was like a 10-minute sort of like build up the courage to try and swallow a tablet.
• 2:27
  And then like literally swallowing a tablet felt like someone was like jamming a knife in the side of my throat.
• 2:31
  Like I was in so much pain.
• 2:33
  I couldn't eat.
• 2:34
  I was hardly drinking.
• 2:36
  So I was dehydrated and just...
• 2:38
  Like I was in a world of pain and that probably went like that for, I went back to the doctor a couple of days later and he's like, look, no, there's nothing more.
• 2:46
  The antibiotics should start to work.
• 2:47
  It's just an infection.
• 2:48
  You're just going to have to ride it out.
• 2:50
  So I was starting to panic a little bit because obviously for me at that point in my career, this was the biggest opportunity.
• 2:56
  Like Marcus was coming into the 05 season as a double champion.
• 3:00
  Obviously he'd made the announcement earlier that year that he was leaving to go to NASCAR the following year.
• 3:06
  And there'd been a lot of on-track angst that year already between obviously Marcus and Scaifey and Murph.
• 3:14
  And so there was a huge amount of pressure and expectation going into Bathurst.
• 3:18
  So as my health kept deteriorating, eventually it got to a point where, so where I was living, Brian Lawrence, who was the commercial manager at the time of Stone Brothers, was a great, great friend of mine and someone that was very instrumental right throughout my career.
• 3:33
  I rang Brian this day and I'm like, could hardly talk on the phone and basically said, hey, you need to come to my place.
• 3:39
  And he's like, come in and taken one look at me.
• 3:41
  And I was just white.
• 3:43
  As I said, I hardly eaten anything all week.
• 3:45
  And he's then gone, quick, get in the car.
• 3:48
  So he took me down to another doctor down the road, Dr. Bill, who...
• 3:52
  Previous to Dr. Carl, who's our current VH supercar doctor, Dr. Bill was the Dr. Carl of the time.
• 3:59
  So Bill's taken one look at me, took one look at my throat, and pretty much the back of my throat almost completely clothed over.
• 4:05
  Like I was having trouble breathing.
• 4:07
  And he's gone, mate.
• 4:09
  He said, we need to get you in.
• 4:10
  So he's rung a mate of his who was an ear, nose and throat specialist and basically like, get to hospital now.
• 4:16
  They're waiting there for you.
• 4:18
  And so what it was was an infection in the back of my throat and it was an abscess basically formed between the muscle and the tonsils and so it was basically just closing the back of my throat in.
• 4:29
  So when I got to hospital, so this is about like now day five, and I think by this stage I'd lost about four kilos because of basically just not eating or drinking all week.
• 4:37
  So not ideal Bathurst prep.
• 4:41
  So we're nearly two weeks out from Bathurst now.
• 4:43
  So gone in there, the doctor's taken one look at me, and he's like even sort of like rolled his eyes, and he's like, wow, this is not good.
• 4:51
  And so he's like, all right, we can fix this.
• 4:53
  So I remember just sitting there in the chair.
• 4:54
  And at that point in time, I'm like, you know what, just whatever you've got to do.
• 4:57
  Like I was in so much pain.
• 4:58
  I was tired because I hadn't been sleeping.
• 5:00
  I was hungry.
• 5:01
  I was thirsty.
• 5:02
  So they've plugged me into an IV to sort of try and get some fluids back into me.
• 5:06
  And he's come at me, I remember just, and I don't like needles like most people, and I remember they've come at me with this needle and, like, the needle was, like, this long because what they needed to basically do was put a needle into the back of my throat so it'd go through the mouth.
• 5:18
  Like a horse needle, mate.
• 5:22
  And I remember just laying there, I'm like, whatever, I just don't care anymore.
• 5:26
  And so they had to anaesthetise the back of my throat and then basically came at me with a scalpel and pretty much just reached in and sliced the back of my throat to relieve the pressure in the back of the throat to drain the abscess that was on both sides.
• 5:39
  And I remember the nurse, like she's there with the suction and when he's sliced it, even the nurse was like, oh, my God, just with the amount of stuff that came out of both sides.
• 5:52
  And after that, they've sort of like, they've sort of kept me there for a while.
• 5:56
  And they're like, look, there's not much more we can do now.
• 5:58
  You've just got to go home and rest and it'll start to heal and everything like that.
• 6:02
  So I'd been to hospital for probably half a day at that point in time.
• 6:06
  I've gone home, gone to bed and just, I was just exhausted.
• 6:09
  And they'd doped me up on some pretty heavy painkillers and, um,
• 6:13
  So I'd actually managed to get some sleep.
• 6:16
  And I woke up after like two or three hours or something like that.
• 6:19
  And I remember just like waking up on the pillow and my eyes, just looking at my pillow, and there was just blood everywhere all over the pillow because the back of my throat had started to hemorrhage and just like blood was like coming out quite heavily.
• 6:33
  So I've rung Brian again.
• 6:34
  He's got me back to hospital.
• 6:37
  And so I think I spent three days then in hospital.
• 6:40
  because also the infection had gone into my bloodstream.
• 6:44
  So I was in a pretty bad way.
• 6:46
  So now we're probably about a week and a half out.
• 6:48
  When I got discharged from hospital, we're about a week and a half out from Bathurst.
• 6:53
  I was on all sorts of medication and everything like that.
• 6:56
  Again, like I think I was still like four and a half kilos down overall on my body weight.
• 7:02
  And just exhausted beyond comprehension.
• 7:05
  Like I was still...
• 7:07
  I was still probably sleeping 13, 14 hours a night.
• 7:09
  Like I just had no energy.
• 7:12
  And because of all the medication that obviously I'd been on to try and sort of fight the infection in my system and everything like that, the one thing I was very, very conscious about was the whole drugs in sport thing.
• 7:23
  Obviously, we are subject to random drug testing and everything like that.
• 7:26
  So I'd obviously been talking to the doctors about drugs.
• 7:30
  okay, I've got this race coming up.
• 7:32
  It's the biggest race.
• 7:33
  Like I've got a, what do I need to do with my medication and that?
• 7:36
  And basically what they said was, so the Sunday before Bathurst, stop your medication then.
• 7:41
  Everything that you're on will only stay in your system for a maximum of up to 48 hours.
• 7:46
  So they said realistically by Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday morning, whatever's in your system will be out.
• 7:51
  And I was like, okay, cool.
• 7:52
  And I had letters from specialists and doctors and everything like that.
• 7:55
  So
• 7:56
  I got to Bathurst and one of the first things that I did on the Wednesday was with Ken Douglas, who was obviously one of the senior engineers there at the time.
• 8:05
  Ken and I, we've gone down to go see the medics at the track at the time and the circuit doctor.
• 8:11
  And I basically explained, look, this is what's happened over the last two and a half weeks.
• 8:15
  Here's the letters from the hospital.
• 8:17
  Here's my specialist letter.
• 8:18
  This is what medication I was on.
• 8:21
  This is when I've stopped, blah, blah, blah.
• 8:24
  And I remember, so this was like Wednesday afternoon, and I remember the doctor looking at the letter and he was like, yep, that's fine.
• 8:30
  He said, but, and he said, they're right.
• 8:32
  Everything that you've taken will be out of your system or should be out of your system within a 48-hour window.
• 8:38
  But if there was anything to stay in your system, you could test positive for any number of these medications that you've been on.
• 8:47
  And even though you've got these letters to sort of like you would have a very good case to argue, well, I was on these for these particular reasons.
• 8:53
  He said you could test positive for any of these.
• 8:56
  So at that point, alarm bells have gone off everywhere.
• 8:59
  Ross, Jimmy and Ken sat down and obviously with Marcus still leading the championship at that point in time, they didn't want to take any risks.
• 9:07
  So the decision was made to that Wednesday afternoon.
• 9:09
  They're like, you need to start ringing around and find a doctor here in Bathurst that can do a drugs test just so that we know that you're clear.
• 9:16
  And I'm like, okay.
• 9:17
  So I've gone back to the motel.
• 9:19
  ringing around and every doctor in Bathurst is like, yeah, yeah, cool.
• 9:22
  We can, yeah, come in.
• 9:24
  We'll do all the necessary tests.
• 9:25
  We'll have the results for you early next week.
• 9:27
  And I'm like, no, no.
• 9:30
  I kind of need them sort of by tomorrow lunchtime.
• 9:32
  And they're like, oh, look, that can't happen.
• 9:34
  We've got to send pathology away.
• 9:37
  So I ended up ringing a really good friend of mine in Sydney who, when I lived in Sydney, he used to be my CAMHS medical officer.
• 9:42
  And I remember talking to Peter and I was like, hey, this is what's going on and I need to do a drugs test.
• 9:47
  He goes, well, read me all the letters that you've got.
• 9:49
  So I read him everything from the specialists.
• 9:51
  And he's like, mate, don't worry about it.
• 9:53
  He said, there won't be anything in your system now, let alone by Sunday.
• 9:56
  He said, like, you're fine.
• 9:58
  And I said, I know that.
• 10:00
  but I need the team need me to do this.
• 10:03
  So I think it was like seven o'clock now on the Wednesday night.
• 10:06
  And so he said to me, he said, look, he said, if you can get back to Sydney, he said, I can, we can, we can rush it through.
• 10:12
  And he said, I'll have the results for you like pretty quickly.
• 10:15
  And I'm like, okay.
• 10:16
  So can I come back to Sydney tonight?
• 10:18
  And he was like, look, he said, if you come back to Sydney tonight, I'll get one of the nurses to meet you at the clinic.
• 10:23
  He said, so you let me know when you're nearly there.
• 10:25
  I'll get one of the nurses to come and meet you at the clinic.
• 10:27
  We'll do the paperwork.
• 10:28
  We'll do the urine sample.
• 10:30
  We'll do everything that you need.
• 10:31
  And he said, I'll have the results for you by lunchtime tomorrow.
• 10:33
  He said, but, mate, I'm telling you now, you'll be fine.
• 10:35
  I'm like, well, I need to.
• 10:37
  So I rang Ken and he said, mate, get in your car and get to Sydney.
• 10:41
  Oh, yeah.
• 10:41
  So at like 7 o'clock Wednesday, and that was also – I was still doing the development series race for that weekend for Paul Crookshank Racing.
• 10:49
  So I'd done the whole development series that year with Paul Crookshank with DeSena on board.
• 10:55
  So not only was I driving with Marcus, but I was also doing the development series.
• 10:59
  So, again, just my physical state, I really wasn't probably as well prepared as what I should be.
• 11:05
  So Wednesday night I've driven all the way back to Sydney,
• 11:08
  Went to the clinic, had one of the nurses meet me there, did the sample, did the paperwork.
• 11:13
  She's like, yep, cool, we'll ring you tomorrow.
• 11:15
  Drove back to Bathurst.
• 11:16
  I got back to Bathurst at like half past one, two o'clock in the morning, I think it was, and just beyond tired.
• 11:21
  This is race week, mate.
• 11:22
  This is like the night before practice starts.
• 11:25
  My God.
• 11:26
  So, yeah, like I remember driving through the Blue Mountains.
• 11:29
  I've got the windows down in the car.
• 11:30
  I've got the radio on blaring flat out just trying to sort of just stay alert because I was just that tired and beyond exhausted.
• 11:37
  But got back.
• 11:38
  We got the test results the next day.
• 11:40
  And obviously, as everyone had said, I was all in the clear.
• 11:43
  So we got the thumbs up.
• 11:45
  And, yeah, so we continued on with the race weekend.
• 11:48
  But, look, as we know what transpired in the race, there was the drama with both Marcus and I with the balaclava.
• 11:55
  But look, mine was probably taken more out of a case of I knew I needed to do a double stint.
• 12:00
  And, again, a double stint back then was probably closer to 30 laps for a single stint.
• 12:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 12:06
  So you're talking like nearly 60-odd laps for a double stint back then, which these days is closer to a triple stint with what the fuel economy is today.
• 12:14
  But again, back then, there's no cool suit.
• 12:16
  There's no helmet fans.
• 12:17
  There's nothing.
• 12:17
  So temperature in the cars, you're talking sort of like mid-50s in the car.
• 12:22
  So to do sort of a double stint back then was rather taxing on the body at the best of times.
• 12:27
  let alone when you haven't had what you'd call probably ideal preparation coming in.
• 12:31
  So, yeah, look, obviously to this day it's probably a decision that I'll eternally regret and we saw obviously what happened.
• 12:39
  But I suppose probably the most disappointing thing for both Marcus and I was that the drive-through penalty for me for not having the balaclava on, him having to come in and put the balaclava on for that sort of unscheduled stop, the incident with Murph was actually the pass for third.
• 12:56
  So, look, it's one of those races.
• 12:59
  What could have been on balance, mate.
• 13:01
  Yeah, look, to be honest, I don't know if we probably had the ultimate speed to match Scaife that day.
• 13:05
  They were really fast.
• 13:08
  But, look, it's certainly you probably look at it and you go, you'd like to think that we're definitely on for a podium finish.
• 13:14
  Certainly the way that Marcus was driving at that point, he was rather angry and fired up.
• 13:18
  And as we've seen, the rest is obviously history.
• 13:21
  There was that great sort of altercation on the side of the track where,
• 13:24
  I'm pretty sure they were just complimenting each other about their driving skill and wishing each other best for the rest of the weekend.
• 13:29
  Yes.
• 13:32
  Like Stone Brothers, you've had, in an endurance sense, the chance to drive for some big teams, mate, and done a remarkable job for them along the way.
• 13:41
  But there are a couple of full-time stints in supercars that we should point out too, for DJR, for Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport, for Brightec.
• 13:49
  And while overall the results mightn't be there, I think that the nice way to compartmentalise this is you've got to do some good things, like working
• 13:58
  with Jason Bright, who at the time you learned a lot from and rate as a result quite highly, don't you?
• 14:04
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:05
  So I raced full-time for Brightec in 06, which was their second year in the championship.
• 14:09
  So Brighty was still at ProDrive at that point in time, sort of spearheading sort of their factory effort, and then stayed on board to do the endurance races in 07 in the second car with Alan Gurr, and that was the first year of Brighty coming on and driving for his team.
• 14:25
  But even in that first year at Brightec in 06,
• 14:28
  to have someone of Jason's experience.
• 14:31
  Um, and still to this day, I rate Jason as probably, uh, one of the smartest guys in terms of his ability to, to feel what a car is doing to he's got such a good engineering brain.
• 14:42
  Um, like I honestly think if he, if he hadn't been such a successful race car driver, he would have made an exceptional race engineer because he's, he's understanding and knowing what a car needs to get the best out of it from both a driving and an engineering point.
• 14:56
  Um,
• 14:56
  And he's one of those guys that I really learned a huge amount from in those early sort of years of my career.
• 15:01
  So, yeah, like you said, sort of the three full-time years that I had probably didn't sort of yield the results that I ultimately would have liked.
• 15:09
  But out of those came opportunities to go and do other things and everything like that.
• 15:14
  So there's certainly no regrets.
• 15:17
  And certainly like after my final sort of full-time year in 2011 with Lucas D'Umbrell,
• 15:22
  came the opportunity to partner with Craig for those two fantastic years at Triple Eight.
• 15:26
  So, again, without sort of that opportunity of being at Lucas's in 2011, I mightn't have got the opportunity to go to Triple Eight and work alongside Craig and all those fantastic people that were there at the time.
• 15:36
  So you can never...
• 15:39
  You can never look back with too much regret throughout your career because out of those times came opportunities to go and do other things.
• 15:48
  Lots of stuff leads to things, doesn't it, in that sense?
• 15:51
  That's a seriously cool period.
• 15:52
  You, Craig Lowndes, Triple Eight together.
• 15:56
  We'll talk some of the results and cars in a moment, but what's it like behind the scenes there?
• 16:01
  Jamie seems like the inch-perfect guy.
• 16:04
  Craig's the kind of modern-day Peter Brock who loves doing things.
• 16:08
  I mean, I heard stories of Craig...
• 16:11
  You know, if Jamie had a special muesli in the truck put away in a certain place, Craig would deliberately put it somewhere else.
• 16:19
  Does stuff like that go on?
• 16:20
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 16:21
  Look, Craig's that guy that he will just – probably one of the greatest things I learned from Craig is that you're not always going to have the car perfect.
• 16:28
  You're not always going to have that car that's maybe capable of winning, but it's about doing the best you can.
• 16:35
  And Craig is –
• 16:36
  is well known for his ability to get the best out of whatever you give him.
• 16:41
  Give him a race winning car and he will deliver every time.
• 16:44
  Give him a car that's probably not a race winning car, but it's only a top 10 car.
• 16:49
  He will grab every last ounce of effort out of that car and he will make it do things that probably,
• 16:54
  probably it shouldn't really be capable of doing.
• 16:56
  So that innate ability just to drive around any particular problem, to first of all drive it in a way to identify what the weakness of the car is, but then his ability to tune his driving to get every bit of performance that he can out of that car.
• 17:14
  You know that at the end of the day with Craig, whatever the result of that car is,
• 17:18
  that's the best it was ever going to do.
• 17:20
  So he's just the consummate master in that.
• 17:23
  And as you said, like, he's the people's champion.
• 17:25
  And a lot of people, probably one of the most common questions that I've been asked right throughout my career is, what's Craig Lowndes like away from the track?
• 17:34
  And it's like what you see on TV, that likeable, fun-loving, down-to-earth, approachable guy that he is on TV, that's exactly who he is away from the track.
• 17:43
  He's just...
• 17:44
  He's just, he's so likeable, he's so lovable.
• 17:47
  And for me, I look at my career and guys like Craig and I look at it and I go, you know what, I was so lucky that I started out as a fan.
• 17:56
  I got to race against him as a competitor.
• 17:58
  I got to be a teammate with him.
• 18:00
  But most importantly now, I consider him a great friend and a really good mate and someone that I look forward to being able to see when I go to the track and catch up and just to talk about not necessarily motorsport but just sports
• 18:11
  We talk about life and have a few laughs along the way and everything like that.
• 18:15
  So, yeah, he's an awesome guy.
• 18:18
  In that role as co-driver, you've got to be adaptable, don't you?
• 18:22
  Sometimes there's limited laps in the build-up to a Bathurst.
• 18:27
  You've got longevity.
• 18:29
  in this role and I'm intrigued about what the secret to your success is in the sense that is it the investment you make along the way during the year and getting to know the team, the structure, the way they operate and so on and fitting in when you sometimes do have that limited amount of wheel time.
• 18:47
  Yeah, look, I think as a co-driver, your role is to fit in around the team, whoever it is that you're partnered with and everything like that.
• 18:55
  And you're there to support them because in any endurance race, the main guy, they're going to do the bulk of the driving in the car.
• 19:04
  So it's your role to support them both in and out of the car.
• 19:08
  Like it's, um,
• 19:10
  to help them in whatever you can out of the car and certainly be that guy that can get in and do the job.
• 19:17
  It's not your job to win the race.
• 19:19
  It's your job to get in there and do the best job you can.
• 19:23
  Ultimately, if you're in a position that you can move forward through the field, then obviously do that.
• 19:29
  certainly try not to lose too many spots, but the most important thing is you've got to bring it back in one piece.
• 19:33
  There's, there's no good.
• 19:35
  It's not about out there trying to be sort of the hero to, to make all the sort of dive bomb moves and, and be that guy that everyone's, everyone's talking about after the race to sort of go, Oh wow, didn't he do a fantastic job?
• 19:46
  But,
• 19:47
  On the other side, don't be that guy that they're also talking about where they go, God, didn't he do a bad job out there or didn't he make some dumb mistakes out there?
• 19:54
  And it's such a fine line between the two.
• 19:57
  And look, certainly over the years, I've also been very lucky to be partnered with some amazing guys that have been in a position at the end of the race to be able to deliver and get us to the podium.
• 20:07
  As I say to people.
• 20:08
  My job is to do that sort of that lunchtime shift and keep us in contention.
• 20:13
  But it's that guy at the end of the car.
• 20:14
  It's his job to race for the podium.
• 20:17
  It's up to him and the team to ultimately get us in that position where we can stand on the podium at the end of the day.
• 20:23
  You talked about the Bathurst podium before.
• 20:26
  There's Sandown 500 wins.
• 20:28
  The Enduro Cup, which was a very special part of supercars, the combination of Sandown, Bathurst and Gold Coast,
• 20:35
  together and you've had success, you know, you hold a special place in the record books with that.
• 20:40
  Is there one somewhere there that you sort of look back and you go, that moment on that podium, I really savour?
• 20:46
  Look, I think probably 2012, that first Bathurst podium with Craig, for two reasons.
• 20:52
  As a kid growing up as a fan of the sport and watching Bathurst, like in our household, Bathurst was that sort of, that was that religion of where nothing else happened in our house.
• 21:02
  Unfortunately for my sister, her bath, her bath, her, her,
• 21:05
  Her birthday happens to fall back then on that Bathurst long weekend.
• 21:08
  So unfortunately in our household it was Bathurst and then Vicky's birthday.
• 21:13
  But thankfully she's a great motorsport fan as well.
• 21:17
  But, yeah, so to have that realisation of the dream of that kid that wanted to go racing, to not only go racing, to now be racing at Bathurst, to then to walk out onto that podium, yeah.
• 21:28
  And to walk out on that podium the first time as Craig Lowndes' teammate, it's a pretty special moment.
• 21:34
  And that's probably the one that I savour the most.
• 21:36
  But obviously there's been a few other podiums over the years and you appreciate them all for different reasons.
• 21:43
  Like last year, I think last year's podium was so special because of everything that we went through with COVID and obviously still going through to this day.
• 21:51
  And it was probably the most surreal moment because to walk out on the podium with so few people down there watching, it's basically like your teams and a handful of people down there.
• 22:00
  It made it probably even more special in that, as I said, Bathurst is a religion for so many people.
• 22:06
  There was people last year, it was their first time not going to Bathurst in 30 or 40 years or whatever.
• 22:12
  There's people that have got their own Bathurst stories that they book their family holidays around and they've got that campsite that they always go to.
• 22:21
  So for us to still be able to go there and do what's so special to us and those people miss out, I think walking out on the podium to not see those people down there, it made it probably that special in a different way in that we still got to do what we do, but they unfortunately had to miss out on what was so special to them.
• 22:41
  So hopefully this year we can get back to decent crowds and those people that are so much part of the Bathurst religion and the Bathurst institution can be back there doing what they love.
• 22:51
  Well done, mate.
• 22:51
  Great perspective on it all.
• 22:53
  Quickly, Garth Tander says, I should stir you about your hair and ridiculous hands.
• 22:58
  Do you want a return serve?
• 23:02
  Look, Garth's one of those great guys where, yeah, look, he and I have had some great banter over the years and another great mate.
• 23:08
  Like, obviously, we had some great fun times together in sort of our three years together.
• 23:13
  We had a Sandown 500 victory together, the Pertec Enduro Cup.
• 23:18
  Obviously, Bathurst 2014 didn't quite go to plan when I had the brake failure in practice there, which put us out for the weekend.
• 23:26
  But, look, Garth's a great mate and there's plenty of things that I could say probably in retaliation.
• 23:33
  I'll leave that for another conversation because I don't want to incriminate either of us.
• 23:36
  But again, similar to Bridie, Garth's one of those guys that I learned so much from and I've got a huge amount of respect for both in and out of the car.
• 23:46
  And again, another guy that if he wasn't so goddamn good behind the wheel or these days behind the microphone, he could have very easily been an incredibly successful race engineer because, again, one of those –
• 23:56
  one of those guys that just has unbelievable feel for not only what the car is doing, but also what he needs and his ability to, to communicate it.
• 24:04
  So yeah, he was a, he was an instrumental guy, certainly in my career and still a, still a great mate.
• 24:10
  I'm glad you say that because I think he's doing a super job and, and offering a level of currency by sharing some of those, those insights that you talk about.
• 24:19
  It leads me to Walkinshaw and Dretti United.
• 24:22
  Again, you're there this year.
• 24:24
  Is there a sense of, you know, in your mind, how much longer can I keep doing it?
• 24:29
  We've talked about Brock Feeney and a few others because of the younger people coming through, but you still love it.
• 24:33
  And every year, incredibly, mate, when you're in that endurance position, you just revel.
• 24:39
  You do it so well.
• 24:40
  Yeah, look, I love Bathurst and like I said, I love driving cars and love getting the most out of myself and the car and everything.
• 24:48
  And so for me, obviously the relationship with the team started in 2014 and obviously been through a few different sort of teammates over the year and obviously lucky to be partnering with Bryce this year.
• 24:59
  So would love nothing more than to stand on that podium again with Bryce and obviously sort of share that moment with him.
• 25:05
  But look, they've become like family to me.
• 25:09
  As I said to Ryan, I'd still love to try and go for at least a few more years because if I can do a few more years, then I'll get long service leave in a couple more years out of Ryan.
• 25:18
  But, look, at the end of the day, as I've said to so many people, that motorsport's like a merry-go-round.
• 25:24
  At some point in time, you're lucky enough that you get on, and at some point in time, the merry-go-round stops and it's your turn to get off.
• 25:31
  And certainly at some point in the future, it'll be my turn to get off.
• 25:36
  But I'll always look back at the, at my time in the sport and what I've done and what I've achieved and, and the opportunities and everything like that.
• 25:44
  And be very, very grateful for it.
• 25:46
  You can't be, you can't be sort of too sort of disappointed or hold any grudges when you sort of look back and look at what I've done.
• 25:53
  Because as I said, there was a seven year old kid that used to watch motorsport on TV that dreamt of being a race car driver one day.
• 25:59
  And,
• 26:00
  He sits here before you to this day a few years down the track and still getting to do it.
• 26:05
  So I look at it with what I'm doing these days as a very privileged position.
• 26:10
  I'm very lucky to do what I do, and I love the opportunity that I still have at Walkinshaw Rangretti United, and hopefully there'll be a few more years to come.
• 26:19
  Is there one supercar in the almost 20 years of having steered them
• 26:25
  where you feel an affinity, a connection?
• 26:28
  Maybe it's one of the ones with Lowndes.
• 26:30
  Was there one that when you drove it, you sort of... And perhaps sometimes these questions are more results-orientated than anything else because you picked up a trophy that day or a podium or whatever it was.
• 26:40
  But just in that moment where the car, the team, everything, the moment, it just felt like a car that you have a fond memory of.
• 26:49
  I think Sandown 2016 with Garth.
• 26:52
  It had been a pretty tough year up to that point.
• 26:56
  And so the team made the decision to put a new chassis into the championship for Garth.
• 27:03
  And like the first test day that we did at Winton, I remember we were both...
• 27:08
  really happy with the improvements that we'd made with the new car.
• 27:12
  And we got to Sandown and like straight from the moment we rolled it out of the truck, like in practice one, we were both kind of like, I remember at the end of Friday practice, we were both kind of just talking with each other and we're like,
• 27:25
  We're looking really good.
• 27:26
  Like everything that we did through practice, every change that we made, it just kept – the car kept getting better and better.
• 27:32
  And it just – it gave you that sense of confidence.
• 27:36
  And the Saturday, the sort of the two sprint races that we obviously had to do on the Saturday, we went well.
• 27:43
  We started on the front row come Sunday.
• 27:45
  And it was just – it was one of those weekends where just everything went right.
• 27:50
  The team did an amazing job.
• 27:52
  Strategy was spot on.
• 27:54
  But then we had that moment late in the race where the front guard sort of peeled off, the front left guard peeled off and was sort of hanging off the car.
• 28:01
  And I think Garth had like about a 14-second lead or something like that over SVG.
• 28:07
  And then there was that panic of, first of all, are they going to black flag us to come in and repair it?
• 28:12
  But it altered the handling of the car massively because you had this front guard flapping out in the breeze.
• 28:20
  So it made it really nervous under brakes, turned in exceptionally well on left-hand corners.
• 28:26
  But it really sort of unsettled the rear of the car.
• 28:28
  And yeah.
• 28:30
  And so Shane started to sort of chip away, chip away, and obviously those guys would have been on the radar going, hey, these guys got a problem.
• 28:37
  So like that last portion of the race, and I think probably something that did go in our favour was that the time certain finish came into effect.
• 28:46
  So we didn't do the full 161 laps.
• 28:49
  and obviously, look, we managed to get over the line and win the race.
• 28:53
  So it was an amazing feeling because, as I said, like with 20-odd laps to go and a 14-second lead, you sort of – you were quite confident, and then the front guard happened.
• 29:04
  But, yeah, that car that weekend, all weekend was just –
• 29:07
  It was spot on from the moment we rolled out of the truck and it was just one of those times where you've really got a lot of confidence in the car and the way that it progressed through the weekend and ultimately to then have it sort of repay not only us but obviously the team, our fans, our sponsors, supporters and everyone like that was a great weekend.
• 29:26
  That's a good choice.
• 29:28
  I recall that race vividly, mate, so I'm not surprised that it's had that effect on you.
• 29:44
  My dad used to start our old Gemini with a sledgehammer all the time.
• 29:48
  Gives a whole new meaning to the word jumpstart.
• 29:52
  It's a question I don't often like to ask.
• 29:55
  Is there a crash, was?
• 29:57
  And I ask that because the reason I ask that is that I actually don't recall many with you across the time of your career.
• 30:04
  But is there one that you sometimes think back on and maybe it makes you wince a little bit or something like that?
• 30:10
  Bathurst 2014 practice, Saturday morning practice.
• 30:15
  It was a co-driver session and obviously I'd already done three or four laps.
• 30:20
  We came in, made a suspension adjustment to the front end
• 30:26
  The boys have pushed me back out.
• 30:27
  I had a brake pedal in pit lane, was going up pit lane, tapped the brakes to check.
• 30:31
  A lot of people naturally assumed because of the accident and having just sort of come out of the pits that are a dumb race car driver that just changed the pads and hadn't pumped up the pedal, but that wasn't the case at all.
• 30:42
  It was actually a front brake line failure.
• 30:45
  So the worst thing was I had the brakes in pit lane and I hadn't even touched the brakes.
• 30:51
  So when I came out of the pits, you know,
• 30:53
  our race engineer was on the radio and he was literally on the radio and he said, look, Louns, he's just coming through term one, let him go.
• 31:00
  You've got some clear track behind.
• 31:01
  So even when I first came out of the pits, I probably didn't accelerate as hard as what I could have.
• 31:06
  Cause I've seen Craig go by and I left a bit of a gap and then I slowly built up to speed.
• 31:11
  went up mountain straight and went for the brakes and literally the pedal went straight to the floor and madly managed to try and pump it to get some kind of a pedal, but it had actually blown the line off the front left caliper.
• 31:23
  So all I ended up with was a bit of rear and managed to sort of punch it down a few gears
• 31:28
  which kind of started to get the car sliding and then obviously hitting Craig, not only unfortunately put him into the wall, but probably thankfully for me, it sent me in there backwards.
• 31:38
  So the inertia and the impact for me was sort of only pushing me back into the seat, which ultimately it didn't actually really hurt that much.
• 31:45
  It was just probably more the fright of it.
• 31:47
  And then obviously up in the air and ended up on its side.
• 31:49
  And then obviously there's the great pictures of Craig helping me out of the car and us having a bit of a bromance hug on the side of a track there.
• 31:57
  So,
• 31:58
  That was kind of one of those really tough weekends because not only in that race, but also I was doing Carrera Cup for McElroy Racing at the time.
• 32:05
  On the Friday, I'd unfortunately made a mistake over the top of the mountain and had a decent sort of shunt in the Carrera Cup car.
• 32:13
  The boys had done an all-nighter on Friday night repairing the car, and then I've obviously had the shunt in the supercar, but thankfully medical cleared me and I was all good to go.
• 32:21
  And it was probably like it was an hour, maybe an hour and a half later, I had qualifying for Carrera Cup.
• 32:26
  and still managed to stick it on the front row in second position.
• 32:29
  And the races went quite well.
• 32:32
  But the final race on the Sunday morning in Carrera Cup, we were leading.
• 32:38
  There'd been an incident somewhere on the track and we're under safety car.
• 32:41
  And in my head, I'm like, let's just finish this.
• 32:44
  It's been a tough weekend.
• 32:45
  We're currently leading.
• 32:47
  Let's just put the flag out and let's be done with it.
• 32:48
  And then they come on the radio and they're like, yep, safety car's in this lap and it's a one-lap sprint to the finish line.
• 32:54
  So I was sort of like, all right, let's do this, and got a good run on the restart, good run through turn one, and then going up to turn two, someone back in fourth or fifth has kind of made a move on someone and gone down the inside, dropped a wheel on the grass, and basically came through and,
• 33:12
  and skilled with a whole bunch of us.
• 33:13
  So took out myself and Richo, Dave Russell, and I basically ended up backwards into the same tyre wall that on Saturday morning with Craig I'd been upside down.
• 33:23
  So it was probably more of a mentally exhausting weekend, that one, because there'd been so much...
• 33:30
  So much going on, obviously the accident on Friday, which was 100% my fault.
• 33:35
  Then obviously the issue on Saturday, which put us out for the weekend and obviously put Craig into the wall, which I felt terrible about.
• 33:42
  And then to sort of come back and be ultimately leading the final race of Carrera Cup for that weekend.
• 33:48
  And had we finished the race in first, we would have won the weekend overall, but then end up backwards into the fence and another trip to the medical centre.
• 33:55
  It was my third trip there for the weekend.
• 33:57
  I think both myself and the medical team were sick and tired of seeing each other.
• 34:01
  Yeah, so that was definitely a very challenging weekend for so many different reasons.
• 34:08
  But it's one of those things that's out of those particular weekends, you become mentally tougher, you become a lot smarter out of situations like that as well, and you live to sort of fight on.
• 34:21
  And, mate, importantly, the pictures –
• 34:24
  were of great mateship in the aftermath of that with you and Craig.
• 34:29
  There are podiums in the Bathurst 12-hour, trophies from the 24-hour too.
• 34:33
  I want to touch back on the GT car for a moment because earlier in the podcast, you talked about that two-minute, one-second lap.
• 34:40
  McLaren 650S.
• 34:43
  To get the chance to drive that, to roar around the mountain in it, to no doubt...
• 34:48
  pull the straps tight, maybe even hold your breath.
• 34:52
  What is a lap like that in a car like that with what it demands of you, how it excites you?
• 34:58
  What is that like?
• 34:59
  That was still to this day, that's probably one of the most unbelievable laps for me from a driver's perspective because, as I said, that was when you had a special qualifying tyre, so it was only good for a couple of laps.
• 35:12
  The thing was fuelled to literally only do the one lap.
• 35:15
  unfortunately, that was the first time I'd also driven on that tyre.
• 35:18
  So even on your outlap warming up, you can feel that it's got more grip, but you don't want to take too much out of the tyre.
• 35:24
  So you'd basically, for me, it was a little bit flying blind on that particular lap because you just didn't know where the actual grip of it was.
• 35:31
  But I remember...
• 35:32
  all the way over the top of the mountain.
• 35:34
  The speed that you could carry was just unbelievable.
• 35:37
  Like I remember coming onto Conrad Strait and taking like this massive breath because I pretty much don't think I managed to breathe between the cutting and Forrest Elbow because it was just the speed.
• 35:48
  And like remembering like a GT car like up mountain straight and down Conrad, it's about 15K an hour slower than a V8 supercar.
• 35:56
  And yet we were doing, as I said, a 201.8 something in qualifying.
• 36:01
  Across the top then.
• 36:02
  So your lap speed is all across the top and obviously braking and that as well.
• 36:06
  But it's just...
• 36:08
  It was unbelievable the amount of grip that you had.
• 36:11
  But all the way over the top, it's sort of like in the back of my head, I was kind of like, oh, I could have gone a bit more, I could have gone a bit more, just not knowing ultimately where the overall grip is.
• 36:20
  And I remember sort of coming over the start-finish line and seeing a 2018 sort of flash up on the dashboard.
• 36:25
  Yeah.
• 36:26
  I don't think even if it was fuelled to do a second lap, I don't reckon I could have actually done a second lap.
• 36:31
  I think I was just so mentally drained and exhausted.
• 36:33
  I'm like, all right, I need to go sit down now and just sort of take a couple of minutes just to recap what actually went on.
• 36:40
  So that was a very, very cool moment in my career to have that opportunity to drive not only a car like that but in a situation like that with a Qualyspect tyre and to be able to do such a quick lap around the mountain was pretty special.
• 36:55
  Can we just spend a moment or two zeroing in on one very cool car that I think will appeal to our listeners of the podcast?
• 37:04
  And that is the car that is affectionately known as Nemo.
• 37:07
  Won the 2012 World Time Attack, which is an amazing event at Sydney Motorsport Park.
• 37:13
  Tell people about that car, what it is like to drive, and a bit about World Time Attack.
• 37:17
  So world time attack, it's one of those unique things in world motorsport where every category these days is so heavenly governed by rules and regulations of what you can and can't do and trying to have parity and everything like that.
• 37:33
  I suppose Time Attack takes the conventional rulebook and throws it out the window to the point where it's pretty much all, if you can imagine it and if you can build it, you can almost run it.
• 37:44
  There are rules along the way for safety and everything like that.
• 37:48
  But you're talking like these days, you're talking cars with well over 1,000 horsepower.
• 37:52
  levels of aero and downforce that are likened to an open-wheeler or F1 car just about.
• 37:59
  So the speeds that these cars are capable of.
• 38:01
  But when we go back to 2012, a lot of the cars in World Time Attack were still very much an improvement on a road car.
• 38:12
  Like they were a road car that obviously had a huge amount of development done but still some big wings.
• 38:17
  I suppose Nemo was probably one of the very first –
• 38:20
  ground up builds where it was take the rule book as it is now it wasn't a car that's developed over the previous two or three years so it really i suppose set the tune for so many of the cars that we see now in world time attack and for me the opportunity to to drive that car it came about really late so
• 38:39
  The guy that owned the car had had a few other people working on it and basically came to McElroy Racing only months prior to World Time Attack with a half-finished car and a whole bunch of parts.
• 38:50
  Basically like, hey, can you finish this car off?
• 38:52
  And his plan was to drive it himself.
• 38:55
  The first test day that we went to Queensland Raceway, I pretty much just went along to basically help him and do a bit of driver coaching and have a little bit of a drive.
• 39:04
  And I think very quickly he realised that the performance level or the potential of this car was certainly a fair way beyond where his, I suppose, experience was.
• 39:14
  And so even when we – so the decision was made for me then to go with him down to World Time Attack to, again, help him but maybe be on standby in case he – because he'd invested a lot in the project and he wanted to see the car do well.
• 39:28
  And at that point, he was like, look, if I can't get the best out of the car, I want you to drive it and let's see what we can do.
• 39:34
  So –
• 39:35
  We got down there.
• 39:35
  I hadn't really spent much time in the driver's seat of this car, but very quickly he made the decision that, look, I'm not going to be able to get the best out of this.
• 39:44
  I want you to drive.
• 39:47
  And, yeah, like it was an amazing car to drive.
• 39:49
  It certainly didn't have the most horsepower out there.
• 39:51
  Like, in fact, like I think top speed down in the front straight at Sydney Motorsport Park was just over the 260 mark, which –
• 39:59
  for most cars is not that fast when like the car that finished second to us, uh, with Garth Walden driving the Tilton car was somewhere in sort of the, the load of mid two 90 range.
• 40:08
  Um, so we were a long way off in terms of horsepower, but we really sort of took the, the aero side of it and took it to a whole new level of both over the, over the body aero and also, uh, underbody aero as well.
• 40:20
  And, um, yeah,
• 40:21
  the car just ran faultlessly all weekend and we just kept improving.
• 40:25
  And we ended up punching out like a low one minute 25.
• 40:28
  And when you consider the previous year, I think the winning time had been like a high 127 or a low 128.
• 40:37
  And even that year in 2012, the car, which was the Garth Walden, finished second, I think that was still in a high one minute 27.
• 40:45
  So we've really sort of not only sort of developed,
• 40:49
  dominated the field that year.
• 40:50
  But as I said, it really probably set the benchmark for what a competitive time attack car needed to be.
• 40:56
  And when you look at it, like supercars at the time were still only sort of in the, because they hadn't run the soft tyre in those days at Sydney Motorsport Park, like a quick supercar time was only in a 1 minute 30 period.
• 41:06
  So to be nearly five seconds quicker than a V8 supercar.
• 41:10
  But again, it didn't have a huge amount of straight line speed.
• 41:12
  So it was a really cool project to be a part of.
• 41:15
  We went back the following year, but unfortunately we had some engine dramas through practice.
• 41:19
  So we never really got to sort of turn a wheel in anger for the duration of that weekend.
• 41:25
  And then after that, unfortunately, the car sort of got parked and hasn't been seen since.
• 41:29
  But it was...
• 41:30
  It was a great opportunity to be involved in something so cool.
• 41:34
  And still to this day, World Time Attack is a massively successful thing.
• 41:38
  I take my hats off to Ian Baker, who's behind it.
• 41:41
  It's his brainchild.
• 41:42
  He started, I think, in 2008 at Orem Park.
• 41:45
  And the event has just grown and grown and grown to the point where, like, you've got guys coming out from Europe and Asia and America to bring some of these amazing cars out to want to play on our stage out here.
• 41:56
  It's got a huge following, mate.
• 41:57
  It's a great thing.
• 41:58
  Just because this is an audio experience, as we wrap up the conversation on Nemo, I just want you to take people there in the sense of body shape, horsepower, power plant.
• 42:12
  Just describe it if you can and what it was like to manhandle with all of that work that went on in relation to the ground up build and the focus on the aero that you spoke of.
• 42:22
  So it started life as a Mitsubishi Evo, but realistically its resemblance to a Mitsubishi Evo starts and stops with the name because it's, as I said, the aero was all designed by a proper aerodynamicist.
• 42:38
  He came on board and…
• 42:40
  and completely did sort of the aero using CFD and all sorts of stuff that is now common amongst sort of time attack users and everything like that, but had these massive wings on both the front and rear because the ultimate thing to generate lap time is downforce.
• 42:57
  Because remembering also in world time attack, we don't run a slick tyre.
• 43:00
  It's an R-spec tyre, but again, in those days it was a very –
• 43:05
  a very special kind of a tyre because, again, it was a tyre that was good for one or two laps.
• 43:09
  And I remember even like on our final run when we did the low one minute 25, coming onto the front straight at Sydney Motorsport Park through that double sort of left-hander, it sounded like a shotgun going off under the front wheel arch because what it was actually doing, the tyre had already started to blister and it was blowing chunks of rubber everywhere.
• 43:29
  out of the front right-hand tie on the edge and just punching it up into the carbon inner guards because the level of downforce, it's just squashing this tire.
• 43:39
  So you've got massive wings both front and rear, full diffuser under the car.
• 43:44
  I said in terms of horsepower we barely had over 500 horsepower in this car so when you look at the cars of today that are out there that are that are dominating in world time attack you're talking like to be a front-running car in time attack these days you've got to be making well over a thousand horsepower um and the speeds obviously these days are certainly much much much higher but um but yeah back then to to drive a car like at
• 44:07
  barely just over 260 kilometres an hour to just come down the front straight at Sydney Motorsport Park in a full body car and just hold it flat through turn one.
• 44:16
  There was no lift, no, and the thing would just stick like nothing else through there.
• 44:20
  It was just an unbelievable experience.
• 44:23
  And like we touched on before, obviously I've done very little in terms of open wheeler and not a lot in terms of cars with high downforce.
• 44:31
  But certainly that
• 44:32
  that early days of Nemo in 2012.
• 44:35
  The only thing I can compare it to is that lap a few years later at Bathurst in the McLaren on sort of the, on the qualifying tyres where just the grip level was so high that it just, your brain doesn't believe that the car is capable of generating that much grip.
• 44:48
  So yeah, it was a great project to be involved in and very lucky to, to be the driver of that car for sort of the two years and, and to stand on the podium in 2012.
• 44:58
  Unreal, mate.
• 44:58
  It just sounds like it's on steroids.
• 45:00
  Really cool.
• 45:00
  You talked about McElroy Racing.
• 45:03
  Again, another very long chapter of your life involves this organisation.
• 45:07
  There have been some ups and downs in that too.
• 45:09
  I mean, you talked about 2014 and the crash at Bathurst and going so close to winning the title in an epic battle with...
• 45:16
  with Richo and I know Andy had to make that tough call.
• 45:18
  I think there was another year on your deal to keep racing there and circumstantially things had changed for him with the business and he couldn't go through with that.
• 45:27
  And yet you stayed, you remained immensely loyal.
• 45:30
  They are hugely proud of what you do with that team now in a coaching sense, mate.
• 45:37
  And it's a huge credit to you, the part you have played in their success.
• 45:42
  They're acutely aware of it.
• 45:43
  I want to talk about coaching because it more or less brings us back to the start of the podcast in that the driver training and things like that, the racing experience that you've had since then, it's almost as though it's brought all those facets together and it's a natural thing for you.
• 45:59
  Did it come easily and how did it start?
• 46:01
  Look, I think, like you said, like my journey in cars and driving started by being an instructor at Dad's Driving School and being around some great guys like we spoke about earlier, like the Rodney Cricks, the Mark Webbers, Greg McShane, obviously my dad, and there's been a whole bunch of other guys that were incredibly successful in their own rights in motorsport.
• 46:19
  And to learn and watch those guys, not only what they do as a driver, but what they do as a coach to be able to sort of help improve people's driving and everything like that.
• 46:28
  So before I was a race car driver, I was a driver trainer and doing those sort of days.
• 46:35
  So the coaching side of it really does, I suppose, come relatively easy for me and it's something that I take great pride in and it's been a fantastic journey with the guys and girls at McElroy Racing and it's a great opportunity that they've given me to...
• 46:48
  to sort of give back to the sport and to be able to sort of help those sort of young guys on their path sort of through and to share my experience and share sort of the things that I can sort of see them doing or advice that I can give them to not only make them a better driver on track, but also to be a better driver off track and how they engage with fans and sponsors and all that sort of stuff.
• 47:09
  Because –
• 47:10
  the outside of the car is such a huge part of what we do.
• 47:13
  And a lot of the time that determines whether you actually get the opportunity to get into the car as well.
• 47:17
  So, yeah, like for me, it's been a great journey with Macro Racing.
• 47:22
  It started back in 2013, or actually started in 2012 with Nemo and then started in Career Cup in 2013 and 2014.
• 47:30
  And then we had another sort of a half year in Career Cup in 2019.
• 47:35
  But my relationship with Andy actually goes back to,
• 47:38
  that first time I went to New Zealand and raced in the summer series of 95 and 96.
• 47:43
  I was that young kid racing at a one-make Peugeot series, and he was dominating the Trans Am Championship, racing against Jim Richards, Dick Johnson, Steve Johnson, Peter Brock, and he actually won the title that year.
• 47:56
  So I've known Andy for a very, very long time.
• 47:59
  And as I said, he and Mel are more like family to me these days.
• 48:04
  And, yeah, I love the role that I have there.
• 48:06
  And, yeah, we've had success.
• 48:09
  both with me as a driver but also with the coaching of some of the young guys and girls that we've had come through as well.
• 48:14
  He is a great character.
• 48:16
  He says that without even asking, and they're just blown away that you do it, that you will often call some of those –
• 48:24
  drivers, those clients or customers, if you will, during the week and just see how they're going in the lead up to a race meeting, after a race meeting, that that coaching extends beyond the meeting proper.
• 48:36
  But can we just zero in on a little story here to underscore
• 48:41
  What I think, mate, without pumping your tyres, is the world-class level of what you do with this coaching.
• 48:48
  And it involves, I think it's Simon Ellingham is the driver in question here.
• 48:53
  He was at Queensland Raceway this particular day.
• 48:55
  He, I think, had only ever been around there in about a 12-year-old.
• 49:00
  But over the radio, while he is out on the track, you, with, I'm imagining, very succinct, very appropriately timed words that perhaps just come intuitively or naturally to you, you coach him to an 11-5 mate.
• 49:19
  How do you do that?
• 49:20
  Look, there's been a few of our guys over the years and probably sort of more of our sort of amateur guys where their life has been all about business and everything like that and they're now in a position to go racing.
• 49:32
  My job as the coach is to be able to sort of help give them the confidence
• 49:37
  to push, I suppose, the car and themselves to a limit where they don't believe that they can ultimately go.
• 49:44
  So it's giving them that sort of reassuring voice in their ear to sort of push that little bit harder under brakes, to be that little bit more aggressive in the corner or whatever it is.
• 49:52
  But it's being able to find whatever the language is that you've got to use –
• 49:58
  to work with each person because it's not just a case of you keep the same message for everyone.
• 50:03
  Everyone needs a different level of motivation or a different amount of sort of reassurance on the radio.
• 50:10
  Like some of the guys I speak to very little over the course of the race, whereas others like I'm on the radio flat out all the time sort of trying to encourage them, especially in the braking areas, to sort of push that little bit deeper, to find those marks that we've spoken about both in our track walk
• 50:26
  in our data and in our video sessions and everything like that, of just giving them that confidence to push that a little bit deeper, to dig deep within themselves.
• 50:34
  Because a lot of the time the natural human reaction is you'll always be that little bit conservative.
• 50:39
  So you're trying to,
• 50:41
  push them beyond their comfort zone without obviously going sort of too far.
• 50:45
  And, yeah, it's been a great journey, and I've worked with some great people along the way.
• 50:50
  Obviously, we've got guys like Matt Campbell and Jackson Evans that have gone on to go race in Europe, and obviously Matt,
• 50:58
  Matt's a Porsche-contracted driver for the last few years.
• 51:01
  Jackson was one of the Porsche juniors and still racing in Super Cup, WEC, and doing a whole bunch of stuff.
• 51:08
  So those guys have now really kind of continued the dream and living.
• 51:13
  They're both living together over there with each other and now racing in WEC together as well.
• 51:18
  Could you imagine those two as flatmates?
• 51:20
  That would be chaos.
• 51:22
  Well done.
• 51:23
  Well done.
• 51:24
  It's a very unique skill, mate, and you're to be admired for it.
• 51:28
  Can we finish with something that I think in our chat here is arguably the most important?
• 51:34
  And that is no second chance.
• 51:35
  I think this is something I'd like to spend a moment shining a light on to conclude.
• 51:40
  And I would ask listeners, if you get a moment, to Google it, to go and have a look and a read, to perhaps even consider trying to reach out and get this to your school, possibly even.
• 51:54
  So it involves you as one of...
• 51:57
  a number of very powerful speakers, mate, that drive home and illustrate the importance of good life choices, don't you?
• 52:10
  Yeah, so it's a program that Andy kind of launched back in late 2012, 2013, in conjunction with one of our speakers, Paul Stanley.
• 52:20
  So they'd known each other, grew up in the same part of New Zealand.
• 52:25
  So Paul and Andy's dad were sort of good mates.
• 52:29
  And so Paul tragically lost his son in 2006 to basically a one-punch coward attack.
• 52:37
  His son, Matt, went to a party and there was an altercation.
• 52:42
  He went to go leave the party and a guy came up from behind, hit him from behind.
• 52:46
  So...
• 52:49
  It was something they'd sort of put together, but we realised that there needed to be a few more elements because our basic target audience is year 11, but predominantly year 12 kids in high school.
• 53:01
  Because in year 12, you've got kids that are getting to an age where they're starting to get their licence.
• 53:06
  And let's be honest, for most people, driving on the roads is literally going to be the most dangerous thing you'll do at any point in your life.
• 53:12
  But they're also at that age where they're starting to go to parties.
• 53:15
  There's alcohol, there's drugs, there's influences and everything like that.
• 53:20
  So we found another guy by the name of Matt Speakman.
• 53:24
  So Matt was an up-and-coming motorcycle racer in the early 90s.
• 53:29
  He'd just signed a contract with Honda to race one of their bikes in the Australian Superbike Championship the following year.
• 53:35
  was super excited.
• 53:37
  He worked at a nightclub in Sydney and his daily transport was a motorcycle.
• 53:41
  And at the end of the night, he and a friend of his were on his bike sort of riding home and a drunk driver crossed the wrong side of the road and impacted both of them, threw them off the bike.
• 53:54
  And Matt basically...
• 53:56
  recounts the story of that night from not only the phone call that day with Honda to ringing his parents in Tasmania to speaking of how excited he was for that following year of being that guy that was trying to live his dream in motorsport and obviously through bikes, going to work that night.
• 54:13
  And at the end of the night, his friend, she came up to him and said, oh, look, someone's left a helmet in the cloakroom.
• 54:18
  Can you give me a lift?
• 54:19
  So made the decision to give her a lift on his bike.
• 54:22
  which put him on a path which he wouldn't have normally gone, to then riding along in the early hours of the morning and seeing these headlights come over the crest of a hill, ultimately be on the wrong side of the road and make impact with them.
• 54:36
  And the feeling of leaving the bike, going over the roof of the car and ultimately waking up in the gutter on the side of the road with horrendous injuries and ultimately injuries that has seen him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
• 54:51
  but he talks about that night and the detail of the accident of waking up and the pain that he was in and feeling like basically from his chest down, he had no movement.
• 55:02
  He couldn't feel his legs to then being transported to hospital and then the emotions of his family as to the phone call that they got to, hey, you need to try and get to Sydney to come and see your son because there's a good chance that he might not survive the surgery.
• 55:18
  But then talks about Maria, his friend that was on the bike, because her family got the phone call that no family wants to be able to get.
• 55:24
  And that is you need to come down to the morgue to identify your daughter because she tragically was killed in the accident.
• 55:30
  So he talks the road safety angle of – and his story is real because when they play his video and it shows highlights of his motorbike career and it finishes with photos of his x-rays and everything like that and he comes in in his wheelchair –
• 55:45
  you can't not pay attention because it's real.
• 55:48
  It's not a police officer standing there saying, you know what, you shouldn't speed on the roads, you shouldn't drink and drive.
• 55:53
  This is a guy that is the direct result of someone else's actions and his life and his direction of life was forever changed through the stupidity of someone making the decision to get behind the wheel whilst under the influence of alcohol.
• 56:09
  So...
• 56:11
  He goes through that sort of story and then, as I said, then Paul, he comes on and talks about the night of the party that Matt, his son, went to where he was ultimately punched, where it was their other son's birthday.
• 56:22
  They've all gone for dinner.
• 56:23
  They went to the party to go drop his son, Matt, and his mates off to this party.
• 56:31
  They went home and he talks about getting that phone call that forever changed their life.
• 56:35
  And that was one of his son's friends on the phone saying, you need to get here.
• 56:40
  Matt's been punched.
• 56:42
  Something's happening.
• 56:45
  It's not good.
• 56:46
  So he's jumped in the car with his wife.
• 56:48
  They've gone there.
• 56:50
  He talks about what it was like to see his son laying on the side of the road with the ambulance's office around him to then having to be in the ambulance.
• 56:57
  Yeah.
• 56:58
  to go to hospital and ultimately have to make that decision to turn the life support system off and to be that parent that turned the life support system off.
• 57:08
  And like throughout both of their talks, you can you could literally hear a pin drop.
• 57:14
  I suppose the most powerful message that these guys have is that this is real.
• 57:18
  This is not – it's not a parent.
• 57:21
  It's not a teacher.
• 57:22
  These are people that have lived the nightmare and continue to live this nightmare to this very day.
• 57:28
  They will always – Paul will never be able to wake up and hug his son Matt again.
• 57:32
  Yeah.
• 57:35
  And so it's just, it's that realisation that these things actually happen and the kids that we're talking to, they're of that age.
• 57:43
  But then what we finish with is I come in and I talk about, I suppose, what it is like to actually live your dream, to make smart decisions in life, that I was a kid that sat there on the lounge with my dad and watched motorsport.
• 57:56
  I was a seven-year-old kid that watched Bathurst and dreamt of being a race car driver.
• 58:00
  Now, at that age, I had no idea.
• 58:03
  what it would mean or what sacrifices I would have to make or how much effort would be required to get there.
• 58:09
  But still to this day, I'm that kid living the dream.
• 58:12
  So my message to them is very, very simple.
• 58:15
  Make smart decisions.
• 58:16
  You can live your dreams.
• 58:17
  It doesn't matter what your dream is, whether it be sporting, academic, music, or whatever it is that you want to do in life.
• 58:24
  With hard work, you can achieve what seems to be the unachievable, but you've got to be willing to
• 58:33
  hand it over to you.
• 58:33
  No one was just going to give me a bathyscribe.
• 58:36
  No one's just going to sort of hand over those sort of opportunities to me.
• 58:38
  I've had to work hard to get those opportunities to be where I am today.
• 58:43
  So it's a great mix of the three of us because you've got those two guys where their messages are so powerful.
• 58:48
  And so it really cuts down to the core of what these kids are, where they're at in life.
• 58:55
  As I said, they're at that age where they're going to parties.
• 58:57
  There is alcohol, there is drugs.
• 59:00
  they're getting their licenses and we've seen it in the road statistics, that 17 to 25-year-old age group, they are the most at-risk drivers on our roads.
• 59:10
  They make up the highest percentage of our fatality rate.
• 59:14
  So there's messages in everything that we sort of talk about in the hour that we're there.
• 59:21
  But the interesting thing is,
• 59:23
  In the time that we've done it, we've been to every type of school from sort of your most elite of private schools to we've been to the Townsville Youth Detention Centre where there are kids that obviously have fallen foul of the law and they are now in the detention system and everything like that.
• 59:39
  But the message that we or the feedback we get from the teachers right across the board is one of like we've never seen something work so well.
• 59:48
  Even kids that are in the detention centre, like,
• 59:51
  They don't talk, they don't muck up, they sit there and they listen intently for the whole hour that we've been there.
• 59:57
  And that's the one thing that so many of the teachers that we go to say, that we've never seen the kids, we can't even get them to sit this still for this long in a normal class.
• 1:00:06
  So we know that the message is getting through and it's about being able to make a difference.
• 1:00:13
  Well done, mate.
• 1:00:14
  It's absolutely powerful stuff, but I love, as difficult as it must be for them to recount some of those stories, I love the real world cut through at an important age for those school kids.
• 1:00:27
  I think, mate, that is a perfect way for us to wrap things up.
• 1:00:30
  Massive congratulations on what you've done for being that...
• 1:00:34
  that kid that grew up around it with dreams of being at Bathurst, co-driving and being with some of the biggest race teams in the country, having some unbelievable drives of all kinds of different cars along the way and still doing it in a racing sense.
• 1:00:48
  The stunt driving, I love No Second Chance and the coaching too, mate.
• 1:00:52
  And we wish you all the very best.
• 1:00:53
  Most importantly, can I just say well done too, because I know more than anything you're a proud dad, so well done.
• 1:00:59
  Definitely.
• 1:00:59
  Thanks, mate.
• 1:00:59
  I think out of everything, that's definitely my biggest achievement and the thing I'm most proud of.
• 1:01:05
  It's, you know, what it's like being a dad.
• 1:01:06
  I've got a great little girl there and just to see her sort of growing up.
• 1:01:11
  And yeah, she's definitely an amazing part of my life and a lot of fun.
• 1:01:17
  Great stuff.
• 1:01:23
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 1:01:27
  Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
• 1:01:30
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 1:01:40
  Listener.