Latest / Rusty's Garage / Trevor Sheumack | Part 1 - Fun rides & Formula Ford fabrication

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Trevor Sheumack | Part 1 - Fun rides & Formula Ford fabrication · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:05
  For this episode, I'm in our Melbourne studios and joined by a member of the Aussie motorsport family who you just get used to seeing when you rock up to work at events.
• 0:14
  Trevor Schumach has been a bit of a constant for almost 30 years in various forms of motorsport that I've worked on, but his story isn't just limited to Australia.
• 0:23
  As you'll hear, he worked in Europe for different teams and also has a proper love of driving himself.
• 0:29
  He
• 0:29
  race super tourers for example back in the 90s here and he's never lost the love of those cars but the driving part of his cv covers a lot more and it keeps growing as you'll hear trev's just about always smiling he's generally got a story and not always about the state of play he is one of those trusted
• 0:47
  can-do people.
• 0:48
  He gets stuff done.
• 0:50
  Whether it's fitting up hundreds of tyres with his very dedicated team before an event gets underway, to patrolling pit lane once things start with an eagle eye on car behaviour and rubber performance.
• 1:03
  This pod is a reminder that there are so many stories in our sport, not just those who take home the silverware, from having a go at Formula Ford fabrication to a blockbuster karting event at the Entertainment Centre in Sydney with Neil Crompton.
• 1:18
  taking on a motorsport tyre distribution business and expanding it in the decades since into the land of the long white cloud and Asia, enjoying a bit of rallying, but not in your typical all-wheel drive thoroughbred, plus a guilty pleasure BMW years after racing one.
• 1:37
  Bit like 90s music, I reckon.
• 1:38
  It left a lasting impression on him.
• 1:40
  Quick thanks to a colleague and friend, Ebony Doherty from Michelin, Australia, for helping to tee this one up and for the ongoing support of the team there who also look after Bea at Goodrich.
• 1:50
  They are really loyal supporters of our pod and we thank them for that.
• 1:55
  Let's get into it now with Trevor Schumach.
• 1:59
  How long have we known each other?
• 2:01
  I reckon it's nearly like 30 years we've been bumping into each other in pit lanes.
• 2:05
  We're showing signs of that too, aren't we?
• 2:07
  Welcome.
• 2:08
  But it'd have to be 30.
• 2:09
  You know, I dug up that video you did for me back in 98.
• 2:12
  Remember you put that piece together for me?
• 2:14
  Yeah.
• 2:15
  And that was, yeah, that was 98.
• 2:16
  So it's
• 2:17
  just on 30 years.
• 2:18
  Crazy, crazy.
• 2:20
  So you're born in Bega, so we're talking... Down the south coast.
• 2:24
  South coast, yeah.
• 2:25
  So this is almost like Malcolm Osler territory nowadays, isn't it?
• 2:30
  It is.
• 2:30
  Mal's there now.
• 2:31
  I spoke to him this morning.
• 2:32
  Did you?
• 2:33
  He's in our library.
• 2:34
  I love getting him on.
• 2:35
  He's enjoying tinkering in the...
• 2:37
  the workshop down there doing some crazy things.
• 2:40
  Were you an avid motor racing fan from a young age?
• 2:44
  Were you about footy?
• 2:46
  What were you doing back then?
• 2:47
  Look, my dad was a very good footballer in the days when there was no money in it.
• 2:51
  AFL, low local.
• 2:51
  No, no, yeah.
• 2:52
  in New South Wales.
• 2:53
  So he was in rugby league.
• 2:54
  League, yep.
• 2:55
  And I think he, you know, we had two daughters and a son, and he hoped I would be a footballer.
• 3:02
  But if he was here today, he'd tell you that the first time he saw me hold the ball, he knew it was never going to happen.
• 3:08
  Okay.
• 3:09
  Iconic roads down there from a rallying perspective.
• 3:12
  Is this the first time your eyes are open to cars and things like that?
• 3:18
  What was the first interaction?
• 3:20
  My dad was a mechanic at the Holden dealer down there, which is Balmain Brothers.
• 3:24
  And at the age of five, we moved to Sydney and he went to the Ford factory at Homebush.
• 3:29
  I can remember that on Parramatta Road there.
• 3:31
  The remnants of that building might even still be there, but it was huge back then, mate, wasn't it?
• 3:35
  It was like an assembly plant.
• 3:36
  They did Mark 1 escorts, Mark 2 escorts, and then later they were Ford lasers.
• 3:41
  All the Falcons and everything were built in Melbourne.
• 3:43
  But so he ended up sort of almost running that plant.
• 3:46
  after some years.
• 3:47
  And so, you know, I was a forward man from very early on.
• 3:50
  Okay.
• 3:50
  But there is a story around an Escort RS2000 body shell for Bob Holden, who you and I would cross paths with.
• 3:57
  I mean, you've done it on multiple occasions with him, but obviously in super touring and so on.
• 4:00
  So, yeah.
• 4:01
  We lived on the northern beaches of Sydney and Bob had a workshop at Manly Vale, which was down the road from us.
• 4:07
  And at a very early age, I was, you know, following the racing game and what have you.
• 4:11
  And so my dad got me introduced to Bob and Bob was running those Escort RS2000s.
• 4:17
  Okay.
• 4:18
  And because my dad was in a position of, you know, at the top of the factory out there, he managed to get some body shells and some other bits and pieces to help Bob, who was a bit of a battler.
• 4:26
  Yes.
• 4:27
  You know, and sort of help him with his budget and what have you.
• 4:29
  So we had a connection to Bob probably when I was 10.
• 4:33
  You know, I remember going to Warwick Farm and seeing Bob race there and, you know, all those sorts of things.
• 4:38
  So, yeah, my dad sort of introduced me to a little bit of that.
• 4:40
  He wasn't so much the motor racing head, but because I had a passion and I still remember going to Warwick Farm for the first time, like it was the biggest festival.
• 4:49
  You know, it was so amazing.
• 4:50
  So tell people a little bit about that.
• 4:57
  memory bank and archives around some of that stuff because um it's long gone for many young listeners now but i mean that was an iconic place for the sydney racing scene among other tracks wasn't it lucky because there was warwick farm which was amazing but you know oran park you would remember those tober lee days you know when they had the
• 5:17
  And the crowds were so massive.
• 5:18
  They were spilling out of the place.
• 5:20
  Amaru, all those sorts of things.
• 5:21
  We were very fortunate there in Sydney.
• 5:23
  But in those early days, you know, Formula 5000 and all sorts of stuff was just fantastic to go along.
• 5:29
  Noisy cars.
• 5:30
  You know, it was proper racing.
• 5:32
  It was good.
• 5:32
  Were you dedicated to school or were you just in the workshop, et cetera?
• 5:36
  What were you like as a student in the early days?
• 5:41
  At school, the things I was interested in, I was quite good at.
• 5:44
  But the other stuff, I didn't rate to me at all.
• 5:47
  It wasn't my strong point, no.
• 5:49
  Okay.
• 5:49
  So have you only ever worked around motor racing and cars and things then?
• 5:53
  Or have you had...
• 5:54
  Look, when I was in my sort of teenage years on the Northern Beaches there, I had a part-time job at a place called Manly Fun Pier, which was next to the Ferry Wharf in Manly.
• 6:02
  I know exactly where it is.
• 6:03
  It's like a little lunar park.
• 6:04
  Yeah.
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  And I sort of became a ride operator there and sort of, you know, running the merry-go-rounds.
• 6:08
  And, you know, when the dodging cars, they all get jammed in the corner.
• 6:11
  I was the guy that used to, you know, swing from pole to pole and get them all unjammed and what have you.
• 6:16
  So that was a great way of earning money.
• 6:18
  You know, I did my...
• 6:20
  chemist runs and paper runs and things like that.
• 6:23
  But the fun pair was really, you know, good fun and quite a lot of work on school holidays.
• 6:28
  And so it was good pocket money there.
• 6:29
  There is a yarn around the, I guess, your, you know, fan aspect, if you will, not just your competitor, you're heavily involved from an industry standpoint nowadays, obviously, but
• 6:42
  At heart, mate, you were a race fan and there's a yarn around you and Alan Moffat and Amaru and kind of forcing your way through a fence or something to get an autograph, is there?
• 6:50
  I tell you, I think if you remember the Amaru Park pits, there was a kids' play area at the very far end where the parents used to put all the kids and then they could go and do their racing.
• 7:01
  Well, there was a fence at the back of that that had a whole, like a chain wire fence.
• 7:04
  And I got through the fence there from the, from the spectator area through the playground and went in and I got Alan Moffat's signature on a black and white sort of photo of him.
• 7:13
  You know, probably I would have been 10 or 11 or something like that.
• 7:16
  And, you know, I mean, Moffat was a pretty steely sort of character.
• 7:19
  It took a lot of nerve to actually even go up and get that signature.
• 7:23
  And, uh, and so, and then, you know, I became a huge, huge Moffat fan all through my life.
• 7:27
  Much missed now, and a man as you would have experienced through your life, he just had a beautiful soul, mate, didn't he?
• 7:36
  And yet he was a tough bastard back then, wasn't he?
• 7:39
  Well, you know, it was sort of hard way to afford, man, because Moffat was a bit awkward, whereas Brock was so good.
• 7:44
  charismatic, you know what I mean?
• 7:46
  And it always seemed like the Holdens, you know, the Holdens of the era were the better cars, you know, more suited to racing and those sorts of things.
• 7:53
  But yeah, I mean, I just love the way, um, Alan went about his business that he was so, you know, as I say, a bit awkward, but he just, the way he delivered the teams and the professionalism was incredible.
• 8:04
  It helped change the sport massively in that, um, in that time.
• 8:07
  You buy a bicycle shop at age 19 in Narrabeen.
• 8:12
  What is it with you and Crompo and bicycle shops?
• 8:16
  He did something similar, I think, at Ballarat when he was young.
• 8:18
  It was more of an adventure shop, I think, for him, wasn't it?
• 8:20
  But around BMX and whatever.
• 8:22
  But it was ahead of its time too, wasn't it?
• 8:23
  Well, look, there's a small back story to that.
• 8:25
  My dad said to me, you should maybe, you know, let's look at a trade.
• 8:29
  So would you remember the Chalora, the Railworks?
• 8:33
  Yes.
• 8:33
  You know, they used to take an intake of, you know, apprentices and what have you.
• 8:37
  Yeah.
• 8:39
  out of school, I went out there to have a look at that.
• 8:41
  And I sort of arrived there at one o'clock or something.
• 8:44
  And I saw a building and there was a few people milling around thinking this is where the intake was.
• 8:48
  And I walked into a room and there would have been 300 people in there all queued up with clipboards.
• 8:54
  And they said, when you go through this line, you've got to go to the next line.
• 8:57
  You've got to go to the next line.
• 8:58
  And I just went back and got in my car and went home.
• 9:00
  I'm not doing that.
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  That's not for me.
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  So my dad came out, you know, I got home and he said,
• 9:08
  And cut a long story short, we sort of, down the road, we bought a small bicycle shop on the Northern Beaches.
• 9:12
  It was an established shop or you started from scratch?
• 9:14
  No, it wasn't.
• 9:15
  It was an established one, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a very big shop.
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  And, uh, and I sort of, I was there for two or three years, you know, learning my trade and, you know, people would walk in and say I'd love to see the owner.
• 9:25
  And I was the owner at 19 and, uh, and I learned a lot.
• 9:28
  I didn't make any money, but I learned, you know, a lot about dealing with customers and those sorts of things.
• 9:33
  Yeah.
• 9:33
  Yeah.
• 9:34
  Yeah, cool.
• 9:36
  What transpires there then?
• 9:37
  I mean, you're late teens.
• 9:38
  A lot of people at age 19 don't run businesses like that, right?
• 9:43
  So do you hang on to it for a few years?
• 9:47
  What transpires next?
• 9:48
  I'll tell you what.
• 9:50
  The Manly Fund Pier, the guy that owned the Fund Pier, he'd sold that – no, sorry, go back one step.
• 9:57
  He came to me and said, we're changing the way the weekend work.
• 10:01
  We're changing the way that we're going to pay the workers.
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  We're going to pay at the –
• 10:05
  on the rides as a percentage of the take instead of your $3 an hour or whatever it was.
• 10:10
  And he said, I think you should come back.
• 10:11
  He sort of took a bit of a shine to me because I was out of- Because you were good with people and stuff?
• 10:14
  Well, I think because I'd gone out on my own and I'd sort of done something a bit bold at 19.
• 10:19
  And, um, and I came back to the fun pier and sort of worked on the weekends and run the bike shop during the weeks, but I was making way more money on the weekends because the percentage of the
• 10:30
  He is the owner and all the ride operators.
• 10:32
  I became their top ride operator.
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  And on school holidays, I was earning, I don't know, $1,000 a week.
• 10:38
  It was crazy money at the time.
• 10:41
  But it was working really well for him because everybody was putting their effort in.
• 10:46
  And when you have a piece of the pie, you're invested in it.
• 10:50
  And I sort of learned a big lesson from that as well.
• 10:52
  Yeah, that does not surprise me with you knowing your personality and the way you engage with people.
• 10:58
  You, the style of bikes, was it, was it, uh, BMX, road bikes, what sort of things were in the shop?
• 11:04
  BMX was quite new, you know, it was the new, uh, passion at the time.
• 11:08
  And, uh, and so, yeah, that was, it was really popular.
• 11:11
  I couldn't believe that, um, you know, during the quiet months in the winter and what have you, people would be, the guys from Malvern Star becoming say, oh, you, you need to put your Christmas orders in.
• 11:20
  And I'm thinking, oh my God, I can't pay this month, let alone thinking about six months and about, no, no, no, make sure you order some stuff.
• 11:26
  So we ordered all these bikes.
• 11:27
  And then at Christmas time, people would come in and say, oh, I'll have one for, you know, my wife and my kids.
• 11:32
  And they'd buy five bikes in one go.
• 11:34
  I couldn't, you know.
• 11:35
  Yeah.
• 11:35
  I didn't come from a family that could do that.
• 11:37
  But it was amazing just to learn that across a couple of years and sort of, you know, begin to have confidence and sort of forecast a bit and, you know.
• 11:46
  All the things you need to do now, mate, around the tie game in some respects.
• 11:48
  Well, you know, it's funny.
• 11:49
  The lessons I learned way back then were really important, yeah.
• 11:54
  Were you riding bikes?
• 11:55
  Are you venturing off and doing a bit of riding?
• 11:57
  What was happening?
• 11:59
  When I first got my license, I did a bit of karting, and I turned it into Narrabeen Cycle and Kart Centre.
• 12:04
  I became a kart dealer.
• 12:05
  Did you?
• 12:06
  Yeah, yeah.
• 12:06
  So I sold a couple of karts on the northern beaches there, but mainly I was doing it because I could buy my go-kart bits at a wholesale price.
• 12:14
  You know, I became like a dealer.
• 12:16
  Um, so I was sort of pretty much focused in that area really.
• 12:19
  Yeah.
• 12:19
  I mean, I rode the bikes a bit, but, um, yeah, but it was more about pursuing the motor races.
• 12:24
  I gather the first cart meeting is actually at Orrin Park.
• 12:27
  Is that right?
• 12:27
  Are you?
• 12:28
  I participated at that very first one when they opened the Orrin Park circuit, you know, cause I, I, I drove at Granville and then they closed Granville down and then they got some money, I think, and they went and built that circuit.
• 12:39
  up on the figure eight part of Oran Park.
• 12:41
  And I raced at the first round, which was the CIG International.
• 12:45
  It was an international round with Terry Fullerton and like, you know, it had major stars there.
• 12:50
  And, yeah, it was a real eye-opener.
• 12:53
  Fullerton is highly regarded, mate.
• 12:55
  What was he like?
• 12:57
  I mean, just to be part of that whole thing back then, it was the biggest international karting thing that had ever come to Australia at the time and what have you.
• 13:04
  It was fantastic, yeah.
• 13:06
  You bought, people listening might not necessarily know what a Renmax is, right?
• 13:10
  But they built Renmaxes out of Sydney from the early 60s through to about 1978, I think.
• 13:15
  And you could buy some that were, I think, Formula Viva based.
• 13:21
  Some were sort of shaped around Brabham's of the era and so on, cool cars.
• 13:25
  And you bought one of those, a Formula Ford, I reckon, from Bob Holden.
• 13:29
  Is that right?
• 13:29
  Yeah.
• 13:29
  This takes me back because I had an RS2000 Escort road car and Bob was helping me with, you know,
• 13:36
  engine mods and you know, I was doing all sorts of stuff on that.
• 13:38
  What did you do to the road car?
• 13:40
  I did plenty, side draft webbers and then turbos and you know, suck through turbos and blow through turbos and like all this sort of stuff.
• 13:47
  This is at the time when the, when those, um, Collabon ran that, you know, the factory rally team.
• 13:51
  Sorry Barton would come in.
• 13:53
  out and stuff.
• 13:53
  I was down there and I bought, you know, rear axles and like all sorts of stuff, Bill Stein struts.
• 13:58
  And so my Escort had all the fruit on it.
• 14:00
  Okay.
• 14:00
  And then I realized that, you know, if I wanted to go racing, wasting all, you know, spending all this money on a road car.
• 14:05
  So that's what I sold the Escort and I went and bought this Formula Ford off Bob.
• 14:09
  Cool.
• 14:09
  And at that time, Bob had two Formula Fords.
• 14:11
  He had one that was a Lola that was run by Stephen Brooke and Mike Quinn and a few others winning the championship.
• 14:17
  Yeah.
• 14:17
  And he had a second car and I bought the second car and it turned out it wasn't really the best formula forward.
• 14:22
  I sort of, you know, not long after I realized I didn't have the money to run it properly.
• 14:27
  So I sort of parked it on the side.
• 14:30
  And, um, but yeah, look, it was, you know, my first race, I think it was at Sandown and I went to Gold Coast.
• 14:35
  I went to Service Paradise International Raceway with it.
• 14:38
  So I raced around a little bit, but realized pretty quick, smart, without, without a budget, um, yeah.
• 14:43
  It wasn't going to happen.
• 14:43
  It got destroyed.
• 14:45
  Is this right?
• 14:46
  Well, I lent it to somebody and they destroyed it and they brought it back in and swept it up in the trailer and gave it back to me.
• 14:52
  And so then that's when I decided I was going to build my own car.
• 14:55
  Okay.
• 14:55
  Because I thought, well, rather than rebuilding the Renmax, which I think had lots of shortcomings, I decided to build my own car.
• 15:02
  So what'd you do?
• 15:03
  Well, I had a, if I can go back one step, the guy that owned the Fun Pier, he, he, he
• 15:09
  He sold the Fun Pier and needed someone to build some rides for him.
• 15:14
  I'd been working a lot with him and he said, if we put this deal together, could I build and design some rides to go into the new Fun Pier?
• 15:22
  So I set up an engineering workshop called Fun Rides of Australia as my business.
• 15:28
  And on the side, I had the resources to build a Formula Ford.
• 15:33
  So I sort of put my thinking cap on and I went and had a look at lots of other cars,
• 15:40
  the pure designing sense of mine, you know, I sort of put together a combination of, you know, what I'd seen and, uh, yeah.
• 15:47
  And we built a little car and, you know, and it turned out to be, I didn't have the budget to run it.
• 15:51
  So I had a guy that I'd raced karts with that had a bit of budget and, um, he brought some budget along and we went racing with it.
• 15:59
  Are you hands-on welding the chassis together?
• 16:01
  I did the whole thing, you know, I built the whole, all the, all the uprights, the whole shooting match.
• 16:06
  And, you know, more than one.
• 16:07
  Yeah.
• 16:08
  I'd sort of developed parts and what have you for it.
• 16:10
  But the first round we ran was at Amaru Park, and we qualified in the top 10 in the driver to Europe series in a 20-car field.
• 16:17
  So I was pretty, you know, pretty happy.
• 16:20
  Hell, yeah.
• 16:20
  Yeah.
• 16:20
  Who's in the field that year?
• 16:22
  Can you remember?
• 16:23
  Oh, no.
• 16:25
  It would have been 84, 85, somewhere around that sort of period.
• 16:29
  Yeah.
• 16:30
  Yeah.
• 16:30
  But I mean the – I know.
• 16:32
  It was a proper crop of cars and all that sort of thing.
• 16:34
  Yeah.
• 16:34
  Yeah.
• 16:36
  You are in – Evan Green is held in kind of the highest regard in a broadcast and journalism –
• 16:44
  sense ride and you're inspired by a book of his, what was it called?
• 16:47
  Boot full of right arms.
• 16:49
  Yeah.
• 16:49
  And you buy a P76, a Leyland P76 at auction and you run it, uh, on the Amaru dirt circuit, I think originally, but you took it rallying.
• 16:59
  Yeah.
• 16:59
  Didn't you?
• 17:00
  Well, you know, but you know, Evan and John Bryson, they ran that car in the world cup in 74.
• 17:05
  That's why they wrote that book.
• 17:06
  Yeah.
• 17:07
  And, um, and so I just, along with a couple of mates, we thought, Hey, what a great idea.
• 17:12
  And, you know, things like Datsun 1600s and all the sort of, you know, specialist stuff was too expensive.
• 17:16
  So we went and bought a P76, ran it at Amaroos Dirt Circuit that weekend, you know, when we bought it.
• 17:21
  So cool.
• 17:22
  And then we built it up and I did the New South Wales Rally Championship.
• 17:25
  And so I went to, you know, Batemans Bay and Buller Dealer and Bega and all those sorts of things.
• 17:30
  Had just, you know, an amazing time.
• 17:32
  Ironically, you are a tyre distributor now and that thing would have just shredded them.
• 17:37
  I would have thought.
• 17:38
  Exactly.
• 17:39
  What was it like to drive?
• 17:41
  Um, I, uh, uh, Ed Mulligan put on a school up at Oberon, like a rally school.
• 17:46
  Yeah.
• 17:47
  Um, and then there was, and he brought all these grade one rally drivers and you could pay your fee and you go and stay a couple of nights.
• 17:53
  And I went up there with the P76 and there was all the other cars were Datsun 120Y or Datsun 1600s or, you know, Mazdas or what have you.
• 18:01
  And I turned up in the P76.
• 18:02
  Yeah.
• 18:03
  And everyone was sort of laughing in the beginning.
• 18:05
  And once we got going, I'll tell you, all the grade one rally drivers, they were all queuing up to have a drive.
• 18:10
  It was such a good thing.
• 18:11
  So much fun.
• 18:12
  It was easy.
• 18:13
  You know, it was quite easy to drive.
• 18:14
  Talky.
• 18:15
  It didn't have to be necessary.
• 18:15
  It wasn't so peaky and all those sorts of things.
• 18:17
  And they just had a ball.
• 18:18
  They had a fantastic time.
• 18:20
  I was fresh out of high school, but I did some club and there might have even been state events back then.
• 18:25
  up around Janolan Caves and Oberon.
• 18:27
  There's some beautiful roads in that part.
• 18:29
  And, I mean, even better when you're talking south coast and stuff and down around Bega where you're from.
• 18:36
  We were clipping the trees on the back corner and the front corner because it was a bit bigger than all the other cars.
• 18:42
  But it was good fun.
• 18:43
  At some point, I don't know how old you are, you –
• 18:46
  cotton on to the idea of you might go to Europe.
• 18:48
  What, what are you inspired by the races of the day?
• 18:51
  You wanted to, you'd work so hard from age 19, you just needed a break.
• 18:56
  What, what wanted, what was the thing to take you to Europe and why?
• 19:00
  The, um, the,
• 19:01
  The guy that owned the fund pair who helped me set up Fundrides of Australia and gave me funding and helped me to put the whole program together, he died.
• 19:08
  Yeah.
• 19:09
  And as part of his estate, they basically took all my assets and shut me down.
• 19:14
  So at the age of like 26 or near 27, I went back to zero.
• 19:19
  And so that took the wind out of my sails and I'd raced against Malcolm in Formula Ford and I, and Mal was out for Christmas because he was already in Europe.
• 19:27
  And I said, you know, I'm not sure.
• 19:28
  He said, just come over, come straight, come over to England this year.
• 19:31
  You know?
• 19:31
  So I just, on a whim.
• 19:33
  Well, I booked a ticket in June and I went for four months and I ended up staying, you know, in the end about eight years.
• 19:39
  I love that.
• 19:39
  But he just,
• 19:40
  He just said, you know, just get over here as soon as you can.
• 19:42
  And so does he help kind of introduce you to a couple of people or what?
• 19:45
  I mean, you meet Dick Bennett's pretty early on, don't you?
• 19:48
  Like literally day one, I think.
• 19:49
  I literally flew into London, went up to Bicester, you know, after I built my Formula Forward and Malcolm was at Raynaud's, they built that beautiful 87 Formula Forward, which would won everything and what have you.
• 19:59
  And he walked me through the workshop.
• 20:01
  You know, I'm a bit sort of jet lagged from having arrived.
• 20:04
  Walked me through the workshop at Raynard's.
• 20:06
  We were back at reception.
• 20:07
  He said, I've got a bit of work to do.
• 20:08
  We'll head home shortly.
• 20:09
  He said, now, are you going to try and build your own Formula Fords again?
• 20:14
  That must have been seriously eye-opening.
• 20:16
  Well, you know, it just was a professional outfit.
• 20:18
  It was incredible, yeah.
• 20:19
  I mean, he played such an integral role in all that stuff too, mate, didn't he?
• 20:22
  He did some amazing things.
• 20:24
  So, yeah, so that night we went to the pub and we met some guys that I've known ever since.
• 20:28
  And the next morning he dropped me in Brackley, you know, where the sage factory is now.
• 20:34
  to go and see some guys at Magic Motorsport.
• 20:36
  I don't know if you know Robert Singh.
• 20:38
  Anyway, he dropped me off and he said, look, go and see them, have a chat to them, and then make your way to Silverstone, which was about six or eight miles away.
• 20:47
  And so I go in and knock on the door and they said, oh, they've all just left.
• 20:50
  They've gone to Zandvoort.
• 20:51
  There's no one here.
• 20:52
  The girl at the reception says, so I thought, oh, well, I'll make my way to Silverstone.
• 20:56
  So I go up to Brackley and I'm looking for buses and all this, what have you.
• 21:01
  Anyway, I walk to Silverstone seven miles.
• 21:03
  Oh!
• 21:04
  A couple of hours.
• 21:05
  And I thought, well, I'll hitch, you know, get a ride or something.
• 21:07
  But all those roads over there, you know, there's no hard shoulder.
• 21:10
  No.
• 21:10
  So I'm walking in the grass and, you know, trucks and – anyway.
• 21:13
  So I got to Silverstone and I'm looking around and had my sort of portfolio under my elbow.
• 21:22
  And I see a guy driving a – I'm thinking now – I better start thinking about how I'm going to get back to Bista to see Malcolm tonight sort of thing.
• 21:29
  And I see a guy driving an Alpha 75 and back then –
• 21:33
  Alpha 75s, Alpha were just into F3 and they'd handed out all these Alpha 75 cars with a body kit on them.
• 21:39
  Malcolm had a silver one and I saw a guy with a red one.
• 21:42
  And so he pulled up and he got out of his car and he was walking over to, and I said, excuse me, you wouldn't know if there's any buses from here back to Bicester.
• 21:50
  And he, and it was Nick Bennett.
• 21:51
  And he said, what are you going back there for?
• 21:55
  And I said, told the story of Malcolm.
• 21:57
  And he said, I'll be, I'll be driving back past that way.
• 22:00
  I'll give you a lift.
• 22:00
  Fantastic.
• 22:01
  Yeah.
• 22:02
  So I swanned around for the afternoon and then just as he was leaving, I waved at him and I jumped in the car and he had Bertrand Gachot in the car with him.
• 22:10
  And they were running Rolt Formula 3 cars and they thought it was the funniest thing ever that they were dropping me back to the Raynard factory and Malcolm, you know, and Bertrand had driven for Malcolm the year before in Formula Ford.
• 22:21
  Anyway, so I made a small connection there, yeah.
• 22:23
  What transpires next, mate?
• 22:25
  How do you keep that European – do you land a job somewhere?
• 22:29
  What do you do next?
• 22:30
  Before I'd gone, Richard Carter, who raced Formula Forward in that era with me as well, he was good friends with Peter Collins of Benetton, and he'd written me an introductory letter.
• 22:39
  So I went and saw lots of people for jobs.
• 22:42
  But in the end, I think Peter Collins created a job for me at Benetton in that four-month period when I was there.
• 22:47
  Yeah.
• 22:48
  And I went into Benetton inside the factory and they made a job for me in the sub-assembly section or something.
• 22:53
  And I was just treated like an idiot.
• 22:55
  Like I was just treated like a – because all the locals just hated the fact that they'd made a job for me.
• 23:00
  Okay.
• 23:00
  And they – you know, anyway.
• 23:02
  Yeah.
• 23:02
  That's what we're talking about.
• 23:04
  But so what I did, I tried to see Peter.
• 23:08
  I couldn't see him.
• 23:09
  I wrote a letter to him and I said, I'm going to leave.
• 23:12
  Thanks for the opportunity, but I need to go get some experience and come back and take advantage of a really fantastic job here.
• 23:17
  Yeah.
• 23:17
  And I went and then Malcolm said, hey, come to Reynard's and we'll have a look here.
• 23:21
  So I went and met a guy called Bill Stone who was recruiting people at Reynard's.
• 23:25
  And, um, and I just, I started at Raynards and I did a couple of months at Raynards doing, you know, fabrication.
• 23:31
  And cause I sort of was quite well skilled in that area where I had machining and fabricating and welding skills and what have you.
• 23:37
  The hands-on stuff from Manly had taught you.
• 23:38
  All that sort of stuff.
• 23:39
  Yeah.
• 23:39
  So I sort of, and I'd driven a car and I sort of built a car.
• 23:42
  So I had a, you know.
• 23:44
  An understanding.
• 23:45
  Yeah.
• 23:45
  Exactly.
• 23:46
  So does it become a, um, you know, you're setting yourself up
• 23:52
  to have a, I mean, it must have been mind-blowing walking into some of these places.
• 23:56
  You've talked about Raynard, obviously.
• 23:57
  What was it like going into Benetton and those sort of joints?
• 23:59
  Oh, amazing.
• 24:01
  Amazing.
• 24:02
  If I go back one step on this, we're literally within the first week of getting there.
• 24:07
  I went up to see Alan Docking.
• 24:08
  You know, Alan?
• 24:08
  Yes, yeah.
• 24:10
  And he said, come on in, you know, he said, come upstairs and we'll talk some bullshit.
• 24:14
  That was the introduction to Alan.
• 24:16
  And he said, have you met the guys from Moffat's team, from Mick Webb and all those boys?
• 24:20
  They're here with the Rothman's car going to Spa.
• 24:23
  So they took me out the back of the workshop and said, hey, have you met this guy?
• 24:26
  You know, have you made a connection?
• 24:27
  They said, what are you doing tomorrow?
• 24:29
  So I was in the truck and I went to Spa and I worked on that Rothman's Commodore of Alan Moffat's.
• 24:34
  How good.
• 24:34
  So here is the story where I got his autograph.
• 24:36
  Yes, all those years ago, fast forward.
• 24:38
  20 years before.
• 24:39
  Yeah.
• 24:39
  And I ended up on that Rothman's Commodore working with Mick Webb and all those great guys there.
• 24:44
  Super, mate.
• 24:45
  And so we did that, yeah.
• 24:46
  Is that your first experience at spa as well?
• 24:48
  First at spa, yeah.
• 24:49
  Yeah, yeah.
• 24:50
  That was fantastic.
• 24:51
  What an amazing... You know, again, I was waking up every day just looking to, you know, what was going to happen today, what was going to unfold today.
• 24:58
  Like, it was so exciting.
• 24:59
  So it's a little bit...
• 25:02
  There's not necessarily at this point a firm locked in thing.
• 25:06
  You're kind of living months to months, if you will, sort of blocks at a time.
• 25:10
  I came back to Australia at the end of that year and thinking, you know, maybe I should go, I'll go back for a year.
• 25:16
  I'll give it a proper year.
• 25:17
  So I went back the next year and Raynards, I had actually a job at Raynards.
• 25:20
  I worked in the like a model department where they were doing the wind tunnel models and I've fabricated, um, prototype stuff for new cars and, you know, all the new wishbones and that, cause I, cause I could, like I said, I could do all the jobs.
• 25:33
  Yeah.
• 25:34
  Whereas in the fab shop they had.
• 25:35
  Sometimes you're specialized, yeah?
• 25:37
  Well, in the fab shot, they had welders and machinists and fabricators, but they didn't really have that many people that could do across the range.
• 25:43
  So anyway, I was very fortunate.
• 25:46
  And at the same time, I went to – Malcolm was working – that's when they introduced Formula 3000.
• 25:51
  So I got a job as a gopher on Spirit Toms, which was like a factory Raynard team.
• 25:56
  Okay.
• 25:57
  So I went off to the tracks and –
• 25:59
  And I just polished bodywork and did all that sort of thing.
• 26:01
  Did everything you could.
• 26:02
  And made my observations.
• 26:04
  And I could see, you know, this is a pretty cool environment.
• 26:06
  European 3000 and, you know, going down to Spain and, you know, Italy and things like that on the weekends.
• 26:11
  And, you know, it was – I just almost –
• 26:14
  Wasn't sure where I was going to go, but it was very exciting.
• 26:17
  This is awesome.
• 26:18
  So much more to your story than I realised, mate.
• 26:20
  Somewhere, maybe I had the timeline wrong, but somewhere here there is a crossover and a connection with Thomas Mazira, Eddie Irvine and Formula Ford in the UK.
• 26:30
  Is this right?
• 26:30
  Yes.
• 26:31
  In that first year, I sort of, Alan said, Alan Docking said, go and see Thomas because it was Thomas and his wife, Kate.
• 26:38
  That was it.
• 26:38
  That was their team.
• 26:39
  Okay.
• 26:40
  And I went along and I was free labor and what have you.
• 26:42
  So I worked with Thomas and that was in, I think it was the RAC Formula Ford Championship back then.
• 26:47
  Okay.
• 26:48
  And that's where they used to do a race on Saturday and another one on Sunday, different tracks and what have you.
• 26:52
  And Eddie was racing for the factory team, for the Duckhams team.
• 26:56
  And he and Thomas were racing close.
• 26:59
  So we made a connection.
• 27:00
  And, yeah, I got to know Eddie from the Formula Ford days.
• 27:03
  Amazing.
• 27:03
  Crompo tells a funny story about him going water skiing, I think.
• 27:06
  The Manly Dam.
• 27:07
  The Manly Dam.
• 27:08
  I think Louise Goodman might have been the PR back then, and she was pulling her hair out because those two maniacs were carrying on.
• 27:13
  They were all down there, Brad Jones.
• 27:15
  I mean, everybody was at the Manly Dam.
• 27:17
  But, you know, you remember when he first went into Formula One that year, he did the first race in Suzuka.
• 27:22
  Yes.
• 27:22
  And he passed Senna and had the altercation with Senna.
• 27:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:25
  He flew to Australia immediately after that because the next race was Adelaide.
• 27:29
  Yeah.
• 27:29
  And he came and was with us at Manly Dam in that week.
• 27:32
  And the press were chasing him, you know, because he was on the world scale.
• 27:36
  And he was hiding out little old Manly Dam.
• 27:37
  Yeah, exactly.
• 27:48
  Malcolm Osler is another great industry success story.
• 27:51
  A proper racer who is a multiple Australian hill climb champion but an internationally respected engineer and designer too.
• 27:58
  Mal worked for B.A.R.
• 28:00
  and Jaguar in Formula 1 and was behind some of the coolest IndyCar or Champ cars ever made.
• 28:06
  I worked in the first year with Tao Favi, who was very fast.
• 28:09
  Then a couple of years with Gilles de Ferran.
• 28:11
  And then with all of them, really, I think I spent a fair bit of time with Pac West and Mark Plundell and Mauricio Guzman in 97, I think.
• 28:19
  But I designed my last car in 97 and 98.
• 28:22
  They just carried on.
• 28:23
  Search for Malcolm Osler when you wrap up with Trev.
• 28:26
  Recorded in April 2022 as part of Aussie GP special release and in between mail-making YouTube engineering vids wearing his trademark pair of thongs.
• 28:37
  Benetton and Raynard's, you've done a bit of work with both of them.
• 28:41
  Does it get cemented?
• 28:42
  Is there a bit more that unfolds there?
• 28:44
  Basically, my full-time program was in 88, I think, was at Raynard's doing the wind tunnel stuff and prototype stuff.
• 28:52
  And then by the end of the year with that Spirit Toms team, Malcolm was the engineer on the lead car or whatever.
• 28:58
  And I think...
• 28:59
  towards the end, I was looking at all the jobs in the team and I didn't want to be a mechanic and I didn't want to be the truck driver, but I really wanted to be the engineer.
• 29:05
  I wanted to be the guy that sort of was talking to the driver and coaching him and trying to extract better performance.
• 29:13
  And at the second last round of that championship in, I think, Le Mans, on the short circuit Le Mans, one of the engineers left the team
• 29:23
  And the guy who owned the team said, you know, I was talking because I was in the same factory.
• 29:26
  And he said, oh, we're looking for an engineer.
• 29:28
  And you don't know.
• 29:29
  And I said, I can do that.
• 29:30
  And, you know, put myself forward.
• 29:32
  And he said, can you?
• 29:34
  And I said, yeah, well, I've, you know, I've done, you know, stuff in Australia, Formula Forward, and, you know, and I know Malcolm very well and what have you.
• 29:39
  Anyway, he said, well, why don't we do that then?
• 29:41
  So then I went straight to Malcolm that night and just said, Mel.
• 29:43
  Hi.
• 29:44
  I need you, I need you back in here.
• 29:45
  Exactly, show me how this works.
• 29:47
  But anyway, so then I, I sort of launched myself almost into an engineering role there, you know, you know, in a, in a race management engineering role.
• 29:54
  Yeah.
• 29:55
  Did you enjoy that?
• 29:56
  Oh, it was amazing.
• 29:57
  And then the next round, um, a guy called Eric Bernard drove with the Bromley team.
• 30:01
  He was, and that year Moreno won the championship with Bromley and they ran a second car for the last round and they asked me to look after that car.
• 30:08
  I mean, honestly, the guy, when you've got a cracking driver, you know, you have a factory set up on it and you just tune it and, you know, you don't put much input into it, but it was a great experience.
• 30:19
  I had a, he, Roberto, turned up in New Zealand in recent years for some stuff.
• 30:24
  So I've done a pod with him and ended up a three-parter because he loves a chat.
• 30:27
  He's very, very good.
• 30:28
  He's so passionate all these years, all these years on.
• 30:31
  We go back to Crompo for a good reason.
• 30:33
  Tell me about British F3000.
• 30:36
  Well, I got to know Neil through – he came and stayed with Malcolm.
• 30:40
  And Mal and I were flatting in the UK there.
• 30:42
  And Wally Story had said, catch up with us, guys.
• 30:44
  So we went there.
• 30:46
  And Neil was sort of – he was in the mix of the whole Holden Racing team.
• 30:51
  But he wanted to pursue his open wheels.
• 30:53
  Because he'd done Formula Holden so well.
• 30:55
  Exactly.
• 30:56
  So I sort of helped put together a deal for him to run a British Formula 3000 car, a Brands Hatch.
• 31:03
  And we organized some private test days and I leased a car and did all these jobs, you know, to put all that program together for him.
• 31:09
  And we went on the pre-race test.
• 31:12
  He was quickest and showed, you know, great pace.
• 31:15
  And then so for the race weekend, we put a fresh engine in.
• 31:19
  And we had problems with the engine the whole weekend.
• 31:20
  We had a misfire and we really couldn't, you know, realize what the potential.
• 31:25
  What you'd seen in the leader.
• 31:25
  Yeah, exactly.
• 31:26
  Yeah.
• 31:26
  And so it was such a frustrating outcome after showing so much potential.
• 31:31
  Yeah.
• 31:31
  And when the engine went back, they said it hadn't, it had glazed the bores or something of that nature.
• 31:36
  We should have just put the old engine back in, but we thought we were doing the right thing by putting the new engine in.
• 31:40
  Oh, man.
• 31:40
  So it was a bit of a wasted exercise.
• 31:42
  It showed a lot of potential.
• 31:43
  Yeah.
• 31:44
  And then Neil sort of, you know, was trying to get budget then because I think he'd funded that first activity himself.
• 31:49
  Yeah, himself, yeah.
• 31:51
  And then we were trying to find budget, and I was trying to find budget for him over there, and unfortunately it never came out.
• 31:56
  Yeah, but you've retained – you've known each other for a long time, you two, though, haven't you?
• 31:59
  From the beginning, yeah, yeah.
• 32:00
  We've done a bit of other stuff together, and it was – yeah.
• 32:03
  Did you almost drive a Formula One car?
• 32:06
  And what happened here?
• 32:09
  A bit further down the road, I was running a guy called James Taylor who's run a bit in New Zealand.
• 32:16
  And he was a very wealthy English guy.
• 32:18
  I ran him in New Zealand.
• 32:20
  And then I also ran – he ran with a former 3000 team, Vortex, in 94.
• 32:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:26
  And he was a strange character.
• 32:29
  He was a bit like a, almost like Mick Jagger to look at, wealthy as.
• 32:33
  No, you know, you couldn't ring him and he used to pay for everything with cash.
• 32:36
  He'd turn up with like a, you know, like a shopping bag full of, you know, full of pound notes or something.
• 32:43
  And towards the end of the season there, we were having dinner with the team and the boys were chatting and I think I'd raced.
• 32:50
  you know, something the weekend before and, uh, a historic touring car.
• 32:55
  Yeah.
• 32:55
  And, um, I did a bit of that in England and he, um, and he was saying, so what have, you know, what have you driven?
• 32:59
  And I said, and when I had that car, the Neil's 3000 car, and we took it to Snare a couple of times, I drove that as well.
• 33:05
  I thought, well, you know, I'm going to run it.
• 33:07
  I'm going to have a drive at the end of the day.
• 33:09
  So I did a few laps in the 3000 car.
• 33:11
  And so we beat it up a bit.
• 33:13
  And James said he had a Jordan, a 7-Up Jordan car that he ran in a thing called Inter Series in Europe somewhere.
• 33:22
  Yeah.
• 33:24
  And he said, you should come and drive the F1 car.
• 33:25
  And I'm going, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure.
• 33:27
  And you couldn't ring this guy.
• 33:29
  He had no mobile number.
• 33:31
  And I said, yeah, yeah, whatever, you know, just let me, you know, we'll see.
• 33:35
  And then a couple of weeks later he rang me.
• 33:37
  He said, no, we're running at SNET next week.
• 33:38
  We're running at SNET.
• 33:39
  Come over.
• 33:39
  No, no, I'm dead serious.
• 33:40
  And I'm going, yeah, you sure?
• 33:42
  And he's going, yeah.
• 33:43
  And he said, yeah, I'm dead sure.
• 33:44
  Come next Tuesday or whatever it was.
• 33:46
  So, you know, that morning from Oxford, I put my bag in the car, my helmet and bits and pieces.
• 33:51
  I'm driving across the Snet thinking, oh, my God, I'm going to drive in here for my car.
• 33:55
  And I got there.
• 33:57
  Oh, great.
• 33:57
  They sat me in the car and, you know, and I'm thinking, it's still a bit unreal.
• 34:02
  And then it's running around and it's got a bit of a misfire.
• 34:04
  It's going up the straight there.
• 34:05
  It's going, you know, and I'm thinking, oh, you know, whatever.
• 34:09
  And then the next thing he was driving and it broke a pivot on the rear upright or the rear pivot bolt on the chocker.
• 34:16
  Yeah.
• 34:16
  And the thing's doing a three wheel thing.
• 34:17
  Remember like Mansell where they did that?
• 34:19
  Yeah.
• 34:19
  And I said, no, guys, I just went, I said, that's me, I'm going home.
• 34:24
  But that was as close as I ever got.
• 34:26
  Are you still flatting with Malcolm at this stage?
• 34:29
  How cemented are you in the whole European adventure by this point?
• 34:34
  Look, I flated with Malcolm for probably a year.
• 34:35
  Yeah.
• 34:36
  And then I had an opportunity to go to Italy.
• 34:38
  One of the Italian teams, former 3000 team, said, do you want to come down and...
• 34:43
  you know, work with us, like leave Reynard's.
• 34:45
  So I left Reynard's and I went to the Italian team.
• 34:47
  How's your job?
• 34:49
  Yeah, well, look, I invested in it and I got to, you know, quite a reasonable level in Italian.
• 34:54
  Oh, good.
• 34:55
  And I got a real connection to Italy.
• 34:56
  So I was very fortunate to work a couple of years down there.
• 34:59
  And, um, with varying drivers, I mean, the first driver I ever drove, uh, ran in 3000 was Alex Zanardi in the, with the, with the little team I had, he did one race with us in Dijon and then he went off to, um, Barone Rapante and won the championship and you know, what an amazing guy.
• 35:15
  We've lost him recently, mate.
• 35:16
  Yeah.
• 35:16
  How terrible I saw all that.
• 35:17
  What was he like back then?
• 35:19
  Oh, you know, when you, when you get a young driver that comes out of those due, cause he'd been a karting world champion and all those things.
• 35:25
  and you put them in a car like a 3000 car, it's just like a kid in a lot of stuff.
• 35:29
  They're just so fast and so committed and you can see it straight away.
• 35:33
  You can see it, you know, in there.
• 35:35
  Your connections to Italy, I'm joining some dots here.
• 35:38
  This is much, much later in life.
• 35:39
  So you and I both have some dealings with Ingrid Ropers, who's been very good on the, on the PR side and worked with various different race teams over time, worked on the Australian motorcycle Grand Prix, worked for Phillip Island and so on.
• 35:51
  Um,
• 35:52
  She quite enjoys venturing to Como, and I think you do too, mate, don't you?
• 35:57
  It's lovely there.
• 35:57
  Well, my wife, Karen, is Ingrid's best girlfriend.
• 36:01
  Yes.
• 36:01
  And they did a lot of stuff together in the Uncle Toby series because Karen was Uncle Toby's marketing manager, and when they did all that stuff,
• 36:10
  The Serial Wars, you know, the Iron Man series and what have you, that was Ingrid and Karen working together.
• 36:14
  Nice.
• 36:14
  And now, yes, Ingrid's got a place in Como, and Karen and my two girls, Lucy and Chloe, we go there, or we have been going there for years.
• 36:22
  It's such an amazing place.
• 36:23
  And I think you went there.
• 36:24
  The Russ were there 12 months ago, and we had a lovely meal with them.
• 36:27
  It was excellent.
• 36:27
  That's just so amazing.
• 36:28
  Stunning, stunning.
• 36:29
  Um, just expand a bit more on that, that Italian, uh, motor racing adventure around F3000 and so on, because, um, are there other people that you come across and you had that one, um, instance with Alex and Artie, what, what other drivers ultimately come your way?
• 36:42
  I based, I worked, uh,
• 36:45
  A couple of years in Italy with Italian 3000 teams.
• 36:48
  And then I had an opportunity to work for Fondmetal Formula One.
• 36:51
  Fantastic.
• 36:52
  Gabriella Tarquini?
• 36:53
  Yeah.
• 36:53
  So Tarquini was, I was based in Italy.
• 36:55
  They had a design office in the UK.
• 36:58
  So Sergio Rinlan was then in the design office.
• 37:01
  And so I was heading up the program in Italy.
• 37:05
  in Bergamo it was, where the factory was there, the Fondmetal Wheel Factory.
• 37:09
  Nice.
• 37:10
  And so the thing about Fondmetal was it was in the time when there were a few Formula 1 teams around that didn't really have quite enough budget.
• 37:17
  So we were sort of struggling for budget, you know, pretty much most of the year.
• 37:20
  I mean, Tarquini was amazing because even with his back to the wall and not having all the right things and, you know, getting hand-me-down brake rotors off Ferrari and those sorts of things, he still was able to deliver some results and –
• 37:33
  Yeah.
• 37:33
  So that was, you know, an amazing, unfortunately we didn't get to the end of the season cause they basically ran out of money.
• 37:38
  Okay.
• 37:38
  People may not realize, but, um, he came out to Australia with the TCR world championship round.
• 37:43
  I got him, I got him on, which was, I was chuffed about, mate, absolutely chuffed.
• 37:47
  Um,
• 37:48
  Somewhere here in the adventure, you come back to Australia, maybe mid-90s.
• 37:52
  Wrap up the European thing first, beyond Italy and other...
• 37:58
  I did another Cesar 3000, but I'd been there several years and I was ready to come back, basically.
• 38:06
  I had a little bit of a look at America, and I just realized that that was going to be a whole other journey.
• 38:13
  And I was keen to come back to Australia.
• 38:15
  So it's about 95.
• 38:18
  One of the first things that I think you may have been involved in, I think Krompo was involved in that project too, was the Legends of Motorsport at the Entertainment Centre.
• 38:25
  That was a huge undertaking.
• 38:26
  Neil and I, we sort of spoke about the concept of that Elf Masters that they ran in Paris.
• 38:31
  And so we said, you know, we should look at a program like that.
• 38:34
  And I came back and I was looking for something to do.
• 38:39
  For perspective for people, that's like converting a –
• 38:43
  a center court for the tennis center in Melbourne or, you know, it was the entertainment center that you used and converting it into a kart track and making it this entertainment spectacle, wasn't it?
• 38:52
  Yeah, basically, yeah.
• 38:53
  It was modeled off the Elfmasters.
• 38:55
  Yeah.
• 38:56
  And so we worked on that for a year and we got, you know, with Neil's fantastic connections, we had good backing, good sponsors, television, all that sort of program.
• 39:06
  And it was going to be, or it was, the biggest karting event in Australia at the time, you know, up until then.
• 39:13
  with the best television and everything.
• 39:14
  And I suppose in hindsight, our biggest mistake was, excuse me, that we tried to run a go-kart race meeting as well as running an entertainment show.
• 39:26
  So, you know, we had, it was called the legend of motorsport because we had two of all the different disciplines, rally, you know.
• 39:34
  Touring cars.
• 39:34
  Touring cars, all those, motorbikes, you know, motocross, all those sorts of things.
• 39:38
  And then, um, but when we, when we, uh, put together a race meeting, we had to go and get, um, or had to get a race director and sort of, and hand it over to stewards.
• 39:50
  And then it became out of our control, you know, like there's that part of the race meeting.
• 39:54
  And then we had a thunderstorm on the day and we had flooding in the part of the circuit.
• 39:58
  And, and so we couldn't, uh, we weren't fully into control as the promoter.
• 40:03
  Yeah.
• 40:04
  Um, and we had to almost apply to the stewards.
• 40:07
  to be allowed to, you know, pull the pin on the race meeting.
• 40:09
  And then we went on with the show and the show was fantastic.
• 40:12
  Had juniors and James Courtney race there as a junior.
• 40:16
  And, and so the show we put on, um, inside the entertainment center, it was amazing.
• 40:21
  We had Victor Bray.
• 40:23
  He, uh, he did a burnout inside the entertainment center.
• 40:26
  Can you believe it?
• 40:27
  He like, he bought, you know, rolled the, the, the 57 Chevy there and lit it up and, you know, and then the night before when he was doing a rehearsal, he was out the backyard and he did the big burnout out there and it set off the five story car park.
• 40:41
  It must've been hundreds of car went off with the, with the shock.
• 40:46
  And we did a pit stop competition with the Johnson, uh, Dick Johnson Falcon and the, uh,
• 40:51
  Gardner Commodore and, you know, inside.
• 40:53
  So the entertainment for the fan was brilliant.
• 40:57
  Yeah, but a big undertaking for you boys, mate.
• 40:59
  It was a big, and, you know, and basically we took a hit on it.
• 41:02
  And so, you know, if we'd had our time over again, I think we could have, you know, streamlined it and built a model that was going to work.
• 41:10
  Okay, the Grand Prix in 96, tell me about Eddie Jordan and some F1 passes, there's 10 grand involved here.
• 41:20
  When the Grand Prix came to Melbourne, and I wasn't long back from Europe, only a year or so back from, I took on a corporate box with a mate of mine.
• 41:30
  and one of the boxes, because it was the first Grand Prix.
• 41:33
  At Albert Park.
• 41:34
  And we sort of had enough friends, so we sold out all the tickets to our friends, and it gave us somewhere to sort of hang out and what have you.
• 41:41
  But I was able to, I gave Eddie Jordan $10,000 cash, and I got five Foka passes, and we ran 100 people through the.
• 41:49
  Just kept swapping passes, coming down to tours of the paddy.
• 41:52
  Exactly, so we did it.
• 41:53
  We had tours through the Jordan, you know.
• 41:54
  Oh.
• 41:55
  Yeah.
• 41:56
  That's awesome.
• 41:57
  Just by knowing a few people from having come back from Europe.
• 41:59
  Yeah.
• 42:00
  Now, you get an opportunity to work around Formula Holden, I think, about this point, do you not, or close there to maybe Scott Dixon, Jason Barguana.
• 42:08
  Tell me about that.
• 42:09
  Simon Harwich had set up a Formula Holden team.
• 42:12
  Yep.
• 42:13
  And he was – the first one we ran was Jason Barguana.
• 42:17
  Yeah.
• 42:17
  And so they came to me because I'd not long been back from Europe and I knew the Raynard cars and what have you that we built.
• 42:23
  And so we ran Jason in, um, must've been 95 or 96 and, uh, almost won the championship, had a big battle through the year with Bridie.
• 42:32
  Yeah.
• 42:32
  And, uh, and, uh, and in the end, you know, Bridie won the championship and we were, but we were winning races and it was, you know, it was fantastic.
• 42:39
  Jace was, you know, again, same, got him out of a formula forward, put him a formula holder and he was just off.
• 42:43
  Dynamite.
• 42:43
  Yeah.
• 42:44
  It was done.
• 42:44
  And that's when he, he,
• 42:45
  when he did the Young Lions thing and all that sort of stuff.
• 42:49
  And then Scott Dixon had done, I think he did a season that year.
• 42:53
  Kenny Smith came on recently.
• 42:55
  I'm being cheeky here, but Kenny basically said to me,
• 42:58
  He was a little fat kid back then.
• 42:59
  They're Kenny's words, not mine, right?
• 43:01
  But he's such an accomplished racer.
• 43:04
  But where I'm going with this is, could you see his potential even back then?
• 43:09
  What could you see?
• 43:11
  Look, he was quite red-faced, and his physique wasn't tuned to car racing, but his talent was clear.
• 43:20
  And in the car, he was...
• 43:23
  accomplished and no fuss.
• 43:26
  And even when the chips were down, he would just go out and put a lap in and deliver a performance.
• 43:31
  You know, it was, it was amazing.
• 43:33
  And then, you know, during that year when we did some testing and, and he got going in our car, we just basically won everything.
• 43:39
  Like he was, you know, it was fantastic.
• 43:41
  I mean, I, I feel, you know, he, he was, he,
• 43:43
  He was on a journey and we happened to have a year with him.
• 43:46
  Yes.
• 43:47
  He would have been, he'd be where he is today.
• 43:49
  Irrespective of him.
• 43:50
  Yeah, exactly.
• 43:50
  But I love the alignment.
• 43:52
  The fact that it happened for you, mate, you got to work with him for that year.
• 43:55
  And in a great period for Formula Holden as well.
• 43:57
  I mean, the names that had come through even just prior to that and around the time you were there.
• 44:01
  I looked at the fields were like 20 cars.
• 44:03
  Awesome cars too.
• 44:04
  And there was a good cross section.
• 44:05
  Like the top six or eight were genuine players.
• 44:09
  And it was, you know, and the exciting thing there was we were able to,
• 44:13
  we could develop the cars a little bit.
• 44:14
  We could, you know, I could use some of my contacts in Europe to get extra wing flaps.
• 44:19
  And, you know, so we were modifying the cars.
• 44:21
  As you went.
• 44:22
  You know, bringing upgrades, as they call it now.
• 44:25
  And it was making a difference, yeah.
• 44:27
  So it was quite interactive.
• 44:28
  So, you know, compared to a control formula where you're not allowed to do much, we had the freedom to do some things.
• 44:34
  And it was quite rewarding.
• 44:36
  It was really rewarding.
• 44:37
  Awesome.
• 44:38
  Somewhere here, does an opportunity present to start doing some work on the tyre side?
• 44:43
  What happens there?
• 44:44
  When I came back from Europe, it's when Super Touring was first showing its head in Australia.
• 44:51
  Australia, yep.
• 44:53
  And I knew Alan Heafy through my European connections, and he was looking after Wayne's Coke team.
• 45:00
  Oh, yeah.
• 45:01
  And Neil was there, so we're at the… So Wayne Gardner Enterprises, basically.
• 45:05
  All that sort of stuff.
• 45:05
  Yeah.
• 45:06
  And when Michelin wanted someone to represent them in the tyre game in Australia, four-wheel tyres, Wayne already had a connection to the two-wheel thing.
• 45:15
  And they said, could you look after that?
• 45:17
  But Wayne's family in Wollongong had no experience in dealing with cars and four-wheel staff and what have you.
• 45:23
  And so they asked me if I could be involved because I was only a year back, not having had tyre experience, but I had European motorsport experience.
• 45:31
  Yeah.
• 45:32
  And so I went and I started literally doing weekends for them.
• 45:35
  I literally started – I said, I'll just do the weekends.
• 45:38
  I'll fly up and I'll tell you what to put in the truck and I'll deal with the teams and what have you.
• 45:42
  And then sort of, you know, it sort of went from there.
• 45:45
  Involved.
• 45:46
  Yeah.
• 45:46
  And I was so fortunate that in that very early period, like within one or two years –
• 45:52
  Super Touring really took off here.
• 45:54
  Took off, yeah.
• 45:54
  And we had, you know, the BMWs, the factory team and what have you.
• 45:57
  And we started to bring specialist, you know, confidential tyres, which you've probably heard of.
• 46:01
  Yes, yes.
• 46:03
  And just that interaction with Michelin was fantastic.
• 46:07
  I sort of invited myself to France and...
• 46:10
  To climb off around?
• 46:10
  Yeah, yeah, I went there and sort of, you know, and got to know some of the French guys that were coming here and they managed to get me in the door there and I could see this was going somewhere.
• 46:19
  And so from a very early on phase, I sort of really invested in, you know, learning what I could and making connections with Michelin and, you know, and we had that amazing time.
• 46:31
  with those confidential ties, yeah.
• 46:32
  Yeah, so we'll talk a little bit more about that.
• 46:34
  I mean, firstly, does that open the door to a few international things with them?
• 46:38
  Like if you're going to France, are you going to, I don't know, did you go to the British Touring Car Championship?
• 46:42
  Did any of those sort of things happen in conjunction with you?
• 46:44
  Yeah, I went to some BTCC stuff.
• 46:46
  Michelin, prior to each of their seasons, they would go to a circuit.
• 46:50
  I went to Valladolid in Italy.
• 46:51
  Yep.
• 46:52
  And they would be there for a week.
• 46:53
  They'd have four or five teams there, so a Volvo, a Vauxhall, you know, a BMW, you know, whatever.
• 46:59
  A Volvo.
• 46:59
  Maybe they ran a Laguna or something?
• 47:01
  Yeah, like all those factory teams.
• 47:02
  And then they would just run a tyre program and try, honestly, a thousand tyres, like different compounds, and they'd collate all the information, and then they'd go back to the championship, and then they would deliver the performance as they needed to.
• 47:19
  Okay.
• 47:19
  So they never necessarily put forward their best foot forward at the beginning of the season.
• 47:24
  That's that old thing about show your hand, don't you?
• 47:25
  Exactly.
• 47:25
  Exactly.
• 47:26
  And then, you know, and we saw it here in Australia.
• 47:28
  We flew some tyres in here that were just... We were flying tyres for every round to try and help the BMW against when Brad was running the Dunlops.
• 47:35
  Yes.
• 47:37
  And it was, you know, honestly, you just bolt them on and away you went.
• 47:40
  Amazing.
• 47:40
  You know, we went to...
• 47:42
  I can't remember which year, 96 or something it might have been.
• 47:46
  We went to Lakeside and Brad was leading the championship and the Audi was a four-wheel drive with Dunlops and one of you.
• 47:51
  Murph was his teammate, I think, back then.
• 47:54
  Murph or maybe Cam.
• 47:56
  I can't remember.
• 47:56
  I can't remember, yeah.
• 47:57
  Anyway, we went up there to try and help the BMW.
• 48:01
  Normally, the confidential tyres would only go to the factory team, like to the BMW team.
• 48:06
  And then that weekend, we dialed them out to Jim Richards and Russell Ingle and, you know, Stephen Richards and what have you.
• 48:12
  And we pushed the Audis from the front two rows to seven and eight on the grid.
• 48:17
  And it was just, you know, blew them away.
• 48:19
  Like, you know, just sort of, you know, helped the cause.
• 48:22
  The points gap was too big.
• 48:23
  We didn't win the championship.
• 48:25
  But you've lit up here in this conversation.
• 48:27
  So clearly bringing the engineering acumen that you'd acquired from your time racing overseas, but also then...
• 48:36
  working with the factory, learning what the tire was like, what it could do, the potential.
• 48:39
  And so did you thrive in this place?
• 48:41
  Did you enjoy it?
• 48:42
  It was amazing, yeah.
• 48:43
  It was fantastic.
• 48:44
  So you could see an opportunity off the Gardner thing to start your own distribution thing?
• 48:52
  I think basically a couple of years further on,
• 48:55
  After Super Touring faded and went away and we got into GDP and, you know, GDP performance and those sorts of things, Nations Cup and what have you, there was a bit more volume sort of happening.
• 49:04
  We were looking after rally as well with Neil Bates and the rally team.
• 49:07
  And then at that time, Wayne was a bit focused on his boys' motorcycle racing, you know, Remy and Luca.
• 49:14
  Yes, right, yeah.
• 49:14
  And so basically he took a bit of effort out of that and Michelin said, hey, can you take – can we go the next step with you?
• 49:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:22
  And as an individual.
• 49:23
  So I then took on the distribution in early 2003 or something.
• 49:26
  Yeah.
• 49:28
  And then I branched to New Zealand and sort of grew into New Zealand.
• 49:31
  And then, you know, now.
• 49:33
  Asia.
• 49:33
  And then linked up the Toyota Racing Series and all those sorts of things.
• 49:36
  Asia was quite a bit later.
• 49:38
  Yes.
• 49:38
  But then I sort of really, you know, a career of cups started in Australia.
• 49:41
  So we started to build a whole, you know, a real bit of inertia in the whole Michelin thing.
• 49:46
  Well, come back to it because it's been fundamentally a 23-year journey or something or other, hasn't it?
• 49:50
  It's been absolutely huge.
• 49:51
  It may have even been longer than that in the number sense.
• 49:53
  Well, when I started on the weekends, it's 30 years.
• 49:55
  Is it?
• 49:56
  Like from 95.
• 49:57
  Yes.
• 49:57
  Mate, of course it is.
• 49:58
  Sorry, let me – yes, of course.
• 49:59
  Literally starting weekends and it's one of those classic old stories where, you know, I sort of pretty much look after most of their program in this part of the world.
• 50:06
  Well, yeah.
• 50:07
  But I did start literally on the weekends.
• 50:09
  But we have missed a little part of the storytelling and that is you are tempted –
• 50:15
  to play and get behind the wheel.
• 50:17
  I can vividly recall you at the wheel of a BMW.
• 50:20
  I can vividly recall you having a steer of one of Brad's Audis and so on.
• 50:24
  It does present... Tell me about these for a starter and how you've made that opportunity kind of work.
• 50:31
  I was in the wings there, you know, quite thick into the racing business side of things now, but I was still looking for, you know, I loved the driving part of it.
• 50:39
  And so where there was an opportunity and I could bring some tires to the game or whatever.
• 50:44
  And so, and I remember saying to Bob Holden, who I'd sort of known from, you know, many, many years before.
• 50:49
  And I tried to help them because they were a privateer team and Bob was running that Faber Castile car.
• 50:55
  Yeah.
• 50:56
  And he rang me and he said, come out one day, we're doing some rides.
• 51:00
  We're doing some end of the year, you know, like a- Corporate rides.
• 51:03
  Corporate rides.
• 51:04
  Yeah.
• 51:04
  So I drove the BMW on the corporate ride and did some potlaps and bits and pieces.
• 51:07
  And then he rang me the next year and said, Justin's got to go to America for something.
• 51:12
  Do you want to have a, can you do Oram Park in the BMW?
• 51:14
  And I said- Justin was Justin Matthews.
• 51:16
  Justin Matthews, yeah.
• 51:17
  Yeah.
• 51:18
  So I said, yep, I'll do it.
• 51:20
  I just put my, you know, $5,000.
• 51:22
  I can't remember what it was, you know.
• 51:24
  Drew out of my bank and I went there.
• 51:26
  And I had a run at Oran Park in that first, second round of the championship, I think, in 98.
• 51:32
  Yeah.
• 51:33
  And it was, you know, brilliant.
• 51:35
  I mean, it was amazing.
• 51:37
  I put it on the front row for the privateers.
• 51:38
  Yeah.
• 51:39
  So, you know, and then…
• 51:41
  And I sort of led my class and, you know, at Oran Park, I clipped the wall in the main race and, you know, that was it.
• 51:47
  I was out.
• 51:48
  But what an amazing sort of opportunity to drive, you know, in a proper class championship.
• 51:53
  And, yeah, but I'd never driven it before, really, apart from the ride day.
• 51:57
  Okay.
• 51:58
  And so, yeah, we had a really good run that first time.
• 52:01
  If memory serves, there was even a run at one of the support races at the Grand Prix and all sorts, was there not?
• 52:06
  Have I got that wrong?
• 52:07
  Paul Gover drove that car at the Grand Prix.
• 52:08
  Sorry, yep, yep.
• 52:09
  But, you know, the funny thing, after I did that here at Oran Park in the BMW, we were down testing with Brad at Mallina.
• 52:15
  And it was raining or I can't remember, we were sitting in the car and he's saying, hey, Trev, you went all right, you know, in the BMW, you know.
• 52:21
  And he said, what's your plan going on from here?
• 52:23
  And I said, well, you know, I haven't got any money.
• 52:25
  I said, but I want to drive one of your cars.
• 52:27
  Oh, you know, Brad laughed and what have you.
• 52:30
  Anyway, so I worked on a program that year.
• 52:33
  And I came up with a commercial arrangement that sort of worked for Brad and me and what have you.
• 52:38
  And in the end, he said, so how are we going to do this?
• 52:40
  And I said, no, no, well, that's it.
• 52:41
  I'm in.
• 52:42
  And so anyway, we put this other deal together.
• 52:44
  It's another story.
• 52:45
  Memory is not with me here.
• 52:47
  Are you front wheel drive or four wheel drive?
• 52:48
  Is that the four wheel drive car?
• 52:50
  Four wheel drive car.
• 52:52
  Yeah.
• 52:52
  I mean, I've got photos on my wall now because in that year, there's probably only two.
• 52:56
  20 people that drove those cars things yeah you know with the big rings on with the silver car so yeah it was you know it was such an amazing opportunity it's such an amazing car to drive and yeah so i was you know beside myself in a factory car you know brad lent me a suit i had you know the orec suit or whatever he's kept one of those i think too hasn't he i wish he'd um
• 53:16
  Yeah, well, I'm sort of trying, you know, I'm working on a bit of a plan to get him to drag it out now, yeah.
• 53:20
  Good.
• 53:21
  That's good.
• 53:21
  And the fact that they've held on to it, I think, is even better.
• 53:26
  The BMW thing, I'm going to – firstly, what the hell happened with that promo video?
• 53:30
  What did I – you rang me about it.
• 53:33
  I can't remember what we were doing with that.
• 53:35
  What was it for?
• 53:35
  Well, I just – I was inspired by the whole thing, and I thought maybe, you know, maybe I could –
• 53:39
  Maybe I could drop a serious job and try and go car racing.
• 53:43
  So this is Greg Russ doing like Trevor Schumach, is it?
• 53:46
  Exactly that.
• 53:47
  Exactly that.
• 53:48
  I dug it up the other day.
• 53:51
  And I pitched it and I got a dribble of money here and there.
• 53:54
  And I drove in those three-hour races at Bathurst, the showroom showdowns and a few other things like that.
• 54:01
  And I soon realized that it's more than a full-time job and it's a full commitment to be like a professional style driver.
• 54:16
  That's the end of part one of my industry profile feature with Trevor Schumach.
• 54:19
  We're not done yet.
• 54:20
  Trev still has some good yarns to share from his motorsport journey so far, including the formation of a motorsport tyre distributorship with a footprint that covers the Tasman and Southeast Asia.
• 54:32
  plus a BMW race car that's now in the garage that he might just take to some European events and a beast of a rally car that's ready to tackle some iconic roads from his youth.
• 54:44
  All that and a lot more in part two, which drops just 24 hours after part one here on Rusty's Garage.