Ep.318 – Paul “Ziggy” Harcus

So, uh, Zignitowsky.

Oh, uh, Fishbarter.

And the child traffic teenager.

Ziggy Harkus.

Well, Paul, can we call you Paul?

You can call me Paul, but I probably, if you're in a crowd,

I will never answer, because I don't know who you're talking to.

Fair enough. All right, Ziggy Harkus.

If you could describe this lunch we just had in one word, what would it be?

Lies.

Lots of lies.

And now for Dinner with Racers, presented by

Continental Tire.

With your hosts, Ryan Eversly and Sean Heckman.

Welcome to Dinner with Racers.

Hey, I'm Sean Heckman.

I'm Ryan Eversly.

And we are sitting in Johnny Rockets in Hollywood, California.

Just kind of eating a little bit of a late lunch and doing some of this hosting,

wrapping up our 10th, the great 10th season.

Crazy, right?

Of Dinner with Racers.

Yeah, we've got to speak with people from all walks of the motorsports life,

and it's been a great journey.

Thanks to you guys and our partner, Continental Tire, for making that possible.

And one of the legends that we got to speak with this year was somebody that came

very highly recommended, but maybe not be a household name.

None other than the current team manager at Andready Autosport, Ziggy Harkus.

Ziggy is a longtime veteran of the IndyCar world and has been in different roles,

as well as different programs, but most notably, like we mentioned, Andready Autosport.

But he has worked with a ton of up-and-coming drivers.

He's worked with some of the greatest names in IndyCar history,

and he's got some amazing stories from his times in the sport.

Exactly.

So like Ryan said, he's currently the team manager, but if you were to drop Ziggy's name

in any race team within IndyCar, everyone would know who he is.

Because he's worked everywhere.

He's done a ton of roles.

He's basically one of those mechanic turn team manager types,

and he's just a man of the world.

He's also, I did the math, Ryan.

He's our 300th Kiwi.

That's crazy.

He's the 300th person on our show.

That's right.

Of the 200-plus guests that we've had.

Yeah, he's the 300th Kiwi.

He's the 300th from New Zealand, so he's got that going for us.

But we keep having Kiwis because they tell great stories, such as

having your mom scream at a boat captain.

Throwing a party that ruins another team's sponsored dinner.

And what you should not do as a young mechanic.

We went to Dawson's on Main again, where we had just eaten with Zach Beach

a few nights before.

And while we were having dinner with Zach Beach, who'd we see walking his dog?

That's right.

He lives right down the street.

So I believe I had a club sandwich, go on.

And I, again, had, as I do, the chicken sandwich in a wrap form with buffalo sauce.

Well, you know what else we have, Sean?

We have this new thing called Patreon.

Oh, do we?

You can go to patreon.com forward slash DWR show, where we are doing a

behind the scenes, extra content grab, and basically trying to give you guys a little

bit more insight, a little more behind the scenes, some funny stories that didn't

make the edit.

And then just also our personal racing that's going on.

We're giving a race reviews.

We're doing previews and just anything that we think is interesting.

That's a lot of things, Ryan.

It is a lot of things.

It is a lot of things that we do here.

But, but that's all because you guys have been so constantly engaged, including

being engaged with our sponsor, which, you know, might be pretty gosh darn important,

Ryan.

Continental Tire.

That's right.

Do the thing.

Continental Tire.

Do the thing.

Continental Tire.

In the middle of a ****.

It's Donnie Rockins.

It's really loud.

It's really loud when we say that at Donnie Rockins.

Hashtag dinner with Conti.

Like we say in every episode, we are measured by Continental Tire with how we

perform on things like trackable links and our Instagram posts.

So if you use the hashtag dinner with Conti on anything you do on Instagram, you buy

some, some tires and you want to post a photo.

You see something that reminds you of us, whatever it is.

If you post that, put hashtag dinner with Conti that lets Continental Tire know that

you came as well as, of course, tagging them.

Or simply when you go to Instagram or go to dinnerwithracers.com, we have some

trackable links there that send you to Continental and lets you know everything

that they've got going on by clicking on those links that tells Continental Tire

that we sent you, which goes a huge, huge way for us.

So please keep doing that because that's what keeps us going.

Now, when we ran into Ziggy, we were already in Indianapolis because we were

both racing that weekend, but it was very nice of Shane Van Gisburg and to drive

us over to dinner.

Guys, we've got to stop.

I really got to piss.

And with that, Ziggy Hocus.

Meow.

Alright, we're going to start in five, four, three, two.

How you doing?

Hey, I'm Ryan. Nice to meet you.

Hey, Sean.

Sean, how are you guys?

Yeah, I've been there.

So you said you had a busy morning.

Yep.

So, who did you fire?

Yeah.

Got Rob Edwards is moving to a new position.

And we have Ron Razewski coming in who was originally from Penske.

Yeah, so he's starting with that deal.

So, should be good.

I'm looking forward to it.

Well, you're one of these guys that every time we mention your name doing our research,

we reach out to people that we all know, all of them have the same thing to say.

They're like, he's the man you're going to love him.

Oh my gosh.

So, I talked to, we had Zach Beach sitting in this very chair the other night

and he was like, oh, he helped me get rid of my nickname.

Yeah.

I love him.

Can't have two ziggies.

Good little guy.

Yeah.

So, our first question for you is, what's your dog's name?

My dog's name is Hank.

Have you seen Hank walking up?

You walked past us.

Oh, he did.

Yeah, we were sitting right here.

And Zach didn't know we would have you on in a couple of days.

He's like, oh, there's Ziggy.

And we're like, wait, we're sitting here with him.

So, yeah, so we saw you walking your dog.

Yep.

So, clearly you live nearby.

I live walking distance to the shop.

We're using on Main Street now, which is fantastic.

I live when I moved here from, I came originally from,

started off coming to California.

Then moved to Albuquerque with the Gallus Racing

and then came here and I bought my house just down here

off 16th Street and I've never moved.

Love it.

It's close to the track.

I mean, I race mornings, I get up and walk to the track

and stuff like that.

So, everything that I like to do is right here.

Is that normal?

It seems like most of the folks don't actually live in Speedway.

No, most don't.

I mean, well, a lot of young people with families are out

in Brownsburg and a lot of people now are up in the north side,

which when we were going to our new shop on the north side,

there was a lot of people that were very keen about that

and now we're back to the old Indiesar building,

but that's not a bad thing.

Some people didn't like moving that way,

especially the families out in Brownsburg.

So, I think that, you know, for me it's six to one-half

doesn't matter.

It's a mile and a half from our old shop, so it's good.

So, you're not Australian?

Correct, and I'll emphasize that if I need to.

I think you're like our 12th Kiwi on this show.

And that kind of speaks to where this is going.

What is it about New Zealand that's making so many great racers?

To be honest with you, I think it started when I was young

because you were so distant from everyone in the world

that it became, you look at American people,

they go and they'll do a two-week holiday

or something, travel around Europe for things.

New Zealand is when I was young, they'd go away

and we'd go to Canada and work, you'd go to England and work,

so we'd go and do those things that you could go and see the world.

And, you know, a lot of them would go back to New Zealand,

some of them wouldn't, but it was one of those things

and then racing was always very popular down there.

So, it was one of the things that I never started racing in New Zealand.

I started it outside, but it was another Kiwi that got me into it.

So, yeah, I think we had old English cars and to work on them,

you had to fix, you couldn't just go out and buy something.

Because you're on an island.

You're on an island, everything came from England

and now it's Japanese cars and English cars, so it's easy.

But back in those days, it was, I think people went overseas

and they go, oh, hell, they'll prepare to have a shot at anything.

I think it's because we didn't have a choice back then.

Interesting.

Now, did you grow up a race fan?

Yeah, I mean, I used to go to, I lived in Auckland,

grew up in Auckland and I'd go out to Pukit Kalei

and see the New Zealand Grand Prix back in those days, you know.

So, I grew up in, you know, Chris Amon and all of those.

So, it was one of those ones that I didn't follow like I do now,

but I did follow it back then.

We'd go to races when we could afford it.

But it wasn't necessarily a career move at the time.

You can grow up with this Scott Dixon-like dream

of like, I'm going to go do this.

Not at all.

It was 100% on my side, but it was really,

I was travelling the world when I was young just to have a look

and I spent a few years travelling around on ships, actually,

working on ships.

And I was over in Europe and had gone over to Norway

and I was travelling around Europe, hitchhiking

and just being a young Kiwi.

And, yeah, it was a couple, I was with a couple of Norwegian guys.

They were doctors and they wanted to learn to speak English

and they let me live with them and I'm thinking,

that's the wrong way to learn to speak English.

And this is like mid-80s or what it is?

This was mostly 70s.

So, yeah, so I did that and when I was down

and I met a New Zealand girl and her husband was doing F1

for the March Formula One team.

So basically that's how I got into it.

I met him and he said, you need to do this.

And he ended up coming over to America.

And so when I was on my way back to New Zealand,

I stopped and was helping him.

And then on my way back to Europe again the next year

I stopped and helped him again and then it turned into...

So you sort of like, is this like a buddy helping out

on the March F1 team?

No, he had actually quit the March F1.

When I met him, he quit March and came over here to work with...

Here in the US.

In the US and he came over to work with Jeff Wood

doing the Formula Atlantic back in those days.

And so he was looking for someone to help him.

And basically I started off just being a gopher,

doing that, you know, I knew how to fix things

but I really didn't know anything about race cars.

So it was all one of those things of jump in headfirst

and see where it landed.

And you were just that free spirit.

They were like, yeah, I'll move to the US

and just sort of go for a round for a minute.

Yeah, I mean it was funny because a lot of people say,

oh, you know, everyone wants to move to the US.

It was never in my plan to move to the US.

I liked coming over here and enjoyed it.

But I was more interested in Europe at the time

or maybe Australia or New Zealand.

And so it was really just falling into a job.

And then when the job became good and exciting

and thought, you know, the pay was better

than what I was doing.

And so I thought, hell, why not?

You know, and so, yeah, so I jumped into it

and it turned out to be a really good move.

It's been my career now for hell since 70,

late 70s to now.

So your dad was in the shipping industry?

Yeah, he worked on ships.

And so it was one of those things.

My oldest brother went to do it

and he did it for a few years then he quit.

And I went, my dad dragged me out of school

and put me on a ship because he was working

for the union at the time

and they needed someone through me on a ship.

And so I started, the first few years

was basically South Pacific Australia,

the Pacific Islands and stuff.

And then I decided I wanted to see more.

So I jumped on an Norwegian ship

and headed off to, went off to,

would we go South Africa, Europe,

all over Japan.

So I enjoyed it.

I loved seeing the world.

And to this day, I still enjoy

when we do the overseas races.

I'd love to, I love those back in the day.

And I wish we'd do a couple more

because to me that's what I enjoy.

Going to other places, different events.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, so what kind of work were you doing

when you were on these ships?

I was basically, you started off as,

when you first start on there,

it's your deck, basically you're doing,

looking after the grunt work,

the cabin's quarters and stuff.

And then as you moved on,

you were doing anything like,

whether it's repairing anything

to do on the ship pretty much.

And at that stage it was,

they had it separated where you were on

a deck crew and the engine room crew.

And I was on the deck crew

because I liked that side of it.

And then the, I did that.

And basically, once I did the start of the racing,

I did, my first year I came back

and I went back to New Zealand.

And I just decided that, you know,

the shipping was fun,

but it's not what I wanted to do for my life.

So yeah, so it was really just fixing

whether rebuilding stuff,

whether it's cranes, derricks,

you know, any of that stuff that you do.

And just basically traveling around doing that

and was enjoyable life at that stage.

I would hate to do it now

because everything's so automated.

When you were in school,

so my dad was a crew chief in IMSA

and he started out,

he went to school

and started learning how to weld and stuff.

And then his first jobs were like on oil rigs

in the Irish Sea.

So he was able to learn a lot of on-the-job stuff

that eventually would work for racing, you know,

and that's how he went.

Was that the same kind of thing

or did you have someone teaching you

before you got on the ships?

No, it was 100% hand thrown on the deep end

and then you always looked at it

and it's the same.

Learning to see the problem, you know,

or see a problem before it becomes a big problem

and racing's the same way.

You know, you're always looking for something to,

you know, people forget.

When you pull something apart,

that's just as important as putting it back together.

And so on the ships it's the same way.

You're constantly chasing, fixing.

Getting ahead of it.

So yeah, so it was the same sort of idea,

but I, yeah, I didn't go to school for that.

When I was going to school, I wanted to,

I loved working with metal and love working on wood

and stuff like that.

So I was always a hands-on type person, you know.

So, but yeah, it was good.

It sounds like if your dad was in shipping,

like a lot of times when the kid moves off

and goes overseas to do grunt work and stuff like that,

some parents are like,

oh, that's a big departure from the nine to five life

we've taught you to have.

Yeah.

But if your dad's in shipping,

sounds like he was totally on board with his very free-spirited

version of you.

He was completely on board with it.

The problem was, my mother,

he come and dragged me out of school one day,

and the first time he tried to do it,

he put me on a ship that was leaving

for three months going to the Far East.

Oh, wow.

And so I was on the ship,

and I was 15 years of age at the time

and looked about 10.

So you were child trafficked.

I was child trafficked,

and I was a tiny little guy,

and so he put me on the ship,

and then my mom found out about it

and come down and dragged me off it before it sailed.

So she was like sprinting to the docks?

Oh, yeah.

Went up to the captain and grabbed me,

and she says he ain't going anywhere,

so dragged me out of there.

We almost got away with it.

Yeah, I had no plans to go to that,

but I must admit, once I got on to the ship,

I was from a big family.

My mom was a yours, more than an ours family.

I had my three brothers,

and then I had two stepbrothers, two steps sisters,

and then between them they had one.

So once I got away, it was the first taste of freedom

and being my own person,

and I got away, and I thought,

man, this is what I want to do this for a few years,

and you see something, you know?

That had to not go well between your mom and your dad.

There was a lot that didn't go well between my mom and my dad.

Let's go with that.

All right, so you're stateside,

you're working on Atlantic cars.

Yep.

I'm sure you're getting rich.

Yeah, no.

Yeah, yeah.

But how old are you at this time?

I was, when I first started working on the cars,

I was mostly early 20s,

and you know, I did that,

and when I was over here, I didn't have a visa,

so it was one of those things that you were working for

what you could get, and...

As in like they're giving you cash,

and you're sort of having a rate on that.

And it was a lot easier back then,

because you don't have the,

it was a lot easier to get over here and stay here.

And so I started doing that,

and I enjoyed it, but when I went back to New Zealand,

I said it once again,

I must admit that I thought to myself,

you know, it's a little bit above what I know,

and it's, I sort of quit,

I just didn't, I didn't feel comfortable

that I was as good as I needed to be for...

To be like a race car mechanic.

To be a race car mechanic.

Okay, got it.

And so I sort of, I quit and went back to New Zealand,

and after the first year,

and a guy called Tony Corry,

he came from an F1 team as well,

an Australian guy,

and he was the one that really took me under his wing.

And, you know, we were working back then,

we had different drivers,

Sullivan was one of them,

and we would, he would do things,

it was really good,

he would do things like,

we're such a small crew,

so he'd do one side of the car,

I'd do the other side of the car,

and we'd work together on a little time,

and so he'd go over,

and the engineer would say,

hey, front spring change.

So he would be in the,

the chief, he'd go and get his spring and his tools,

and he would walk back to me and say,

Ziggy, front spring change,

and then I'd run back and get everything and try to do it,

and he'd beat me hands down every time.

And as soon as he did,

he'd lean off the drive and go,

waitin' on Ziggy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

the pressure,

all the pressure's beat up.

Yeah, and this was the Atlantic team.

Yes, the Atlantic team.

And then what?

And you're working with Danny Sullivan?

We worked with Danny Sullivan on both the Atlantic,

so I went from it,

it was a team called Garvin Brown Racing,

and Sullivan became,

and we did the,

we did Can-Am as well.

We had, back then,

we did Can-Am, Super-V, and Atlantic,

but what I liked about it was when he would do it,

he would, after we'd finished and done,

and the car was out the run on track, he'd go,

Ziggy, why did you use a ratchet for that?

That should be a speed handle.

So it wasn't even just,

even though you were doing the same tight

and bolt was all about how you did it

and how you did it quick and stuff the rest of it.

So he was the guy that made racing enjoyable for me.

He was the one that said,

this is what you want to do.

He was willing to invest the time

to grow you the way you needed to be.

Yeah, we were the greatest friends for a long time,

and he's,

sadly he passed away from,

he got cancer and passed away,

but yeah, one of those guys that she just,

even though we only worked together for a few years,

never stopped being friends.

And the thing I'm hearing is, even then you were Ziggy.

So where did this,

I mean, we know the background behind you

at your nickname, but obviously our fans mean not.

Yeah, so there's a guy called David Kepter,

and his name was Slick Dog in the team.

Slick Dog.

Was this part of the Atlantic deal, or was this thing?

He was back in the, he was actually in the,

it was a gang, everyone still got nicknames,

but he was on the team that I joined,

and when the USO,

when I first came over here,

and the first day that I actually worked with him,

he comes and he's, I had sort of longest hair

and was spiky, it just stuck in my memory.

And it was like early 80s punk.

Yeah, so it was actually David Bowie.

He goes, you'll remind me of David Bowie.

I was going to say Rod Stewart,

but I could say David Bowie.

Yeah, David Bowie.

He just said you were a Ziggy Stardust,

and I go, I went around,

and he'd tell everyone, he'd introduce me,

everyone on the other team said there's a Ziggy,

and I go, and the name's Paul.

And he's like, there's no, and it never did go away.

And when I went to Gallus Racing,

I was going to change it back,

and then they had like two other Pauls there,

so then it just sort of stuck.

And it is now, I've become the Ziggy.

When'd you go through two teams, that's it?

Yeah, right, right.

Yeah, done.

Because actually they'll be like, yeah, Paul's saying,

like who's that?

Well, even my family would come over here,

and I'd have my sister come over,

and she's been quite a lot of time,

and because no one knew me as Paul,

she would be there, and she'd go,

can you go get Paul for me?

And they're like, who?

And I had, when I got to Gallus,

my mum, her friend, he's ill at the time,

and she said, we'll give you a call in a few weeks,

and see how things are going.

So I heard nothing, heard nothing so funny.

I better call Emma, make sure everything's going good.

So I called back to my mum, and she goes,

Ziggy, you're an idiot.

She goes, you give me the wrong phone number.

I go, what phone number do you have?

She says, that is the correct,

I said, that's the correct phone number.

So then I go to the girl at the front desk, I says,

have you had any calls from a lady with an accent

that sort of sounds like mine?

And she sort of gives me that look of, yes.

And I go, do you know what my real name is?

She goes, Zignatowski?

I go, no, my name is Paul.

So she was a funny old one.

Ryan and I are nerds for IndyCar History,

so we're very familiar with Gallus,

but how does that tradition happen?

How do you end up over there?

So I was working with that team there,

and we had a driver by the name of Mike Rosen,

who was from California.

This is the Atlantic team you're talking about.

This is still back in the Atlantic team,

and we'd done the Can-Am part of it,

and Sullivan was a Can-Am,

and then he had moved on,

so we were running this young Mike Rosen,

and we had a guy called Hubert Phipps,

and good little team, and Mike Rosen,

he had a bit of a drug problem back in the day.

Great guy, great family,

but he had a drug problem,

and he got himself in trouble at Long Beach.

We were there, and he had been out

and crashed the car on Saturday morning

for the rest of Saturday afternoon,

and it just got under my skin.

You're putting all this work into a car,

and he's not wrecking because he was over Zellis.

He's wrecking because he's not in his right mind.

Actually, when he was, it's funny,

his parents even said this back in the day,

the only thing that he cares more than drugs is motor racing,

you know, and so we did run him,

and then he was good.

When he was clean and sober, he was really good,

quite talented, good guy, it's just that,

you know, it's a different person.

Right, and to put the time and money that you're putting in.

And so we went, so I went there,

and after the hour race, I went to a guy, Alan McCall,

who was another Kiwi, and he was running Gallus at the time,

and I walked down Pit lane and asked him,

he says, hey, you guys looking for anyone?

And he goes, yep.

And I says, well, when are you looking for someone to start?

He goes, roll your toolbox down here right now.

Wow, wow.

So I went to Flute of Gallus in Albuquerque,

and had a look at that, and decided that's what I was going to do.

So I moved there and spent 10 years there doing with them,

and it was a great team.

Rick Gallus, I still keep in contact with him occasionally,

very good, and enjoyed the hell out of Al Jr.

Some of the best stories and times I had in my life were with Al.

He was such a, he was so fast,

and he was such a good team leader in the sense,

and even now I try to explain this to young guys,

it was different back then, because the drivers now are in and out,

and we're the same.

It was before we used to travel on the road together,

and we'd be on the road for weeks together.

So you had a lot more of a family atmosphere,

and even the partying, people, one of my jobs now

is to make sure the guys are on top of it for race weekend,

and the sad part is we go in now on,

whether it's Thursday night or Friday mornings,

and you're in and out, and then Sunday you can win the race,

and teams, all we do is we run down,

they run on the way to the airport,

and grab a six pack of beer,

and sort of do a little bit of celebrating

while we're waiting for the plane,

but really it's, back then we'd be able to,

the whole team would go,

stay there and party.

There was some disasters that went on,

those two by the way.

We heard a few.

A lot of our fans, especially younger fans,

they may not know who Gallus was,

but Gallus in the 80s and 90s was one of the big IndyCar teams.

If you've ever seen the valveline IndyCar

during the Aljuner days, that was Gallus,

and it was a big deal, but we sat and did one of these

with Kevin Blanche Rocket.

Oh yeah, Rocket, yeah.

God, years ago now.

He said the same thing, that the cars are

in a way easier to work on now,

but no one's having the fun that you guys used to have.

Yeah, that is very true.

It's funny, I was talking to Kyle one day

when he brought me into Andretti years ago,

I was working for, I'd gone to the Chamco World Series,

on the operation side of it there,

and it was a big change for me,

but Kyle and I were talking about,

you know, what's the difference that teams seem,

it seems to be not as much fun

and the guys don't enjoy it as much,

and I go, well, I think part of the problem is

back then we used to have, you know,

it was a lot more, season was a lot longer,

and we spent a huge amount more time on the road,

but that's not a bad thing for, to keep,

you don't spend a whole lot of time on the road,

but you know, you go away, you have a couple of weeks

when you're on the road, you've got the guys,

and you don't have the pressures of your family,

but it's just, now I think the thing is,

when you have four events in a row,

and you come home, and it's jumping on the plane

for the next one, and you're days off,

the guys are pretty much worn out in a sense, you know,

and it's not that we work stupid hours like we used to,

I mean, we don't work, our seven to four is our normal,

and as a team.

At the track?

At here, at the shop.

And at the track, you know,

that changes from depending on what the schedule is,

but back in those days, you'd never had a time

we had to be out, now you've got a time,

unless you crash a car, and you can go down to rock

and say, hey, I need to be here till midnight,

or whatever, and he'll say, no, you can be here till 11,

and so, you know.

My way.

Yeah, that sounds right.

But the good part on that is that,

I think our team is really good once it comes to that.

That's as other teams are as well,

but we don't even have to go out and tell the guys,

hey, if someone crashes before we even got back to the garage,

we've got guys from the other two teams,

they're in there, they've taken, hey, we've got on us,

why don't you go and help them.

And so after the once the garage is closed,

we'll keep the whole group of people,

and then as we start to slim out,

and the job list gets avoided,

then it goes back to their regular team of guys,

and management, we stay there and get it done.

But yeah, it's just different.

I think it's just busier.

It's a lot shorter season.

So right now, it's a lot quieter,

but during the season that you've got,

I always break it down to like three,

you have a normal, you have a quiet time,

which is now just getting caught up on all the stuff

that we have to do during the off season.

You have, you know, a third of the season,

which is not too bad, you're busy, but not too bad.

Then you have a third of the season, you know,

like that middle section between Indian Detroit

and Barber leading up to it in the road course race.

That is vicious.

And then the last four, whether we had those four on a road,

I mean, it's doable, but if you crash cars,

you have no time to rebuild and get things back on track.

That's the biggest problem.

So you're at Dallas with Alan Sir Jr.,

probably in his payday, you know,

like when he was really becoming Alan Sir Jr.

I'd love to hear some early day Alan Sir Jr. stories,

because I mean, he's got big shoes to fill, and he did.

Well, yeah, he was, I came into the team as being,

they brought me in with Jeff Brabham, actually,

because we had the other two cars there.

So I worked with Jeff for the first year or so.

Actually, to be honest with you, the first one

was actually Poncho Carter.

And then when it moved to Jeff's car,

and then they had a reshuffle in the team,

and they moved me over to Al Jr.'s car,

and I stayed there for all of those years until

I was mechanic on Junior's car,

then I moved to the Chief on Sullivan's car.

So Sullivan's been in and out of my racing career.

But yeah, Al Jr. was, he was one of those guys.

There was races that would go out and would qualify,

and we had Ray Hall running there as well.

And when Ray Hall would be really, he's really good

at setting up a car and doing that in Junior.

We'd go out there and we'd qualify P15,

and you know, the car's not good,

and then we'd throw Ray Hall's set up on it on the set.

Then I would go out in Sunday morning,

and he'd go out there run for a while,

and coming in with still P15 on the thing,

he'd just get out of the car and go,

what are you doing? He goes, the car's good.

Look, it was still P15.

He goes, the car's good, and then Ray started,

and he'd go straight to the front.

And it was funny, if he ever came in,

and I always thought, I should have been a betting man,

because if he ever came in, he'd come and stop the car,

and he'd just give us the double thumbs up,

and you knew that we were going to be going.

So he looked after us, we had a huge amount of fun

and party in and stuff like that.

But yeah, he was just, he's still one of my favourites.

And even when he went through his issues,

even after he went through those,

and then when he was going through

getting out of those issues,

he'd talk to us about people and the teams,

if they needed help.

He goes, I'm the guy that's been through the drinking

and the rest of it.

You know, if you have guys that want to talk to me,

and he was fantastic like that.

And even to this day, I still think

he's one of those guys who's had his issues,

but as a person, you can't meet him much better than him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because of the show, we've gotten to spend hours

with Mario Andretti and all these legends,

the sport, and what's our most common phrase

that you and I say in the car?

Always meet your heroes.

Meet your heroes.

And they always say, no, no, meet your heroes.

They're who they are for a reason.

It was funny because we'd won Long Beach

four times in a row with him,

and then they moved me to Chief on Sullivan's car

for the last year, and so we go out there

and we're actually running, I think we were running

1-2 or 1-3 with Junior leading,

and somehow rather, I think they were going to lap a car

and Danny made a good move, and we got by Junior.

There might have been even a little bit of contact,

I can't remember completely, but Brian Barnhart,

who's still a good friend of mine,

he was on Junior's car and he was a huge Junior.

So he didn't care about Sullivan, he cared about Junior.

And so after the race, he'd say to me,

God damn it, no one's ever won a race five years in a row.

And this goes on for a couple of weeks,

and finally I said to him, well, that's not true.

He goes, what do you mean?

I said, well, I have.

So, yeah, but it was, we were just very lucky,

but when we had Sullivan and Junior,

I mean, the trouble is the same thing,

you got two really good drivers that are fighting

for the same spot, and when we had the Galma,

where we weren't great, that creates issues too,

because then you got two drivers battling

to be number one on the team, but yeah, it was,

I mean, the Galma was, we won the 500 with it,

but yeah, it was a tough car.

Basically for years, Gallis was basically a Lola team,

basically purchasing and importing all their stuff,

and then Rick Gallis said he wanted to make his own car.

Correct.

Because in those days you could.

Yep.

And so there was this Galmer chassis,

which was sort of a Gallis-specific chassis

that only you guys had in 1992.

Yeah, it was, the car wasn't a bad car at all.

So the, except that I think it was,

that designed it a year before,

and back in those days, everything transitioned

very quickly from one year to the next.

Yeah, every year was a new design.

Yeah, and that's one of the things

the guys don't realize now, as you know,

they talk about how hard the car is,

and don't get me wrong, there's a huge amount of wire

and electronic, some of the rest of the stuff on it,

but back then you'd go out and would test day after day

after day out in Phoenix or Big Springs, Texas,

trying to break as much as we could

to see what were the weaknesses of the car,

and so not only would you have to,

you'd buy a good car or a car that, there,

but then you'd have to redesign and do all of that stuff now.

Hell, I've got that so far under wraps,

you can't do a lot at all without having clearance

from the series.

But yeah, now the Galmer was a decent car,

but it was just, it was designed the year before,

and by the time they got the OK to go ahead with it,

we'd lost a year that you could have been ahead of other,

whether it's the Lola or whoever,

but yeah, it was a, not a bad car,

it just wasn't fast enough when we needed to be,

I think the speedway we won,

because we could do the same speed all day long,

and it was one of those days it was really cold.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

We're, so like an Indy car in the 80s and early 90s,

like we talked about, it's every years a new car,

there's update pieces coming up all year,

was what you needed out of a mechanic

different than what it is today?

I think it, you still need that same thing

of doing it right the first time.

You know, that's the biggest thing that I always look at

is, you know, even youngsters coming in,

I go, you know, try not to go too fast initially,

because that's, you're gonna make mistakes

and you're gonna screw it up,

but it is different now, now it's more,

you know, keeping on top of the mileage,

making sure that you've got the right pieces on,

and so you are doing a lot of swapping

and geometry changes and all the rest of the things,

but I think back then, because it was a new car

over you had to learn new stuff every year,

now it's the same sort of thing you are progressing,

you know, the safety side of it,

they keep working on that every year,

so you do deal with that, but it's,

I think now it's more of staying on top of it

back in the early days you were developing

and, you know, always, every time was develop, develop, develop,

and the car was built within the box,

so you had room to push it.

Yeah, whereas now it's, that box is very, very tight,

so you're dealing with, it's back then you could,

you're searching for, you know,

sort of big chunks of time on the track,

now you're searching, you know,

you're trying to find ten different things

that give you a tenth of a second here, yeah,

so it is a tough deal, but it's, you know,

no one's worse than the other,

it's just I liked it back then when you had

to think about things a little bit more, yeah.

Yeah, there's not a lot you can do back then,

hell would have engines apart in the shop.

Yeah, as I say, it was part of the skill set in the 80s

being able to fabricate,

because I feel like there's not a lot of need for fabric.

No, I mean you have a lot of, we used to have, you know,

fabricators building your own headers

or have people doing them for you,

a lot of stuff, and a lot of it was just little stuff to,

you know, like with this heat shielding

or you'd build your own equipment for, you know,

whether it's pet equipment, you're changing that all the time,

tractor trailers, you were doing a lot of that yourself,

so that's where you learned in the off season,

you were, you know, you'd go down there

and you'd start working on the trucks and going,

okay, what do we need to do here?

And so it's very true, we don't have,

the guys are more, you know, you're a mechanic

and so you spend 90% of your time doing mechanics

back in the old days, it was mostly 75%,

and then the last 25, you're doing fabricating some well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

All the stuff that no one really likes to do,

but it's actually good.

Yeah, let's get training.

You are fixing cars, like now you have to go

and buy anything you want, you have to go and buy it,

you know, and it has to have a part number on it,

it has to be done, whereas back in those days,

hell, if you had it, you were fixing it at the track

and they didn't have everything there that you needed

at all times.

And you were testing every other week, I assume.

Yeah, exactly, and it was, we would go,

I left, I think one time I was on the road for,

I left to go to a one test or a race,

and they asked me to stay and go for a test,

and I was young and single back then,

so I ended up staying away from Malbecookie

at Gallis, I was gone for six weeks, eight weeks.

Yeah, and that's a good number test coming up,

so I come back to Indy here and I'd work on the car here,

and then we'd go testing, and we had dedicated test teams,

and so, yeah, it was definitely different,

but when you're young, I didn't care about being away,

I liked it actually, more time.

You say the partying with Gallis was pretty good.

We had a lot of good times, yeah.

Well, I think one of the big things

that might have changed culturally

is we now have cell phones with cameras.

Correct.

How much would you still be around today,

career-wise, if there were cell phones with cameras?

I would not be around career-wise, I wouldn't be married.

No children.

And I wouldn't have a dog either.

So, you know, it is, I look at it now,

and it's funny because the young guys,

they'll bring me back, you know,

once you get into the management side of it,

I don't go out with the guys anymore,

you know, it's a different thing,

and they don't get me wrong, I like the guys,

and it's good to go out with a small group of them,

but, you know, if they want to go out and have fun,

then they don't want there.

They don't need the boss.

No, I agree with it completely,

but I'll see photos, and I'm like,

oh, my God.

Let's do a watching.

Some of them show it to us, some of them said it,

and I'll see it, and I'm like, oh, God, what happened?

I imagine you'd be in a type that's like,

I don't need to know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Everything's done, we're all good?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I imagine there's also a part of you that's like,

ah, it's a rookie move.

Yeah, I get it that way better.

I'm under my first beard.

We bought us some youngsters,

and we need to do the same again as we,

you know, they're trying to bring young people

into the sport is different,

and, you know, to get them in,

and so we bought in like six, two or three years ago,

and I think four of them actually made it through it,

you know, but the same thing, you'll see them go out

and then they're out thinking they can party with the,

like rock stars with the rest of the guys,

and you go, you're a rookie, you're going to pay the price.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Man leaves at six.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When I say six o'clock,

that doesn't mean you roll it downstairs.

That's the B550 and be ready to go.

One of my first weekends in racing,

I heard, do you know what taillights means?

And I said, no, they're like,

taillights means the band's already left.

So if taillights is eight o'clock,

you better be down there at 750.

I was like, oh, okay.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, there is a reason we do that.

I mean, but that's also teaching part of the job, you know.

When I always look back on a go,

there's no such thing as a deadline

that you don't make in motor racing, you know.

Your deadline is when that green flag drops

for the race or for the practice or whatever.

If you don't make it, you're in trouble, you know.

And that's just, you're teaching the guys

that whether it's being at the van at six o'clock

or whatever it be, you know,

make sure you got your act together and do that.

Yeah, so.

Yeah, it's a little thing.

Yep, 100%.

So you're at Dallas.

How does that time come to an end for you?

I was there and it was a great,

a great 10, I had 10 years there and enjoyed it.

And I was actually still chief on Sullivan's car

and I think junior had moved on and we had,

I think it was, who would we have then?

Fernandez.

Fernandez?

Fernandez, I think it was Aaron.

And so Sullivan was there

and we'd been friends forever.

And so he'd said to me, he was telling me on,

he says, hey, things are looking not great

with our sponsorship.

We had Molson at the time and he says,

you might want to be a little bit careful of what,

you know, because I was chief and the rest of it.

And so I flew back here to meet with,

to Pack West with John Anderson,

who was your Ando here.

So, and I flew back to meet with him and Foxy,

the Gearbox guy at Dallas and said,

well, check on it for me as well.

And I flew back and had a look at it

and they were starting going to a two car team

and a little building down on gasoline.

How are you here?

And I'm like, oh my God, they have nothing

and they've got a huge amount ahead of them.

So I told him, no, let's wait here.

And so then I let someone else do the hard work.

And so we did that.

And then so it did, Sullivan's deal did fall apart.

And then Rick was kind enough, he says to me,

we're going to make you the firefighter.

You can be on, whenever we crash a car or whatever you

and mechanics will say that you'll do that.

And so we'll leave the chiefs us an hour and go, yep,

that's good.

And I started to do that.

And I was there and this is the off season.

So I was doing that.

And then I'm working off, got an old E-type Jag

and I was working on that at the shop at night.

And Rick called one right now.

Rick Alice.

Rick Alice, yeah.

Answer the phone.

And he said, what are you doing?

I said, I'm just working on my own car here,

doing some stuff.

And he goes, everything good.

And I just said, nope, I'm going to leave.

And I had no thoughts about doing that before.

I already decided to stay.

But yeah, it was just in the moment.

I just knew it was time.

Yeah, right.

He could feel it.

So I called Ando up and told him I was going to take the job.

Foxy was smart enough.

He stayed in Albuquerque.

And it was.

It was a year or two of...

Those first few years of Tasman.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

At PacWest.

At PacWest, excuse me.

And so it was a lot of work.

But it was a team that was growing.

Ando was my mentor right through the rest of my life.

And he was the one that got me into really...

He was at the Champions League World Series.

He brought me in to help.

And they have to do some just part-time work over the winter.

And then I realized why.

Because he's actually leaving and going to Deferent.

He went quit and went for there.

But when he went up and quit, he says, well...

And they're like, no, well, who are we going to do?

And he goes, well, I've got someone here in the building

before you're ready.

That's my name.

He used to tell everyone.

He says, I'm paving the way for Ziggy.

I said, I used to tell all my friends,

I'm cleaning up Ando's s***.

So...

But yeah, so he went to PacWest.

And it was, you know, we had Scott Sharp and Dominic Dobbs

in the first year.

So, you know...

What was your role?

I was Chief Mechanic on there.

It was a very start-up team.

A very start-up team.

And a huge amount of work.

And it got to the point at some stages there.

I think we had to...

We crashed so many times.

We were involved in a lot of them.

And, you know, Scott was a new to the series as well.

So, you know, trying to prove his speed.

And...

How was his hair?

See, it was perfect.

But yeah, so we did...

It was just non-stop work.

We even had it on Sunday sometimes.

We had to tell that we'd work Sundays.

And we made it so we had to quit by two o'clock in the afternoon

so the guys could have some family time.

It was just so busy.

That's how brutal it was.

And we never had...

I think we finally got four cars together.

So to have two backup cars for them.

And that was about three quarters of the way through the season.

Oh, is that far?

Oh, so far.

Two drivers.

Yeah, two drivers.

And yeah, so it was a huge growing experience.

And so I was there.

And then we, you know, it moved along.

We had Blundell and Guzman and...

Yeah, so to get good.

And then the team started.

We had...

We started to become successful.

And it was a lot of fun.

A lot of work, but a lot of fun.

And I really enjoyed working with those two.

And Bruce McCaw, the owner of the team,

you know, he was fantastic to us

and really enjoyed his time.

And it was really...

Really, that's how I got into the management side

is because I was on that.

And I had my twin...

I have twin boys.

So Cameron, who actually he's over at Genasi,

he started with us ten years or so ago.

And he came over and did...

He started...

We started him off as a pretty much a gopher

and then moved him.

We had a pro team at the time.

And then the indie lights team.

And so we moved him from through that.

And then his first year that he comes into the team,

he wins his...

He's on...

Rossi, right?

Rossi's car.

Oh, yeah.

His first 500.

Then we moved on the next year.

I was doing strategy for Sato.

And we moved over to there.

He wins his second 500.

Then he moved to Genasi.

He wins his third 500.

Like, Jesus, it's like all my family back in New Zealand.

Deep to this day,

if Genasi's winning a lot

and we're not doing what we should,

I get emails from them and it says,

good to see that one of your family's doing well.

Yeah, nice.

Nice.

Yeah.

So eventually with PacWest,

you do move to management.

You start running the indie lights program.

Yeah.

And was this something you wanted to do?

No, it was...

That all came about because of the twins.

And so there was...

I've been married to my wife for 30-something years now.

And Nicky and then the boy's mother,

it was a girl I dated and it just wasn't...

You know, it was one of those ones was up and down.

It was like moderation.

It was good and bad.

It wasn't...

There was no middle ground there.

We're in our 40s.

We're all saying the same thing.

Yeah, we know.

So I...

She was an Albuquerque and the boys were an Albuquerque

and so when I moved here,

she was not interested in moving at all

and so she stayed there with the boys

and so Liam and Cameron grew up in Albuquerque

and then when I was doing here

and then Gallus called me and he had a job.

He had another driver coming back

that he wanted to know whether I'd come back

and run that car for him.

And it was Marco Greco.

And so I decided I didn't want to do that.

I thought it'd be a step backwards.

You know, I thought the chance of being successful

would be tough.

The car was not going to do well.

Yeah, so I thought, nope.

And he kept pestering me about it

and my wife finally convinced me.

She said, you should think about it

and it'll give you...

Maybe make a deal with Rick

where you can go back

and one year guaranteed with a second year

if it falls apart,

then he has to keep me employed

at some sort of level.

Oh, I see.

And she said, but it's two years with your kids

that you wouldn't have otherwise.

Yeah, this is the responsible dad that says, yeah.

So I decided to do that

and I came into Ando, John Anderson

and told him that I was going back

to Albuquerque to work there

and he could have my two weeks notice

or he could send me down the door right now.

He just tells me, he says,

just go home, I'll see you in the morning.

And I had no clue what happened.

I'm like, how the hell I just quit?

And he said, no.

So I get back the next morning

and I go home to my wife and I don't know what happened

because it also rented my house out to another guy

who was coming from Hall VDS.

So I'd already rented it to him.

So there was no return.

You just committed yourself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I ended up...

So get back the next morning,

we sit down, we call Bruce McCall

and Bruce says to me,

I said, Bruce, I'm not going after money.

I'm not trying to get anything else.

All I want to do is it's time with my children.

He says, well, what about if we fly your children

backwards and forwards when it's convenient for you?

What a fantastic offer.

I said, but the trouble is this has been,

you know, the chief on the car back then

was a lot of workers.

It still won't be great.

This gives me a lot better things.

So he was the one that came up.

He says, what about if we,

if you take overhead, Alex McNeil and another Kiwi,

there was running his, he had a one car

running it out of California.

And then he lights a car.

So it was a different team,

but a Pac-West labeled program.

And so he said, what about if you take over that deal?

We'll bring that back in house.

He says, and then you can, he says,

you don't have to be here every day to run the team.

You know, you can go there as long as it's run properly.

And so I ended up agreeing with that and said,

that's a good step in the right direction.

So I started that program and we started off

with Robbie Answer and then we got Didier Andre.

And, you know, we weren't, we weren't great.

And, you know, the first few years were a struggle,

but, you know, Robbie was a great guy,

but, you know, putting all the corners together

every time is a tough program, you know.

And so, yeah, so we did that.

And then it was eventually, he gave me,

he said, we talked about getting one driver.

And he said, well, what do you want?

And so we ended up choosing, we tested Dixon.

And then he signed that very next year for,

we tested him in Sebring,

and then he tested with Johansson the day afterwards

and he signed with Johansson straight away.

Which was at the time a lights team.

Yes, a lights team.

And so we missed out on that one,

but the next year he came to us,

so their team didn't do, didn't have a great success.

So, but we could see the speed

and we thought, oh man, that's a guy to have.

So we brought him into the lights team and I had him

and then I, Tony Renner was looking for a drive.

And he didn't.

Same thing if you're playing there, no money.

And I was, so we had Didier and Didier

had a huge crash somewhere

and was just struggling to get back on top of that, you know.

And so I thought to prove to the driver,

I asked Bruce, can I get a second car going together

and go up to the test and we'll run a second car.

And I called a few drivers and they wanted money

and they wanted that and I didn't have a lot to play with.

So Tony was floating around the paddock and I asked him,

I said, would you be interested in doing that?

And he said, well, what's in it for me?

I said, all I can tell you is that if something comes up,

I will guarantee you'll be the first on my list, you know.

And he did.

So he went up there and we did the test

and we had the two teams and overnight

we had, I just swapped, just the drivers.

So just that and, you know, Didier was not happy about it.

I said, Didier, we've got to solve,

know where the problem is to solve it.

Absolutely, right, right.

And so Tony was really good, really fast.

And so I think it was my walk-in.

So we ended up running him and it was fantastic, you know.

And another little driver that I loved to death

and I hate the fact that he's no longer with us

because I would have liked to have seen

what he would have done over his job.

But yeah, so then we had Dixon

and then Dixon went to the IndyCar team

and won his first race in Nazareth.

And so it was a great learning experience for me

because I didn't know, you know,

I'd always been hands-on mechanic-wise

and then you got to deal with, you know,

whether it's drivers, engineers, money,

the whole things that have been revolved around it.

So, but yeah, it taught me a lot

and I have nothing but good to say

about Bruce McCall for giving me the charts.

Still talked to this day.

Say the fact that he was offering to fly your family,

you know, around to make it easy.

Like that's an unheard of thing in a lot of cases.

Exactly.

I don't know what he was thinking, to be honest with you.

Yeah, sweet man.

Yeah, he was the guy that gave me the ability or the chance.

But then it's like I tell anyone else, you know,

he says, you've still got to prove yourself after that.

He can lose that job.

Yeah, that's right.

You can easily talk yourself out of that.

Exactly, right.

To me, for a lights team to go into management

from having been like a chief mechanic or a car chief,

I feel like that's probably a good transition

because I can't imagine a lights team manager

is completely hands off.

I assume you're still having to do some hands on work

and it's kind of a good hybrid.

Yeah, no, it's a, it was definitely,

it's a fantastic transition

because you're dealing with a lot smaller group of people

and that group of people is actually,

they're all doing the same thing,

but you're also bringing in youngsters

and ones that have to learn.

So yeah, it was, I would say it was mostly 40% hands on

and 60% of doing the other stuff, you know?

But it taught me a huge amount of what to do

and dealing with people, I'm not sure

I'm the best to deal with people,

but I think the biggest thing, I say what I feel

and I'm okay with that.

I'm the same with other people

if they tell me what they want or need.

How, I mean, we obviously know Scott Dixon today,

but in that lights, I mean, he kicked ass that light season,

but how obvious to you was that he was going to be

what he is now?

Yeah, it's funny because you looked at him

when he first came, he was a chubby cheeked

and you know, round on, not overweight,

but you just wasn't what you see today.

And, but yeah, it was one of those ones you came in

and you thought, man, that guy's got speed.

And one of the funny things was like Renner on that

when I remember we'd go testing or we'd go to a track

and he could never understand how Dixon would go out

on his first, second lap, first, and he's just right there,

you know, and you know, so you could see that straight away

and as a team, you know, the PacWest lights team

at the time, we were still, you know,

weren't as good as some of the established teams

and so you saw that man, we're right in the battle right now

and so we started to do things better as well.

You know, other teams would be dynoing engines.

We didn't do that because they're all supposed

to be within the same range.

But I think once we started dynoing,

we started to realize that wasn't whether they were

lacking horsepower, it was how they got to that horsepower.

I see.

Yeah, but so he did a fantastic job for us

and our crew back then, we had one of the guys,

Tony Halck, that works with him now still.

He's over there and we've got Blair Julian,

who's came over and worked for us then

and his brother Anton

and he's team manager at Wayne Taylor now.

So we had a really good little crew

and which is important, you know,

we had a great time together

and they worked hard, played hard, you know.

Yeah, the rumor is that PacWest might have been

the greatest partying team in that era

developing a racing.

We certainly had, we were the first ones to really,

we had a huge hospitality unit

and they used to have, you know,

when we had Guzman there, we had Caipirino's

like every Friday night that have those press

and drinking.

Kiwi Capirino story.

Yeah, so it would have that.

So they definitely, they used the,

used it for their sponsors and guests and all the rest

and it was well done.

And then of course then, you know, our post racer,

if you had a good race, then it'd become team party

because we weren't flying out that night anyway.

So it was, yeah, it was definitely a lot of fun

and Bruce used to take us.

He had a place up in north of Seattle

and oh my God, he had the whole team

and sponsors that there.

I think it was for two or three years in a row.

You know, he had his own golf course on the property,

he had his own go-kart track

and it was fantastic.

I mean, you look at that and you go,

we'd go there and Sunday night we'd come down

from Vancouver race and we'd get down there

and Sunday night was just nothing but a huge party.

If you could survive that, you could survive

the next two days of this place.

But we'd go down there, have that there

and then Saturday or the, sorry,

Monday would be go-karting and all the rest of it

and I think that we got up to about three ambulance visits

one time and I think it sort of stopped after that.

Yeah, lose a crew.

Yeah, exactly, because we'd go straight to,

I think we'd go straight to Laguna Saker

or something like that, I remember.

Right, yeah.

Steve Garf has a one of a kind story

where by accident because of a rain delay,

he serviced one of the Ganassi cars,

a little bit tipsy.

Was there anything that bad on your end?

No, I don't, I mean, usually it was pretty good.

I did have, on another team I was working on

and Kelly Racine and we did have one time there

where the guys had gone out on Saturday night

for dinner and drinks and fine, great, you know.

And somehow they met up with O.J. Simpson.

Whoa!

What?

It's the first O.J.

Yeah, it's the first O.J. story, 10 years.

They met up with O.J. Simpson and they stayed.

Like he was there by accident or somebody was like,

oh, I know O.J., let's meet him up.

No, they were at some, like in Coconut Grove having,

it was must have been the race at Homestead.

Homestead, yeah.

And yeah, so they were doing that and it turned out

that they met him and then it turned into a big night

and so the next morning when we're heading to the racetrack

waiting for the guys downstairs and two or three of them

did not show.

Yeah, so two of them were put on a plane and sent home.

So, yeah.

So we do, you know.

O.J.B. Damned.

Yeah.

Tail lights.

Tail lights, exactly.

It was not a happy camper.

But, you know, there was a couple of others

that were out there and they had been out

and they came in and they did their job

and they were sweating bullets,

but it was, you know, they did what they needed to do

and that's one of the things.

You got to teach the guys, you know, choose your moment.

You know, if you spend all this time

and effort getting the car ready for a race

and then you throw it away because you go out

drinking to the early hours of the morning,

you can't do a pit stop or you screw up a pit stop

and, you know, it's not good for anyone.

Sponsors, teams, owners, nothing.

So, it's, yeah, choose your time.

So at what point in this process does the annual

carb day party start with you and your wife, Nicky?

We cancelled that.

Finally had to cancel.

It just got to the point where it was...

Getting out of hand?

Oh, it was huge.

And it started off with doing basically

20, 30 people over and then...

When did this start?

I don't remember the first time it started,

but it started because back then

we had carb day was Thursday.

So Friday was pretty much a day off

and all the rest and where it got cancelled

was finally because when they moved it to Friday

and then I was...

Don't get me wrong, Saturday's normally a...

It's not a bad day.

I'd go in and make sure that the tanks were filled

and everything was ready there.

But, you know, we still had people there.

You would have to kick them out of two or three in the morning.

And hell, it was...

It got to the point where there was times

I looked out there and there was stuff happening

in cars in my driveway that I thought, oh, my.

So...

Called the wife and said, it's a successful party.

Look at this.

Get out here.

Yeah, so I mean, it was good.

So it started off and my wife did 90% of the work.

Was this 30 years ago, 20 years ago?

No, it was mostly 20...

We must say it started 20, 25 years ago

and it went for a good 10 years or so

and it was once they moved it was the thing.

So I don't know what year we moved there,

but it was, yeah, I must say 20 years ago.

How many people are shown up for this thing?

Hundreds.

Okay.

Oh, wow.

It got to the end of the point there.

Because it started off as just a driveway party

and then nixing the backyards that were decorating

all of that and then I've got pop-up tents

all down the driveway.

Budgeting for it.

Yeah, right.

The food trucks start showing up.

I live in Speedway,

so the parking's not the greatest

and all my neighbors, they loved it so much.

They're like, oh, they can park in our driveway.

They could do this and it was good.

So I think the biggest you had at one time

must be 150 people at the one time,

but it was one of those ones that people would come in

and start drinking.

And I mean, one year we had a driver,

not to be named, that had come there.

Can we bleep it out for you?

Can you tell us and we'll bleep it?

Oh, okay.

Having his wife came.

Okay, yeah.

And he was just,

he just started and was at that time.

I think it was.

So he had come and he...

Got it received.

He too, what times it start?

And I said, well, pretty much it starts

when people leave the track.

And I says that I usually don't get this late o'clock

at night or something like that

by the time we get done and the rest of it.

And so my wife rides her heads over from the track

and they're sitting in the driveway.

So they start having a few drinks

and my wife's got yellow shots going around

and God knows what.

So they're there.

So this carries on for quite a while.

People are coming.

It's good fun.

We're all telling stories and lies.

And then she, then finally he goes, oh, crap.

I go, what?

He goes, I've got to go.

I go, what are you going to go?

He goes, Firestone dinner.

So a good friend of ours, Darla,

who worked for Firestone and did all,

took care of all of that.

She would come to all the parties as well

when she'd finished the night.

And so she rolls up around 11 o'clock or so.

And we go, how was the party?

She goes, it was really good.

She says one driver didn't show up

and he looked at her so he was drunk.

Then she looks at my face.

She goes, was he here?

I go, yes, he was.

So yeah, so it was good.

She used to come in.

It just became a lot like all the mechanics

and everyone and friends.

And now we pretty much do it.

We'll have a deal on.

We just have people over.

My wife and the whole group of friends

go to the carb day party.

My daughter loves it.

She goes over there now with her fiance.

And so it's one of those ones you come and go.

I should please not even on Sunday night post race.

We'll have now we just have people come over.

We have beers and stuff like that.

If they think, but if you do well,

then you it's going to be late and it's bloody.

You know, you've got tech.

And by the time I get there, it's you're worn out.

And yeah, so it's still,

we still have a little get together,

but the party we had to,

old age might have some.

Just in case.

But as team manager, it's conceivable now.

You could hire a 19 or 20 year old mechanic

that is a product of your party.

Yeah, absolutely.

There is no doubt on that.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it was good fun and I enjoyed it.

And I keep thinking when I ever do decide

to call it quits in this business,

I'll have one big one.

Shortly after this,

you ended up working for champ car internally.

Yes.

So Tony Cotman.

Yeah.

Once again, another Kiwi.

Yeah, right.

So Tony had, he called me

and asked me whether I'd be interested in going over there.

And so I decided it was time for a change.

Yeah.

And so I thought I'd give it a run.

So I went over there and it was definitely different

the first year because I'd never had a regular job.

You know, when we sort of.

It's regular as it gets, yeah.

It's regular as it gets for us

because on a race team, you know,

it was always up and down, up and down.

Right.

And whereas there, it's sort of,

you have your moments up and down,

but it's sort of like during the week,

you're not in a panic.

You're just making sure you've got everything set

for the next week or two.

So he offered me that job.

And I jumped on board and said,

yeah, I'll give it a shot.

And it was, I think I did it two years or so.

And then the series was starting to go through its issues.

So that's when I moved over to,

I think I went to, I went here to Andretti.

But yeah, I mean, it was a fantastic deal.

I went across to, we'd go to all events

and he flew me across to Europe to do,

we were running a car in Holland

at this event here that's to promote the IndyCar race

or the Champ Car race I'm going to have up there.

So it flew across there and then I went down to

Belgium and looked at the track there for them.

And it was good.

I really enjoyed it.

It was a much better deal.

And so we did that.

And then the, you know,

it was, I really enjoyed that event.

I flew across there, stayed there for health

right through the three weeks or so.

And enjoyed it.

We ran the car through the streets of Rotterdam

around at this event up there.

So you had a little bit of everything to do there.

And you know, it was really good.

Yeah, not just, you know, going through tack,

you're actually helping with events and stuff.

Yeah.

It was definitely a change where you're

trying to catch people cheating.

And instead of, you know, trying to bend the rules,

you're actually trying to see if they've bent the rules too far.

Yeah.

And one of the things I read you said was the fact

that you didn't have the ups and downs of being competitive

or not competitive.

It kind of changed the way your life was because you

didn't have that stress as much as you would in the past.

And that is very true.

You know, I would say that my wife and daughter

loved it as well because it does.

It takes away that you have going on.

And then the, you know, I like the fact that, you know,

I could, my daughter was young at the time.

Right.

And so I could drop her off at school,

which I never had the opportunity to do.

Yeah, you could be normal.

Uh-huh.

So it was more a fact of that you could have a decent life.

I could leave work and run and go and see something.

Right.

You know, and like Tony, his thing to me was,

you run the program, just keep me informed of what you do

and make sure we stay on track with what we've got.

So yeah, I was working with him.

It was a hot group.

It was Billy Campbell's and Brian Hughes,

another guy that they were then,

they're still all involved.

Brian's doing the SRO series now.

Yeah, he's our Chief Steward for a while.

Yep, nice guy.

So you're a good group of guys.

Yeah, the traditional one-liner we've been getting

whenever the hire and insider to go be the tech guy

is you want to get the guy that knows all the cheats.

Is that accurate here with you?

I would say yes, in the sense that,

not all the cheats, but back,

especially back in the day when everyone had different cars,

you know, you were searching for that thing.

And gray air has always been something that you,

you know, how gray is it?

And one of the things I liked back then, though,

was the rule book was pretty solid.

And so you knew what you could do within that rule books.

And there was times that, you know, there were people

outside or with cars were underweight or whatever that.

And so my biggest thing really was the,

I didn't want to catch people in gray areas.

If I thought it was a gray area,

I would go and tell, not tell the team or I'd ask them,

say, hey, do you think if someone was doing this,

you know, so that they knew,

I'm going to be looking for this, so you better not be doing it.

Yeah, yeah.

How am I going to give you a chance to save yourself?

Yeah, exactly.

Or it gets real bad.

But that's what you want.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean, I still think that you've got to have some,

you know, form of sensibility of, you know, what teams can,

you know, I still think when you look at a team back then,

when you had a team that didn't have a lot of people,

it didn't have a lot of money,

and you know, the things were not right, you're thinking,

is that because they're pushing the rules,

or is that because they just don't have the time

to do it properly?

And you know, if that happens,

then I would say to those guys, just remember,

this will not happen again.

If this happens again,

you've already got your free chance on that one there,

you know, if they're close on something.

Right, right.

Don't push your luck.

Do you have any cheats that stand out from that,

from that time?

Do you find anything that you were like,

oh, that's pretty good?

There was people that would fuel, you know,

if they were doing stuff,

and they were, we had a team that,

we have pumps that pump out the fuel

back into the tank after it flowed up,

and normally a team has one of those,

and a team that I was looking out,

they had three of them,

and basically that pumping was to suck a,

so that the fuel would flow faster, you know,

and their answer to me was that,

well, we need, what happens if one breaks us,

what happens if two breaks?

You get all of that.

So they were made to do that,

but, you know, we'd do things,

I'd fly out to, we had teams in Colorado

and out in California,

and say, I would fly unannounced,

because I had the ability to be able to get them

to any team at any time,

and you'd go out there,

and you could see what they were doing.

Oh, so you were allowed.

Just show up on an L?

Just show up at a shop?

Yep, yep.

That's not happening in our sport.

No, that is amazing.

It's amazing.

So like you mentioned Colorado,

or like, yeah, wow.

We had one of the teams that came with a front wing

that they had seriously modified,

and they said that they didn't want to bring it to tech,

and I said, well, why was that?

Because back then, you didn't have to go to tech.

You just had to pass tech.

Right, yeah.

So they didn't want to bring it down,

and so I said to them, here's the deal.

If you don't bring it to tech,

it's going to be a problem.

If there's anything wrong with it at all,

you are going to be disqualified.

Yeah, I thought that's on you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, I had a dream.

And I was back down with the wings at the time.

Like, were they very excited?

No, you could back then.

You know, when I started putting, like, the little

you could use rear wings and do wingwings and stuff like that.

Yeah, so they'd done something with theirs,

and so we got them through.

I said to them, how about this?

Come after the day when tech's closed,

bring it down and run it through and make sure that we're good.

They brought it down.

Well, one of the things they hadn't done properly was the,

we had a pull down that you'd put some pins in the front wing

and you pulled them down.

See if it moved.

Yeah, and you could not move more than 50 to 100 thou.

And theirs moved about 300 thou.

Yeah, yeah, it is.

And by the time they'd finished making it,

there was a pass tech.

It didn't run it.

It just wasn't going to pass tech.

But you're trying to prevent a headlight.

Correct.

Because if you cue them, it's bad for everybody.

Yeah, and back then you also had,

you know, there was lawyers involved.

People would, if you took someone out that,

you know, that fight it and it just become issues.

So to me, any time you can get away from having that,

is a much better program.

Was it straight from champ car to Andrade Green?

It was.

So I was, actually it all started when we were down on a test

in Sebring, and Indycar had it,

IRL or whatever it was at that time.

They had the track before us,

and Kyle and Roy was with Andrade.

We had our traveling hospital that we had at champ car.

And it was going to be an open test.

And I think if I remember right,

we're going to do like two days for the big teams

and the Atlantic teams are going to run.

So we're going to be down there for a bit.

So I asked him after their test had finished,

you know, there's two or three hours work

of the guys getting packed up and loaded and gone away.

So I asked him if I could take the hospital truck

and get that, it was, we're parking right down there

on the out of everyone's way,

but I could run down Pit Lane to start on that

because there was a bit of work on that.

Yeah, we could do that.

And he, we were just chatting.

I asked him about, I said,

well, who have you got to replace John Anderson?

And he said, well, we're looking at two or three guys

within the team.

And you know, I said, that's fantastic.

So I definitely agree that you've got to show your team

that you're looking at them.

And I said, we just chatted and we were just,

I was Kyle's best man at his wedding,

which I showed up late for about 20 minutes,

but that's not a story.

And so yeah, so we were just chatting

and then we come back here next a week later

and he calls me and says,

can you come on over to the shop and just meet with him?

So I asked, I thought, yep, I can do that.

So I said, let's do it after everyone's gone.

So that, you know, because I still had a job that was okay.

And so I rolled over there and I go upstairs

and there's him, Kevin Savry, Kim Green, Michael,

sitting there, I felt as though I was on a firing squad.

Yeah, right, right.

So we sat down and we just discussed what they were looking for.

And like he said, he goes, he said, the guys we have

that we're looking at are not quite ready for that.

He said, we'd like to, you know, talk, so we talked

and then they, Savry called me back a couple of days later,

said we'd like to come on board.

So that's how that all came about.

So then I left the champ car side of it, went over there.

Why was that more appealing?

Champ car, I could definitely see there was some issues there,

money, yeah, money.

It was the money, I think it was just,

the writing was on the wall there.

It was good, you know, good solid team.

And then Michael took it over.

And so it's just transitioned through the different changes.

But good team, they were very successful back then.

So I enjoyed it and decided, okay, this is where I'd like to be.

And I've had a couple of offers outside of what we're doing here.

But I like, I want to finish my career here.

I mean, I think if things change here,

then I'd be good to go and do something part-time.

I help, you know, when Prima were looking, you know,

I spoke to them up there, they called me and said,

hey, if you're retired, can you, would you be interested?

And I said, I'm not interested in,

I said, I'm still not retired.

I just decided I was going to try and step down.

And so I spoke to them up there and I said,

I'll be quite content if you've got a team manager.

I could come in and help for the first two stuff to help you

to take over certain parts because they did a hell of a job

with what they had on their plate to, you know, to make it.

So, yeah, so I said, but yes, I'm not retired.

So not interested.

But yeah, so I think if I, if I just went away,

then I'd love to do something with it, you know,

help someone in themselves or do something there.

But I'm not prepared to sit on my ass at home

and not do anything, you know.

So you first take this role with Andrew Reddy

after, after departing champ car.

How much would you say that role has changed

over the last 17 years?

I would say that it hasn't changed that much.

You know, we have, it changed, you know, Kyle left

and went down to Penske.

Really, Rob Edwards came in to run the team

and fantastic choice.

He does a great job for us because he's,

he's got the engineering mind, but he's also

the management mind as well.

He understands people.

He understands people a lot better than some of the engineers.

Do they look about it as, you know, they,

they figure stuff out.

They just don't do that thing very well.

I understand completely.

Yeah.

So he, so Rob came in and did that.

And so, you know, my side of it with where we're going,

what we're doing and who's going to do it.

So I'm never liked by everyone.

Like by about 50% of the people on a good day.

That's a good number.

But that's a good number.

I'm okay with that.

Eventually you, and this is very common.

Like we spoke with Barry Wanzer, I think last year.

Eventually he hit a point where with everything he was doing,

they put him on the box and sort of said,

we're going to put you on the radio and make you sort of a strategist.

And a strategist can vary from team to team.

It's true in Institute.

In many ways he's sort of a coordinator on strategy.

Like he's got his opinions, but there's engineers saying this

and fuel guys saying this.

And he's the one that's there to sort of put it all out there

for the driver.

Is this similar to how it's worked out for you?

100%, you know, I mean, even though you're making the calls

and I don't do that anymore.

My last, actually, my last year of doing that was actually

with Sato and he won the 500.

Well, you did okay.

Yeah.

So a good way to step out the door.

And so, yeah, but, you know, you've got your, you've got your fuel guy.

He's feeding you information all the time of where you are on fuel

and what sort of the guy calculating.

Calculating.

Sorry, not the guys over the wall and the engineer.

And, you know, they look at different things than you do.

They're looking at how the cars are operating

and you're looking to see where you're going to,

where you can fit, where you can, what you can do,

how you're going to pass these people, you know, the gaps.

So there's a lot to it and, but yeah, it's definitely,

people think the strategist is one person.

There's not, it's a group of you to make it happen.

And we have, you know, the intercoms now where everyone,

we've gone sort of along the lines of the F1

where you can have everything blocked out

and if you can just talk to one person,

you can, you know, the strategist Rob can talk to

the fuel guy and say, hey, where are we on fuel?

How many laps we've got to go?

And he'll tell you, he says, we can make it to lap 27 right now.

We can make it to 28 if we go to this fuel number

and we'll pit with a 10th of a gallon of fuel in the car

or, I mean, we cut it that close.

So you've got that, you've got the engineer saying,

you know, Brian Herter, who does the strategy

on Carl Kupitz, does a fantastic job, you know.

And one of the things I love about him is that he'll,

he'll, Jeremy Millis is the engineer

and Brian will have his decision and he'll say it.

And sometimes it's like, wow, that's a, you know,

is that risky or is that, but he'll say,

this is what I'm thinking, talk me out of it.

And fully get that.

I love that because it's, he's made the decision

what you want that person to make,

but he's quite prepared to listen for you to say,

no, we shouldn't do that or here's the downside of it,

which, you know, when there's so much stuff going on,

you may not remember everything.

I like that a lot.

So that part of it, it's a tough job

and there's more, I mean, studying what teams have done before

and how the race works out and tires, you know,

we do a huge amount now with tire management.

That's half the deal.

And so, you know, how are we going to make them last

between the tire management and fuel

and all the rest of it is how you,

how am I going to beat these other guys?

So when you're the guy on the box

and Sato wins the 500.

Yeah.

Does that have a different meaning?

Oh my, it was, that is the, this was 17.

Yeah.

The highlight of my career in the way,

because you look at it and they go,

okay, I've been lucky enough to be involved in other wins before

and I do have, I think I got five rings,

but you look at that and you go,

that's the one where you've put everything on the line

and, you know, his spotter, he's a big part of,

we had Roger Hasakawa, who, fantastic guy and he was,

you know, you look at all those pieces that made that happen

and I will tell you, I think I was so unbelievably happy

because I thought that Sato had made the move too early.

Oh, that you're going to get, yeah.

And when we did win it, I was just like, oh my God,

you know, he made the move and he got passed,

and he got passed back again to take the win.

I thought that's, you just don't beat that feeling.

And so, I mean, I love that.

And I had my family and your kids down there,

it's for the winning thing.

And so it was, you know, it was good with there

with Al Jr. and Sullivan.

So those guys, but you look at that and you go,

that's, and Sato, you can't meet,

he is such a pleasant person, you know.

And I remember like his engineer at the time,

Garrett Mothershead, Garrett was there on on car day.

We tried to talk.

He, you know, he thought that we were slow,

because Sato did.

And so we went out and he's like,

no, cars too slow, cars too slow.

And we were like P14.

I don't know what it was, but we go back

and we actually changed the setup

and got to a lower downforce setup.

And then went out and realized, you know,

Sato went out and he comes in,

he's just doing the old hand thing of like, oh, you know,

and way on the edge.

And so we went back to where we were,

which was good because he actually,

Garrett made the decision to actually, you know,

at least show him why we're going that way.

And it turned out good.

Were we the fastest car there?

No, but we had a good car.

And we knew that we were going to be in the hunt.

And that was the thing is,

you've got to be in the hunt to be there at the end.

And I'm like the most fearless driver of all drivers.

No attack, no chance.

You say your time's not done yet.

What's going to be the sign that you know you're done?

I think the team will,

when the team decide they want to change or, you know,

I think with our new ownership now,

there's the pressure on to succeed,

which I think that's the right thing to do.

You always want to have it

so that you're making sure that everyone gets what they want.

I think there's, you know, they'll make it,

I think it's something like a big thing.

I say, okay, maybe it's, when they took me on strategy,

this is again, it's time for someone young to come in and do it.

And I agree, you know, it's, yep,

you've got to keep looking for the forward, you know,

same with us, you know, whether it's,

you're bringing in young people,

you need to teach people gearboxes.

You need to teach this so that they,

when something does change,

if someone decides to leave or get out of it,

then you've got people in place.

So I think that for myself, I would like,

I still love the travel part of it.

I think it's not the travel.

I think that the races, that's where I see

that all the pieces have fallen into place if you do well, you know.

Yeah, and I like that.

Some guys don't, for me, that's, you know,

I think if they said to me,

you're going to be shop-based and do this.

Yeah, you know, I'm not sure that'd be what I want to do.

So yeah, I could see me, you know,

maybe a year or two and just saying,

whether it's done completely,

I'd like to not be done completely.

I'd like to, if they want to step down and say,

hey, how about doing this for us, running this or doing that,

then maybe that's an area that I look at.

Yeah.

Does the hiring process go through you for mechanics?

Pretty much, yeah.

What's some of the things you're looking for,

because we have a lot of people coming out of, like,

Formula SAE programs and college kids that have used this show

to, like, kind of learn how to get involved.

What's a guy like you looking for out of a young person in racing?

It's funny you say that,

because they actually had a job fair at the Speedway yesterday

and our HR girl Carrie was over there

and I asked her this morning how to go

and she goes, really, nothing really for you, Ziggy.

It's more, there was a lot of engineering,

so you're getting a lot more young people

in the engineering side looking at it.

Truck drivers are still a problem to get

because, yeah, there's still enough.

I think when you look at it,

a truck driver's not a truck driver.

They drive the truck for 40,000 miles a year,

but they do very little in the off season,

but the race tracks are busy doing tires

and doing pit setups, so there's a lot there.

So not a lot there.

We're starting to see a little bit more of young guys,

but I'm looking for, when they come in,

I want to see what they've done as far as,

you know, if they're sitting in front of TVs

and doing stuff and that doesn't show me.

If I see them, you know,

and they don't have to be working in a garage

or doing anything like that.

I want to see that they are a hands on type people person.

I want to see personality, work ethic.

You know, if they're sitting in there

and they've got the phone in front of them,

flipping through the phone all the time while we're talking,

I'm thinking, that's the same guy

I'm going to have to yell at the race track, you know.

So I think that it's really, you know,

I want to see that the biggest thing is that

they know how to do some mechanical.

What we do, it's not super, super difficult.

It's more, you know, it's doing it in a timely manner,

quickly under pressure, you know,

and doing all that stuff.

That's what you want to see

and how they get on with people is a huge part of that.

So I think that there's those whole group of things

that I look at and then once I decide a guy's worth looking at,

I'll get with Josh and Rolando

and then I'll go to Rob after that and say,

hey, I've got a young guy here that's worth looking at

and I'll bring him in again to meet him there.

But yeah, it's really, my whole thing is really

getting a feeling from the guy and enthusiasm.

I mean, there's some guys that are very enthusiastic,

but you know, they just don't have the background

to do what we do.

And there's other guys that come in

and they're afraid of, you know,

they go, oh, big time Indica race and blah, blah, blah.

We have a truck driver now is fantastic

that he came in, worked for one day and quit.

I spent an hour on the phone that night telling him,

no, you're really good at this job.

You need to come back and do it.

Oh, he quit just because he had the imposter syndrome.

He, yes.

He thought it was, you know, big time motivation or whatever,

but it wasn't.

It's just like, it's just, it's a job.

It's a job you can learn.

Yeah, you can learn it and you'll enjoy it.

If yours has a CDL, he's farther ahead

than most people that want to be Linux that show up.

Let me tell you, I drove the truck for a few years

when I was young as well because I'd mechanic

and drive the truck until I finally took all the wheels

off one side of it.

They knew that.

Better stay on the mechanical side of it.

So what I just heard is you don't want to drive the truck.

Wreck it.

That's exactly what worked for me.

But to Ryan's point, like if I'm 22 years old

and I want to be a mechanic, when I give you that resume

or when I'm in your office to be interviewed,

how am I going to lose you?

Yeah, the biggest thing I think there is,

when I look at the resume is one thing,

but when I start talking to you is

that's when you'll lose you.

I've had people talk themselves out of a job.

I'm sure.

What do they do?

How do you talk yourself out?

You talk yourself out by really attitude

and if I ask you something,

I'll walk them around the facility

and show them the cars and say,

and you'll have guys there and they'll say,

oh yeah, no, I've done,

I've got my own little jukeboy eraser that I have

and I put those turbos on it or whatever.

So you see that they're doing that

if they're very quiet and very standoffish

in a way where you get one word answers from the thing

when you talk to them, hey, what have you done there?

Why have you do that?

When did you go to school?

What did you take there?

But if they've come through the schools

and we've got a brand new school started in town here

that when I first met with them a couple of years ago

and they wanted to do that,

they told me that they do a thing in Monza, I think it is.

It's an Italian school and they have started one over here

but I'm interviewing some people from there

because it's the same thing.

Like a racing mechanic school?

It's a racing mechanic school, you know,

and we're trying to give them like used parts,

parts that are mileageed out so that they,

you can still take an upright that we don't use

and still it teaches them how to do the basics of what we do.

So yeah, so I think that the biggest thing

you can not do it by not asking the right questions

or answering correctly.

But if the resume is good

and I feel that your attitude is good,

then I go to the next step.

You've got to bring young people in because

it's got a lot of older people now

and you need both, you need both those.

The guys that are teaching, yeah,

pit stops are huge.

So anymore, that's one of the things I look at

and I'm like, man, that guy, you know,

he's got the build for it and he wants to do it.

He's young and we have, you know,

we do our pit stop workouts every day.

We've got the car and we didn't do as well

as we could have this year.

We had issues that and TV just never let it go.

So, you know, our owners are like,

what the hell's going on?

Spent a lot of money on the guns and that.

So we need to make sure that that program

is running as good as it can do.

We have a pit stop coach.

We, you know, the whole lot.

So that's another thing I have to take into account now.

So it's, yeah, so, yeah,

I'll have people that are older and you think,

well, that'd be a good mechanic, but do I have

a shop-based job that they need to do?

And the answer to that normally is no,

because you'll have the guys that have

worked in the business all their life

that want to get out of it

or want to step back from being on the road.

Yeah, they get the priority.

Yeah, so, look after them.

Last 22-year-old mechanic question,

can I tell you I don't know how to do something?

Yes.

Is it okay to say I don't know?

100%.

Yeah.

And one of my first things to when we do hire

someone that's young and like that

and I think I've brought it up before

is that trying to do things too fast to impress

or going too far too quickly.

And my thought is that, I tell the guys,

if you keep messing up,

because you're trying too hard,

you will lose your job.

You're better off to be a little bit slower

and go to your chief or pick,

you know, I always like to tell guys,

I said pick your guys and your team

that you see do the job as well

and learn from them, you know,

and go and ask and it's not the end of the world to ask.

The end of the world is just doing something without knowing it

and then screwing it up because there is no,

you know, there's no recall from that.

So, yeah, that's the biggest thing is just

when you come in, slow down, do it right, you know,

and you know, it's like do it right or do it twice.

You know, it's, yeah, yeah.

Kind of on that same realm,

what's the greatest prank you've ever seen?

I think one of the funniest things I did see,

we had a guy working for us years ago

and Michael used to bring...

Andretti?

Yeah, used to bring his kid in

and it's weird, you know, I get to work early,

I'm not a great sleeper so I get to work early

and I get in there and he's in there

and he's got his kid and his little buddy

and they're pushing each other around

on the rolling stools that I work on.

You like the little snap-on chairs?

Yeah, little snap-on chairs

and so one of the guys was completely annoyed

that it's not your chair,

you shouldn't be doing that and all the rest of it.

To Michael's kid.

Michael's kid, yeah.

To the guy that doesn't work here anymore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, the kid told him, he said that,

let me tell you this, when I run this team,

you'll be the first one gone.

But the best part of the deal was

we left to go to Japan

and so the mechanic actually

put a lock and chain around his thing

and tied it to one of the steel legs of the benches

so that the kid couldn't play with it.

So, the good part was

is that the kid came in

and he got one of the shop-based mechanics to help him.

They dismantled the chair

and then cut it up into pieces

and put it in his mailbox.

When the guy comes back, he was so mad.

Yeah, there's a lot of pranks going on.

Is there any rental car stories in your history

that we wouldn't be surprised to learn about?

I know that we got banned from Hurts

in the team many years ago,

so he might have rolled a car.

Wait, wait, wait.

That's a big deal.

That's what we did roll the car by the way.

That's not like how we bumper.

Where was that?

It was in Phoenix.

So, rushing to try and get out of the track

and get to the aeroplane.

No, actually get to the aeroplane.

We're going home for a change.

There were a few of those

and I think we might have had another one

where we were at Big Springs, Texas

and we all had rental cars

and it'd been raining.

Pre-season, cold as hell.

We're trying to get the track dry

so we could get out and run.

And it was dry enough that we couldn't run

and wet tires, so it was one of those.

So we also took our rental cars out there

and one of the guys planted

one of the huge tractor tires.

And the last I saw, they had a chain

and they were backing the car up at a higher rate of speed

to try and straighten out the frame.

But that was many moons ago

and now the guy's getting into trouble

if they damage any rental cars

because we pay for it and do it.

So we actually make them

take photos of their car

if there's damage when they get it.

You guys really ruined it.

That's on you.

You're the man here.

You're the problem.

You say we're not part of like we used to.

It's because of you.

Well, you're not wrong there.

Speaking of old cars,

we have an anonymous source

who wants to know if you ever finished your E-Type.

Oh yeah, the E-Type had it out here.

It's been running.

What's that?

Got a widowmaker?

Oh yeah, I love that car.

I mean, I bought that car.

That's another story that is just fantastic.

I was so lucky.

I was living in Los Angeles there

working for Garvin Brown and this lady.

She had some roofing problems on the roof.

And I said, well, I know how to do that.

Let me come and have a look at it for you.

And she ran a fish store that I used to buy my

I had 160 gallon tank.

And I just overheard her talking.

She said, well, let me look at it for you.

And if it is, I can fix it

and you can give me the fish as the thing.

So I go down there.

Fish broker?

Yeah, fish broker.

Wow.

And roofer.

Yeah, got down there.

I said, listen, don't pay so.

When I saw fix it, it was like an hour or so job.

So I fixed it for her.

And I was up there.

I looked at the back of her property

and I could see a car

and I thought it was a,

it was undercover in a carport.

And I says, is that a 240Z

or something you got back there?

And she goes, no, it's a Jagged.

So I went back to have a look at it

and I just had a quick look.

And I says, are you interested in selling it?

She goes, no, my husband gave it to me.

It's a wedding present.

And he had passed away.

So she says, I'm going to keep it.

And I said, I love those things since I kid.

I said, have you ever decided to sell it?

Let me know.

And I get a call about four years later

and I only had briefly looked at the car.

She says, I want to sell it.

I go, how much do you want for it?

She goes, it's 35 too much.

And I thought, oh, that's a little high for 35,000.

And I go, that's a little on the high side at that time, you know.

And she goes, how about 25,000?

2500.

Oh, God.

And I go, no, I says, you're in the wrong,

you're in the wrong park.

I says, that's, the car's worth a lot more than that.

She goes, I know.

She says, but I want someone that will love the car.

So I went and picked it up.

Wait, did you stay at 25 or did you go back to 35?

I think I stayed.

I think I gave her the 35.

I can't remember to be honest.

But I went back and picked it up in the winter.

I flew back from Albuquerque, got the car,

and I was driving back to Albuquerque

and it took me a day or two to get it running

because it just sat for 10, 15 years.

Got it down, but all the rub around the windows

was rotten, no heater, and it just snowed.

And I was going across the high desert,

and I was freezing cold.

I'd taken the seat cover off.

The sheepskin seats cover off the passenger seat,

and I had that on me.

I had every piece of clothes.

Oh, yeah, every piece of clothes in the freezing.

And I'm doing about, I don't know, 90 mile an hour

on the car shaking because everything's just bad.

Is this the hard top or soft top?

It's a hard top.

Yeah, so it wasn't too bad, but it was cold.

Still.

And so Nixon get pulled over by a policeman,

and he comes up to the car and he doesn't pull his gun,

but you can see he's looking at me as though he's going to

because he's thinking, what the hell is going on here?

So I told him, I said, hey, there's got no heater.

It's freezing cold.

I said, I got the thing.

He says, come into my car.

You can get warm while I write you a ticket.

Oh, nice.

So I go over to his car.

I said, I need to bring some paperwork with me.

So I grabbed my book, and he puts the license plate in.

Well, the lady wanted to keep her,

the license plate was me and DC, which was her husband's name.

OK, yeah.

And so she kept the license plate.

She gave me the brand new license plate

up for a brand new Cadillac or something.

So he goes, I go, hang on.

So I pulled out my piece of paper, showed the policeman.

And then he goes through about two or three more things.

And finally he just stops and goes,

do you know how illegal you are?

I go, I got a pretty good idea.

And he says, I'm going to make a deal with you.

What's that?

He says, just get the hell out of my state without speeding.

I says, we've got a deal.

So he didn't ticket me or anything.

I bought it back.

And it's been, I've had it running for decades now.

It has its moments, but I've got an old.

I've got an old BMW motorbiker, 74.

And I got an old Triumph.

I like tinkering with the old stuff.

Minds the Bonneville.

Yeah, nice.

Very cool.

Yeah, so it's my toys.

And I've got them both here.

But the Bonneville is about ready to go on the market

because at my age to try and kickstart it.

And the big thing about the, even though it's a 74 BMW,

it's got the power starter.

Nice.

So that was the other one.

So I love the Triumph and it looks really nice,

but I just can't deal with it anymore.

So that's going to go.

But the E-type is one of those ones you can only take it out.

I mean, it's summertime.

It's not fun because no air conditioning.

But spring, winter and fall, I love going out.

And I don't go too far.

I just go around any side of town or do something

and take it out and do it, run around.

But it's awesome cars.

We do a pass along question.

And last night we had dinner with Mike Lanigan,

who's a team owner.

OK, that was a look.

And I like Mike.

He's been a fantastic supporter for the thing.

Yeah.

Any idea what his question is for you?

No.

OK.

Well, he said, can I hire you?

I'm a lot nicer.

Obviously, Mike doesn't know me as well as he thinks he knows it.

Yeah.

The exact quote was, I'm a lot nicer than your current boss.

So, yeah.

That is very true.

It's funny because I think where we were down in St. Pete

a couple of years ago and the room was going around

and I was going to quit motor racing.

And Graham Rayhall was there and he asked me

whether he'd be interested in running or working

at his Rayhall performance part.

He said, do you know anyone that would be looking for a job

at their Rayhall performance part?

I said, well, it's definitely not me

because you've got to deal with people on an everyday basis

and I don't want to do it.

Yeah.

No.

So tonight we're going to have dinner with Christian Rasmussen,

who we don't know at all.

But if you could ever ask a question of him.

My question would be, how do you turn right?

So many times on a noble without crashing.

Because that race he won.

Oh my God.

I mean, I think Colton was behind him.

No, I'm on Kirkwood's car during the races.

So Kirk Rasmussen, he says, I'm following Rasmussen.

He says, I'm going to stay back a bit

because I think something's going to happen there.

Rasmussen did try for us in the lights program.

Good guy, good talent.

I think once he gets his head completely around

he'd be fantastic, you know, but he's, yeah.

There were so many times I thought, oh, he's in the wall.

He's in the wall.

Nope, made it again.

So he did a fantastic job and deserved to win that race completely.

Kyle Moyers played a pretty big role in your life, including saving it.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, he did.

Without him I would definitely wouldn't have children.

So that's a hell of a start.

Yeah.

He was the pit fire that we had there.

That was massive.

So set the scene for us.

This is Cleveland.

Cleveland.

And we were 90, I think it was.

Sure, sure.

And we were leading by 1992 and we were leading.

Well, hell yeah.

I think we had a 25 second lead.

And with Junior, we was one of those.

We'd practiced the shop and back then because you had much bigger fuel tank.

It was the most important thing was to get the fuel in.

So we're told Juniors to stop.

Doesn't matter if you're coming on an ankle.

Just once you've put your brakes on and stop, just stop because we're going in.

And so Mike Arnold, who was the fueler, he went to go in.

And I'm not sure whether the car rolled forward or he missed it a little bit.

But when he stuck it in, the probe, there was a little stream of fuel sticking out or

spritting out going to the rear of the car.

And so he decided to pull out and reset the fuel to stop that leak because he knew that

could be a fire.

So when he pulled it out, the valve stuck completely wide open.

So he went to the front of the car where I was changed to the inside front tire.

And I just got completely doused with fuel there.

And my own fault, so the morning, I think we'd had an engine change or something in

the morning, so I went back to change right before the race.

And I had my fireproof underwear on top.

And I couldn't find my bottom.

And I thought, ah, it's all right, it's just one day.

And so when he did that, I was taking my tire off and I felt the cold fuel come on

me and I thought, oh, I'm good.

And I was good until the wheel fell off.

And then it ignited and it pretty much burnt all the side of my face.

And we'll just go with private parts.

Back of the legs and God knows what.

But where Kyle came in, he was with Entredi and the team, they were right in front of us.

And he saw the initial, the squirting of the fuel.

Like the fuel line.

He saw that.

And typical Kyle, he thinks ahead.

And so he thought, oh, I'll walk back just in case they have a fire and he grabbed the bucket of water.

So when I caught on fire, I didn't know what I was doing.

I just started running and I ran right past him and he nailed me with the water.

So otherwise it would have been a lot worse.

So yeah, he was a life saviour.

And for a guy that I stood him up on his wedding where I didn't show up on time.

And his wife still works for us.

Tracy does the travel for us.

And they still bring it up time.

Remember that time?

Yeah, I do.

I got it.

But you left out a critical part of that story with the wedding.

Why were you there?

I had, once again, we went to Vegas.

So we had the night out before.

They ruined the night out.

And I got up in the morning and we're staying at the hotel and I'm walking along.

And I thought, I'm just going to go for a, I love to walk around.

And he said, here we go.

For me, I love to walk around, have a look.

So I was walking around in the morning and I see one of the girls that worked for the team.

And I see her walking across the lobby of a hotel.

You know, half a mile or so away from our thing.

And so I don't wonder where she's going.

She's all dressed up.

So I shut down and says, where are you off to?

She goes, I'm off to Carl's wedding.

I go, it's not till four o'clock.

It was like two o'clock or something like that.

She goes, Ziggy, it's two o'clock.

And I go, I'm the best man.

I know what time the wedding is.

She goes, pulls out their thing.

I go, oh crap.

Oh wow.

So I ran, I mean, ran back to the hotel.

It was, and I arrived there.

20 minutes late and they're all laughing at me.

And I was like, oh my God.

And so they, I don't know how they even, or why they even stayed friends with me for that time.

But yeah, it was a bad day for me.

Just completely lost the time.

You won the Robin Miller award a couple of years ago.

Yes.

What does that mean to you?

Huge.

It's, it, I think the two things, I love Robin because of his passion for motorsports.

And, you know, he said it, how he felt it.

And I had no idea because I, the team set me up completely on that one.

They, I got an email saying, hey, or saying that there was something going on on the morning car.

I think it was car day.

Just to give a little bit of context, the Robin Miller award is, is sort of a person who contributes to the community

award they put out every year in Robin's honor.

But it's normally not for people on the competition side of the sport.

It's normally for journalists or marketing people.

T.E. Mikhail had won one a few years ago.

Yeah.

And so you were the first sort of competition-oriented person that they had nominated.

But I'm sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, correct.

And so, yeah, that's why I had no idea, you know, and, and so they tell me that, hey, Zigg, can you handle this?

It's up in the tower on this morning.

So I thought, okay, I'll go, sorry, right back.

Yes, I'll do it.

And then I, I get up there, they take me up there to, it was a group of people that I was supposed to show or do something with.

And I get up there and I walk in and I see about half of my mechanics on the team,

chiefs and all the rest of us standing there and I think, and all I could think was,

what are they doing?

They need to be working.

I didn't schedule this.

All fired.

The clue.

Yeah.

And then I saw like, oh my God.

So then I get there and I start looking around.

I see my wife and then my son lives.

Like you have a son.

It's an infinite.

My wife's there.

My son from Albuquerque had flown in.

So yeah, completely caught me off.

And I mean, it's a fantastic, you know, recommendation of what you've done during your life.

And I always think to myself that, you know, I want to do well at what I do and I want to work hard to get there.

And I think that's what Robin did, you know.

So do I think that on the, should have been the first one to deserve it and as a mechanic on the mechanic side,

mostly not, but it was a fantastic thing.

And, you know, with his sister and that, I mean, I spent a lot of time with Robin.

And, you know, it was very sad to see him go.

But yeah, it was, that was about as good of a reward as you can get really to be honest with you for me.

So very pleased.

Did he have a nickname for you?

Outside of Ziggy?

He called me a lot of things.

He called us slap.

Yeah, he did.

Every time I saw him, there was another name that came up there.

But, you know, he was very good for the sport.

And the, you know, what he, I like the fact that I said before, what he said was he didn't hold back.

He just said what he thought needed to be said.

And if it created controversy, well, sometimes that's worthwhile.

Wait, so if that's your first reaction, looking at the mechanics, I'm guessing there's an angry side to you.

What's the trigger?

What's the thing that as a mechanic, or just as a part of the team, I can say that I'm going to see the other, the guy that's not sitting here now.

If what really gets my goat is when people lie or not, they don't take responsibility for what they do.

You know, I'm okay with when people make mistake if they want to go to the next thing.

And age has helped me on that because I remember years ago, I ripped into a guy in Petlane in Japan.

And guys, still a good friend of mine.

But we had an issue the day before we couldn't get an adjustment that we needed and it was supposed to be done overnight.

It wasn't. And I lost my call.

And that was funny because I had 10, 20 people tell me that was not right.

And they were correct.

You know, I needed to get my act together.

And I've never forgotten that because that was, I think, the one that taught me that there's two ways to handle it and the proper way is to do it.

You know, sit down with the guy and say, why did we get to that position when it was on the list last night?

It didn't happen. Why is that thing?

And then you figure it out and you go for it because the guy was a good mechanic.

And it was just one of those things that, you know, whether it's time zones or whatever,

you're on the other side of the world and just missed it.

So yeah, but really the biggest thing is people not telling me the truth or hiding stuff in motivation is not a good thing.

You know, you need to step up and do it.

And if something goes wrong or if you do something wrong or if you think, I mean, I've done it.

I've had issues and forgot things and missed things.

But, you know, at least, you know, put your hand up and say this is me.

All the drivers you've worked with because it is a roster of the who's who,

not necessarily who is the best, but who did you click with the most?

I would, I mean, I think I'd have to say El Jr. on that.

You know, I think that, you know, I was lucky enough with it.

We had a long run together that makes it better.

And being on the team that was based out of Albuquerque, it was, you know,

that was even when we were home, we were together.

You know, I look at, you know, Dixon is always funny.

He's still the same guy I knew when I met him, you know, decades ago.

And he's, I really like Scott.

I like the fact that he's the same thing.

He's just the same Scott that you knew many years ago.

You know, you look at here on this team, the drivers are always gone.

You know, I mean, don't get me wrong.

I like the drivers and I don't have a problem with any of them.

But I just think that, you know, the days of clicking as well were in my early days.

And I think that also, you know, once you get from it being a mechanic,

we are hands on on the car.

I think it, I think that's the difference is like, I don't,

I won't go very seldom when I go to Victory Lane or anything like that anymore.

Because to me, it's the guys that do the work on the cars and doing the pit stops.

That's theirs.

I like them to go down there.

I'm quite content to sit at the pits and start cleaning up

because my job is to make sure that they get everything they need to make it happen.

And if they can do that, you know, that's their win.

And that was the same when I was on a car.

You know, some people didn't like doing pit stops.

I did it for 20 years.

I loved, even after the fire, loved it.

It was, I always felt then that there was a chance, you know,

you help that driver win the race.

And there was a couple of times I made the driver not win the race,

dropped the Nato or things like that.

So there's definitely, yeah.

You aside, somebody clicks that we try to, we try to make these sort of evergreen

where it's not about stories of the week.

Somebody clicks on this episode in five years.

Where's IndyCar?

Well, you hope that it's, it's got a lot stronger, you know,

it shows signs of, you know, the TV packages seems to be a bit better.

You know, we've growth in the team side of it, what they've got there.

Love that, you know, love that you've got, you know,

whether it's, you know, TWG getting involved in it and then, you know,

ECR, Carmelers, I've got, you know, a guy.

So I love that part of it, but I still don't like the fact that we,

I look at where we're going, you know, you know,

losing downtown Toronto, not good, you know.

You keep hoping, you know, Roger Penske,

I hear all the people giving him crap about what he does.

Without Roger Penske, we wouldn't have a series, you know.

So he's, to me, that is a fantastic person

that loves what we do just as much as I do,

and he's prepared to put his money, you know,

and save what we have.

So I think there's some good things about it.

I just hope that it keeps going that same way.

Where are you in five years?

I'll mostly be retired in five years.

I mean, I'd like to think that I'm still healthy.

You are running IMSA Tech, sir.

That is what you are doing.

Then you would, then you're really going to hate me.

Yeah, so who knows, but it's, yeah, I hope that it,

hopefully it's, you know, it's, I look at other series, you know,

the top fuel and stuff like that.

I think those guys are having their issues as well.

So it's not just one series that's having issues.

It's keeping, you know, with so much TV and all the rest of it,

it just spreads that audience out.

And I just hope that somehow or other we can,

I'd love to see it.

Some drivers were a little bit more confrontation

between the drivers that draws people, you know.

So yeah.

Okay.

So last thing would be on the same vein,

somebody hits play for the first time.

They don't know your name.

What, what's the sort of take away you'd want

from somebody who'd never heard of you

and then listens to this episode?

I don't know.

I think I've always thought that, you know,

that I come over here as a guy that didn't have a lot

you know, I was just youngster.

I think that my,

I'd like to think that showing work ethic and dedication

and that can lead you to do what you want.

You know, whether it's in this sport or another sport,

I think that, you know, you come away and go,

oh, he's, you know, that's a guy that has worked hard

and got to where he wants to be.

And I think, you know, my whole thing is I enjoy life.

I enjoy people.

But I still think that if you want to get somewhere,

where America is a fantastic country to let you do that,

I don't think I could have got this back in New Zealand.

You know, I could have done what I wanted to do

and I would have had a good life,

but I think that I've been blessed that,

and like I tell my daughter, I say,

Lauren, no matter what you do and I stop,

just don't do it, just looking at your phone.

It says everything that happens in my life

and it's still true to this day.

Don't be afraid to meet people

and don't be afraid to have a shot at something different.

Well, I'd say as fans of IndyCar,

we're glad your mom pulled you off that ship.

Yeah, she might fly us too.

Yeah.

I'd say with that, Continental's got the check.

I'm finished.

Honey, healing magic, goodness from above,

affection.

You gotta give it away, give it away,

give it away to the ones you love.

It feels like sunshine,

the way that it warms up my cold heart.

Sweet as sugar and a light that leaves you through the dark.

A friend to pick you up in brokenness and pain.

Lord, let your love and kindness fall on us like rain.

Affection.

Honey, healing magic, goodness from above,

affection.

You gotta give it away, give it away,

give it away to the ones you love.

Where would the world be if we offered this gift freely?

Tend a devotion to the weak, the poor, the tired, the needy.

A helping hand, you know that you can always trust.

Lord, let your love and kindness grow in each other.

Affection.

Honey, healing magic, goodness from above,

affection.

You gotta give it away, give it away,

give it away to the ones you love.

Affection.

Honey, healing magic, goodness from above,

affection.

You gotta give it away, give it away,

give it away to the ones you love.

Ep.318 – Paul “Ziggy” Harcus

About this episode

Continental Tire

New Zealand Grand Prix

Scott Dixon

Formula 1

March F1

race car mechanic

front spring

Can-Am

speed handle

IndyCar

Valvoline

qualify

set up

Plymouth P15

update pieces

Jaguar Etype

Kia Tasman

dynoing engines

Laguna Seca

Ganassi cars

F1

tire management

Formula SAE

Tata Motors Indica

Monza

racing mechanic school

Datsun 240Z

Nissan 240Z

tinkering

pit stop

fuel probe

fuel leak

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from Dinner with Racers