The Motorsport Brief | Wolfsport’s Tom Clarke

On this edition of the Shortcast, we're focused on the business side of the sport with a new

platform developed in our corner of the world for the benefit of both event management and

participants that has the potential to go global. Everyone, Rusty here, shortly to Tom Clark,

who you may know from the Australian Rally Championship where he's both competitor in

various cars including a seriously cool Datsun stanza that went over the ditch recently to

contest the Otago Rally in New Zealand and he's been a passionate supporter of Production Cup

as well through his businesses, which we'll get to. Little mention of a couple of recent

EPs that you might enjoy including the re-release of Jeremy Burgess, the legendary Aussie crew chief

who worked with McDewan, Valentino Rossi and many more. We had some messages from listeners

asking to kind of get him on or perhaps not realising he was actually already in our library.

Recorded back in 2018 there is some awesome combo in there including mixed acute feeling with those

awesome 500cc machines and how together they made the Honda the bike to beat. Plus working with

Valentino Rossi keeping the band together when they went to Yamaha and Yucati along with his

recollections of a flashpoint at Laguna Saka in the Rossi Casey Stoner rivalry. You can find that

now again but it's back at the top of our library list this time. There's also a two-part feature

with a familiar face of the circuit racing paddock Trevor Schumack who's been kind of the Michelin

man for decades. His work overseas with the likes of Malcolm Osler in single-seaters, the connection

he's had with Neil Crompton plus the security around special tyres racing supertourers and then

owning one years later as well as an unusual bit of eye-catching rally kit that he now drives.

You'll enjoy that it is a rubber eater let's just say that much. Let's get to our guest and how

a cutting-edge system that he's behind is helping to streamline processes for all sorts of events

and motorsport disciplines. Hello Tom Clark welcome to the garage mate. Hey there mate how are you?

I'm fantastic. Can we begin this conversation by maybe establishing credentials on both sides of

the ledger from a competition standpoint and then maybe a business standpoint. Firstly your rallying

career commences I think back in 2009 you scraped together like most good stories a few thousand

dollars you buy a dream car and off you go but sadly mate you were given a bit of inspiration I

guess you could say from your late mum weren't you? Yeah yeah look I think like any motorsport fan or

fanatic that wants to get into motorsport you sort of make all measures to get there right and I

wasn't any different. I grew up in a family that look we did okay as a family but there was never

there was never money there to get into motorsport and not that my family didn't want me to get into

motorsport but it just wasn't a fair and reasonable option when it come to funding so I left home at

the age of 18 and moved to Sydney from a little spot on the south coast New South Wales and the

bug got too much I kept going to events and watch it I'm like no I've got to have a go at this I

really want to give this a go so I think I sold a car and bit some pieces of what I had some surfboards

I think I nudged together about $5,000 and went on a road trip with a good mate of mine that was

in rallying and we slept on the side of the road and the next morning I went and bought my first

Datsun 1600 rally car. Amazing there's some cool statistics along the way for you stepping into

four-wheel drive machinery in 2015 finishing second in the ARC to Nathan Quinn I think a couple of

years later the progression there's a bit of time in that time but the progression seems

rapid did it feel like that yeah look I think moving out of the the two-wheel drive and the

and the rear-wheel drive realm into that four-wheel drive category was that it was really that next

step up and again it was it was scrounding that sort of money together to move into that next

realm and we did a couple of years where we really persisted inside the New South Wales

chairmanship in those states that are chairmiships where we had ebbs and flows we'd have some really

good events and then we'd have some really bad ones like I suppose any motorsport driver has and

then we finally started striking some success and the biggest being at Rally Australia in 2017

there had a really good run molly tail and a few other guys there all sort of really bunched together

and finally on the on the last day we managed to get ourselves away there but yeah Nathan Quinn

well too quick for us but it was one of those things that was sort of reminded me you know why

I love the sport and why I was trying to do what I what I was trying to do so that 2017 was probably

the year that solidified me actually staying in the sport and really dragged me in to go see you

know say like this is what I want to do just walk me through what you're doing separate to this in

a business sense because we're about to get to the point of the of the podcast here in some ways

but you have had other businesses that have ultimately I think helped you with this platform

haven't they yeah look essentially I started off as a builder I'm a builder by trade and

I sort of progressed through my I suppose years as a builder and then moved into sort of the

building management side of things and I sent a real I suppose opening in the market when it come to

how can we streamline moving around contracts and moving inside other businesses as a contractor

that can make it easier that that realm of moving into the IT space is where we connected with the

insurance companies now we started doing insurance buildings say when in Australia we have you know

multiple storms and big big events and floods and fires where we needed to somehow get thousands

and thousands of people's insurance claims into one space and be able to move through them as quick

as possible and give customers I suppose the biggest and best outcome that they that they

required to get them over the line so that was essentially where we we first moved into that

space and then that's what brought me into the sort of the sport and motorsport space of seeing

the similar sort of struggles where how can we move into main streaming I suppose processes

through motorsport where over the years of doing multiple and multiple entries into sporting events

the monotonous of having to re submit all that information again make sure I've got valid licenses

forgetting that I haven't got a valid license putting all that together was something that

I think across the board in in motorsport was becoming a real pain point where you'd spend

hours of trying to put that information together that's when I had a bit of a chat with a few people

in the industry Adrian Coppenby won in the ARC we spent some time with motorsport Australia

and some other categories and I said we can make this better there's a way that we can get rid of

all that monotonous paperwork we can make sure that we're covering all the legal sort of things

and we're making sure the people are signing the right documents and we can make that that whole

experience for competitor a whole lot easier and smoother across the board that's how we we moved

into that space I think when you say we correct me if I'm wrong here too you you co-founded this

you know might have even been in the in the very early days and on the building side was it with

Matthew Herbert for example and then you have expanded on this side here into the motorsport

space the two things Tom seem like they should be worlds apart but but it's the way I think that you

are cleverly harnessing information and putting it into the right places is that a simple enough

description well look there's I think there's a correlation between just about everything when it

comes to streamlining and we're moving into a new world that we're moving into that digital world now

where it's not slowing down we're not going backwards that ability to do all those things

manually becoming so hard for everyone that we we need to move aside let that digital world come in

there's this AI space now that is huge around the world and is coming in very hard and heavy

but it's a very cool tool as well look at it if it's used in the right way it can be

exhausted in different avenues and different places to be very very useful which is what

what we're essentially doing now so what we are attempting to do and I'm saying attempting but

we will make it work is you'll have one profile across all your motorsport disciplines and you

can enter those events if you want to change discipline or you've got multiple cars we've

got multiple people in the industry they have more than one car can have up to 10 20 30 different

race cars the ability for them to be able to enter those events at the click of a button

and let your AI and your API do all the rest of the work and and take away that monotonous part

it helps I mean you're talking in a participant sense there how it might help the the competitor

but it helps the event organizers as well and I think it does it in lots of by the sounds of it

lots of very good practical ways too so if for some silly reason you have overlooked a renewal

on your license it'll trigger that won't you and and let either the event organizer or the participant

know hey this needs renewal and so on is that correct yeah look it's a smart digital system the

way that it's designed and developed is exactly that it will alert you in every movement you make

and make sure that nothing is ever missed I think we all know you know as humans we're very good at

what we do but we can make mistakes the one thing when you're moving into the digital world and

computers is they don't make mistakes if they're designed right they don't make mistakes and they

miss anything the biggest pinch point I think for a lot of organizers and promoters not just in

Australia but more globally is that things can get missed documents aren't getting signed as

regularly as they need to be and that human error maybe at a documentation where something may just

go by the wayside the system is taking away that space of those things getting missed and making

sure that every single bit of compliance and every bit of information that is required is 100%

getting to that organizer so you know we've got organizers around the country we're working with

now in in in all forms of discipline that as you know spending two 300 hours prior to an event to

make sure that they're collecting that data and that information and we're moving that down into

the realm of 20 to 30 hours at max but allowing the system to do all that remove all that mundane

you know administration and just get back to them being able to run a really good event

and really promote what they're doing inside their events the platform gives an avenue for

everyone to be able to see the event so the general public can go in there they can follow

their favorite drivers they can see what's going on and what those participants are doing so

really opens up a realm of sport that hasn't been touched yet you have built it as an all-in-one

digital platform rather bringing automation and AI into everything around event management helping

clubs organizers promoters spend less time around that administration that you that you're talking

about it is called wolf sports right and you're you're proudly promoting the production class in

in the australian rally championship for example but you have spread your wings here a

little birdie tells me you might have had meetings in new zealand and you could potentially take

this beyond our shores is this true yeah absolutely look i think we are probably one of the only

companies in the in the world that are doing something of this magnitude there's multiple

different platforms and companies that do this for single sports right this is not built just for

motorsport essentially once you have a profile a wolf sports profile that sits as an app

you will be able to move wherever you want to move if you want to go enter a skateboarding

event or you want to go enter a tennis tournament you'll be able to use the same

profile and the same click of a button and you allow the system to go in collect the data it

needs to move over to that discipline it is a is a huge space that again has not been touched

globally and it's something that i'm i'm passionate about making work it's not a matter of when it's

how we actually do it now but we're well on the way we're working inside new zealand we're getting

interest more globally i think these days we've really got a 100000 people going through

the platform at any one time and that's that's anywhere from competitors around the world to

the general public being able to go in there and see the information it's open to the public

but it's given to the organisers promoters to be able to let the access there that they want

they can turn things on and off we want the public to be able to see that we don't want

them to be able to see that we want them to see our drivers we don't it gives full freedom

and malleability for the organisers to set it up how they want when the then competitors come in

they're essentially building a profile like an instagram profile that's just their sports profile

there is still more of this story to tell hope you're enjoying it stick around we'll continue

the convo with tom clark right after this this is the motorsport brief our rusty's garage

broadcast where we tackle a topic from time to time today our guest is tom clark whose wolf sports

platform has streamlining benefits for both competitors and those on the management side

of motorsport there is some great potential in this as you'll hear let's jump back into the convo

now i love that you've found this window you could very easily i mean for having come from a

totally different work domain maybe that's often what it needs tom a fresh set of eyes to have a

glance at things and see opportunity i would imagine there was a lot of learnings along

the way to try and fine tune this to get this right oh mate it's it's one of those things when

you're starting i think something like this it has its highs and it has its super lows

and i've been following that journey for the last couple of years now we've gone into you know using

pilot events and pilot organisers and pilot participants to be able to build something like

this um this is not something that was just developed and and then handed out to the public

and said how does it work we use the competitors organisers we collected data over

you know 12 24 months so what are all the pinch points and what are all the pain points

what doesn't work and and what do we require to make this better as a whole for everyone so

we built it that way so we essentially use the community as the consultants so that they've

been able to then get exactly what they wanted and it be very close to the mark but it doesn't mean

there's there's never fine tuning that's um that's something we know we're always going to be doing

is turning into a quite a big platform there's a big team working on it full time um so it's

managing what comes next and how do we refine it to make it the biggest sport platform globally

and that people can move around as many sports as they want and build profiles promoters can build

their events and make sure that it's getting seen around the world it's very hard these days to promote

event when you're only using i suppose your own website or trying through social media

to get to your audience but what we want to achieve is that it gets out to everyone if it's a motorsport

or event i want to see cricket players seeing a tennis players um surfers skaters i want everyone

to be able to see and get inside motorsport and understand what it is i love that that was kind

of my next question where would you like it to go can i pivot on the question then can you still

dabble in a bit of motorsport to uh to get that fix as you as you need it you we were together at

the recent um the rumour rally you took your your mighty Datsun stanza that you love across the ditch

to um to a great event in a target there earlier this year which i know you want to go back to can

you do a bit of that still or is this occupying most of your time i may think i'd say imperative that

i have to i've got i've got to hold my sanity together um yeah it's it's been ever since um

i started in 2009 it has been an outlet um for me from being so busy from i think

2009 i started racing um by 2010 and i'd started my first business so um i think the passion for

for driving the car is one thing the passion then to make sure that i've got money to do it

revolves around you know like any any motorsport person we've got to have funding come in it

drives up through sponsors sometimes but essentially a lot of us are self funding and bringing a lot

of that that funding in so it's got to be there for multiple different reasons but the main thing

is probably my sanity um but that adrenaline that adrenaline for me is um is very important to

probably the way they operate awesome been great to get you on the podcast today and we are only

telling um a fraction of your story i realized that but i wanted to kind of shine a light on

wolf sports you know in a broad sense how can people in closing this conversation find out more

about it mate they can go um visit the website uh you'll see it's all over social media um very

easy to get involved very easy to build a profile but the general public they can go in there and

they can start seeing their favorite events they can start seeing who's there um who's

participating in the event but they can see all the details that maybe they uh haven't been able

to see um anywhere else and that hasn't been available for organizers to get out to the to the

public but essentially very soon what's going to happen is this will be the uh the hub for sport

and uh everyone will be able to see what's going to move around as freely as they want

i will get on board now and build my skateboarding profiles but nice to catch up mate thanks for

chatting with us today very good thanks rosti what is it with some of the rallying fraternity

and some clever business innovation i am keen to also get luke near on the pod you may know him

from safety culture and seeing his logos on shane van gisburg and's nascar in the past year

luke's had an involvement in the wrc as well and competed here in the australian rally championship

that is another great ozzy success story with motorsport links thanks for the feedback on the

recent two-part feature episode with todd hazelwood too i think that that has helped a few of you

realize the depth and i mean incredible depth of his commitment and how he's managed to forge a path

kind of against the odds in some ways out of pure drive and determination check that out if you

haven't already that is it for today we'll catch you next time bye for now

Datsun 1600 rally car

ARC

four-wheel drive machinery

two-wheel drive car

Rally Australia

Original notes