This is a car event where lots of racing cars show up and fans can watch and learn about motorsport. In this episode, they’re saying it’s coming back in 2026 with new stuff to see.
This means older touring-car race cars—cars that used to race in touring-car series—being shown or celebrated at the event. It’s basically a history-focused part of the weekend.
Term
Formula 4 historic touring cars
Formula 4 (often shortened to F4) is a junior open-wheel racing category used as a stepping stone for drivers. Here, “Formula 4 historic touring cars” indicates a historic/tribute-style program that includes Formula 4-era cars alongside touring-car history.
They’re talking about a particular crash that happened at Eastern Creek in 1995 during a race event called the “triple challenge.” The episode promises to explain what happened.
The Torana is a car that was built in Australia and is known for being used in racing. People remember it because it has a strong history in motorsport. In the podcast, it’s mentioned because it relates to someone’s early racing experience and a special connection to the people involved.
Qualifying engines are race engines tuned for the single-lap or short session where you’re trying to get the best starting position. The idea is to make maximum power for a short time, and it can be risky if something goes wrong.
General Motors (GM) is the major US automaker that owned key Australian brands and racing programs historically tied to Holden. When GM “retire[s]” programs or brands, it can directly affect local motorsport infrastructure and the availability of factory support.
Enduros are longer races where the car has to last and the team has to manage things like tires and fuel. Strategy and consistency matter a lot, not just speed.
A Perth street race is a motorsport event staged on city streets rather than a purpose-built circuit. Street races typically emphasize tight layouts, barriers, and traction management—making them distinct from traditional track events.
Supercars racing is Australia’s big touring-car motorsport series. They’re talking about how frequently the races happen and how that keeps fans interested.
Concept
factory hold
“Factory hold” sounds like a time when the factory or organizers weren’t letting things move forward normally. That can delay car prep or change how the racing program runs.
Place
Oren Park
Oren Park is a race track. The speaker is saying this happened at that track during the racing series.
A Ford Laser is a small Ford car model. Here, the host is talking about people buying one and then adding safety and racing parts so it can be used in a race series.
A roll cage is a strong metal frame inside the car. It’s there to protect you if the car flips or crashes hard, by keeping the passenger area from collapsing.
“Series production” just means the car was built in a normal production line, not as a one-off. In racing, that often means the rules wanted cars that were based on real, mass-produced models.
Amory Park is a racing venue the hosts reference as the place where the speaker’s newly built car won the next race meeting. Track names matter in motorsport because different circuits stress cars differently (braking, traction, cooling, and tire wear).
“Written off” means the car was damaged enough that it’s not worth fixing. People then usually take the usable parts and build something else with them.
“Down the outside” means trying to pass another car on the outer side of the track. It’s usually harder because you’re committing to the pass with less space.
“Fired down the inside” means the driver went for the pass on the inner side of the track. It’s usually a fast, committed move that depends on braking and corner entry.
“Escort” here means staying right near the other car to guide how they have to drive. It’s like keeping them in your control zone so they can’t easily pull away.
Conrod Strait is a well-known part of the Bathurst race track in Australia. If someone crashes at the end of it, that’s a big deal because that area is fast and challenging.
Concept
internals of the cars weren't anywhere near as scrutinized as we currently have
They’re saying that back then, racing cars were checked less closely than they are today. Nowadays, officials and teams look much harder at what’s inside the car and how it’s built.
The Sandown 500 is a well-known Australian race. The speaker is using it to talk about a specific time in their racing career.
Place
Sand Down
Sand Down is where they’re talking about driving in the rain. They’re saying the track conditions were slippery, so it was a tough test of how well the car and driver worked together.
Torsional rigidity is how much the car’s frame resists twisting when you corner or brake hard. If it twists a lot, the handling can feel vague or inconsistent because the suspension isn’t working the way it’s designed to.
Term
drag racing compound
A drag racing compound is a special type of tire rubber made for quick, straight-line launches. It can grip and heat up differently than tires meant for turning corners, so it can change how the car behaves if it goes off the planned path.
Circuit safety is how the track is built to protect drivers when something goes wrong. It includes where the walls and barriers are, and what’s around the track if a car leaves the road.
Runoff area is the extra space next to the track. If a car goes off the racing line, this area is meant to help slow it down and reduce how badly it can hit something.
Bitumen is the material that makes up asphalt roads and race tracks. If a car leaves the bitumen and hits something like grass, it can lose traction very quickly.
A touring car championship is a racing series for cars that are based on models you could buy. Drivers earn points across rounds, so missing one can hurt their chances to defend the title.
Place
Calder
Calder is a race track in Australia. The speaker is saying they went there to work on the car before the next part of the season.
“Unforgiving” means the situation doesn’t forgive mistakes. If you’re off by a little bit, the car or track makes it hurt your speed or control quickly.
They’re talking about how extreme heat during races affects drivers. Teams try to reduce heat around the driver, and the speaker also notes that it can have lasting effects.
A street circuit is a race course made from regular city streets. It usually has tight turns and uneven grip, so it’s easier to make a mistake and harder to drive smoothly.
Place
Nernse
“Nernse” sounds like a specific part of the race track. The host is saying most people don’t realize how risky or difficult that section is to drive.
Normally you brake with your right foot. The speaker is explaining that because their right leg lost feeling, they had to brake/drive differently with the left foot, which made the car harder to control.
“Overrun turn 11” means the driver didn’t make the corner when they meant to and went too far. That can force the car into the wall or fence because there’s no room left to correct.
Term
back of the pits
The “back of the pits” refers to the pit-lane area near its far end, where the track rejoins or where cars transition between pit activity and racing. It’s a high-stakes zone because speed, visibility, and track layout can change quickly.
Term
tender
“Tender” sounds like a quick problem or delay after the impact. The key point is that in that race situation, stopping to fix it wasn’t possible.
Concept
mitigating risk
“Mitigating risk” means trying to make something safer by lowering the chances of a problem. In racing, it can mean being careful with how you drive when conditions are tough.
“Back of the field” means starting a race near the rear of the grid rather than near the front. In motorsport, that usually implies more overtaking work and a higher chance of getting caught in traffic, especially in poor weather.
Place
Emory Park
Emory Park is a race track. The speaker is saying it gets really chaotic in the rain—water runs off the hills and makes the track harder to drive than usual.
Rain changes how the race feels and how the car grips the road. The big issue is that visibility and traction are worse, so driving has to be more careful.
Qualifying determines the starting order for a race, and the front row means starting near the very front (typically positions 1 and 2). Starting up front reduces traffic and can improve your chances of leading early.
A dyno is a machine that tests an engine’s power and behavior. It can show how the engine performs, even if the biggest change is how quickly it responds rather than peak power.
“Cost containment” means racing organizers try to keep costs from getting out of control. They do this by writing rules that limit how much teams can spend on development.
Here, “special engines” means engines that were built for a specific racing advantage. Instead of being off-the-shelf, they were developed as a focused project to help the team win.
The cylinder head is the top part of the engine where the combustion happens and where the valves sit. In racing, changing its design can improve how air and fuel flow, which helps power.
The inlet manifold is the part that delivers air to the engine’s cylinders. On race cars, its shape is tuned so the engine breathes better and makes more power.
Engines can use “wave tuning” in the intake/exhaust to get better breathing at certain RPMs. “Third harmonic” means they tuned it to a particular pattern of those waves so the engine gets a boost at the right speed.
A fuel stop is when the race car pulls into the pits to add gas. If a car is quicker, it can sometimes go longer between stops, so it might need fewer pit stops for fuel.
Australian touring car racing refers to the national touring-car category centered on production-based sedans and coupes. It’s known for manufacturer involvement, rule evolution, and intense team rivalry, which is why “engineering” and “process” debates can become central to performance.
Correlation is how engineers check that their predictions match real track results. If the numbers don’t line up, it’s harder to know what changes will actually help the car.
Brand
Ford Blacks
This is a nickname for Ford’s racing group in that touring-car era. The speaker is saying Ford and Holden teams were on opposite sides of technical meetings.
“Wrong gear” means the driver picked a gear that doesn’t fit the car’s speed. When that happens, the car doesn’t accelerate or respond the way it should, especially at the start or during fast corners.
“Third gear” is one of the steps in the car’s gearbox. In racing, choosing the right gear helps the engine pull strongly; choosing the wrong one can make the car feel sluggish.
Mount Panorama is a well-known race track in Bathurst, Australia. It’s the kind of track where how you manage your tires and driving over a lap really matters a lot.
The “rear tires” are the tires that usually provide most of the traction when the car accelerates. If they get too hot (or not hot enough), the car can grip worse or feel unpredictable.
An “out lap” is the lap where the car leaves the pits and heads back onto the track. It’s usually a controlled lap to get the tires and brakes ready without pushing too hard.
When you launch, the clutch should smoothly connect the engine to the wheels. “Clutch slip” means it’s not fully locked, so the engine revs but the car doesn’t hook up cleanly—usually not what you want for a fast start.
“Bog it down” means the car feels like it’s bogging—like it’s not accelerating and the engine loses power. It can happen if the launch is too abrupt or the tires can’t grip.
A clutch is what lets the engine connect to the gearbox when you launch. “Tilton AP” is a brand/model of racing clutch that’s built for hard use in motorsport.
Preloading the clutch means taking up some of the clutch’s engagement before the actual launch point, so the driver can control how quickly it bites. Skaife says he didn’t preload much at Bathurst, preferring a specific engagement strategy to manage slip and wheel spin.
The adjustment point is where the clutch starts to actually start grabbing. By leaving it just short of that point, a driver can bring it in at the exact moment for a better launch.
LIVE
The Winton Festival of Speed is back for 2026 with new dates, new events and new cars.
Over 500 racing display cars will gather across three big days as racing history takes set
a stage.
The legendary heritage touring cars are back.
There's touring car legends, touring car tributes, classic sports cars, Formula 4 historic
touring cars and the Fitzy Cup for Porsches in honour of Peter Fitzgerald.
It's an event for fans of all ages.
Get your tickets at the gate or online now via Humanityx.
Kids under 17 free, single day passes from $30, two day passes from $50 and camping's
also available.
And if you can't make a trackside, catch the two day live streaming coverage on Blendline
TV via YouTube.
Pencil it into the diary, July 24 to 26 for the Winton Festival of Speed.
We had effectively qualifying engines being done and if you have a look at the engine that
might have been in Murph's thing for the lap of the gods, that might have been a pretty
good engine.
Hey Sleuthers, we're back, it's Noons.
This is the kickoff of a new series of the V8 Sleuth podcast powered by Paramatta Toyota,
Sydney's Toyota dealer with a passion for performance and motorsport.
Now Mark Scafe, he is no stranger to our pot.
He's back with a double part F to fire up our 2026 series and in this first part we
hit on heaps of interesting topics, some current stuff and some old stuff.
A potential supercars event on the Central Coast, his departure from Supercars TV and
rewinding to the laser series days Peter Williams and Supra, Big Daryl Eastlake, huge, speaking
of huge, that Eastern Creek crash from the triple challenge in 95 in depth.
We talk about his first car race in a Tarana that came by Mark Winnerbottom's dad, special
HRT qualifying engines and how it all went wrong at Bathurst in 2006.
This is a juicy one.
Let's dive in on the V8 Sleuth podcast powered by Paramatta Toyota.
Hello Scafe.
How are you?
Hey Noons, very well.
Thank you.
Congratulations.
You are now three time?
Three time.
Three time guest on the pot.
Ah.
Six time, five time.
Three time.
Good work.
We've talked a lot in the past.
When we caught up in 2019 we were sitting in this same office.
We talked a lot of factory holding stuff back then.
It was 50 years of the Holden dealer team and factory holding racing.
We wouldn't have guessed in 2019 that we would sit here in what, six or seven years
later, there ain't no Holden anymore.
The world has changed a lot since we have sat in this office and talked about stuff.
Well, it is a weird landscape, isn't it?
I mean, I think if we had asked ourselves at that stage would General Motors retire
the Holden brand, you'd say no way.
You know, would manufacturing in this country be so difficult?
You would have said no way.
And you probably would have said, you know, over the course of the journey, you know,
what does the Australian motorsport landscape look like?
You know, was a Gen 3 initiative on the cards, sort of at that point, not really, because
we'd just come out of the back of what was a successful car of the future and there's
always change, but probably didn't ever think that the level of change was going to be so
extreme.
No, big odds if we'd, if anyone had called that we would have looked at them and gone,
whatever, good on you, good on you.
Some of the stuff that's been floating around of late, supercars on the central coast.
Would you have done any track testing back in the day in your youth?
It certainly was.
Not that I could report and I really don't want to talk about it too much, but you know
some roads.
Yeah, definitely.
The old Pacific High was was a, well, and still is a lot of the guys use it for, you
may have had the odd race on those roads.
Allegedly.
Allegedly.
Yeah, so, you know, it's obviously a great, you know, part of my childhood growing up on
the central coast and it was, I mean, now it's like a suburb of Sydney, but it was just
a beautiful picturesque seaside area, but it also had beautiful valleys up to the national
parks from Yarrow along and Dur along and our tire businesses did all the sort of the
farm work for all those beautiful old blokes that had orange orchards and dairy farms and
stuff.
And we did all the work on the, all the earth movers for the contract between Sydney and
Newcastle for the New Freeway, which bypassed Wile because the Pacific Highway wouldn't
actually straight past our tire service originally.
So yeah, so a lot of history and great lineage with the central coast and now when you think
about us, you know, toying with the idea via Central Coast Council and via Wollongong to
replace Newcastle, you know, for both of those areas, they're both beautiful vistas, you
know, gorgeous coastline, that part of Australia is pretty special.
So it would be fantastic to, to be able to do it.
We were very close with Gosford originally.
So before Newcastle come on stream, James Walbert and I had basically done a deal with
the Central Coast Council to have a race in Gosford and the council went into administration,
they merged the two councils with Gosford and Wile, become Central Coast Council and
they went into administration at that point, then the financials didn't work for them.
So we shifted it to Newcastle and that was, that was a fair while ago now, but obviously
still good to have interest with them.
Now, without giving it away, if there is a race there or thereabouts, where's the gun
place for us to go and stay?
We want to book really early before anybody else gets a clue in as to where to go.
Oh, well, my favourites, the Terrigal Crown Plaza, you know, that's a beautiful area.
Terrigal is just a gorgeous little spot.
So that would be, that would be the highlight.
That'd be, that'd be one that you'd go and stay at.
I don't know about that there, but anyway, where it actually gets located, we're looking
at a few different zones and clearly, like all things, you're trying to do something
that has minimal disruption to the locals, minimal disruption to the traffic flow.
There's a lot of people, especially post COVID, who, who basically go back into Sydney every
day, because I mean, really the drive from or to the northern end of Sydney to the North
Shore, for instance, is probably 45 minutes to an hour depending upon when you leave and
what the traffic's like.
It's a bit like living not that far out of Melbourne to get into whichever edge of Melbourne
you've kind of got to get into for those who are listening in, in Victoria.
What's the realistic possibility of all of this?
I mean, how many times over the years have we heard there could be a race here, there
could be a track here, there could be a thing here, and those stories are abundant here
there and everywhere.
Is this a legitimate red hot shot at some point?
Absolutely, 100%.
Yep.
And, and it's good to have a bit of an auction, you know, if you've got a couple of regions
that are looking for this, then, you know, you tend to sharpen the pencil as a consequence
and...
A bit of competitive tension.
Never heard anybody.
It's always good.
And, you know, destination use files and the, the men's government and use files are keen
to get another event going and Newcastle, you know, 60% of the race track was on the
water.
It was just beautiful.
So it's great.
Tragic to lose that.
I can't remember another time where local council outvoted the Premier and got away with
it.
But anyway, that's another story.
Where would, where could this event, if it happened, where would it fit?
I mean, where do you fit it on the calendar where there's some bits that are kind of already
locked in because of existing deals or the weather insert, you know, the dry season in
Darwin, for example, is an important part of when and where the championship goes to
him valley.
But where could it fit?
I think it would probably fit in the first third of the series.
And I think what we've got to do probably is because we've got finals and the grand
final build up, I think we've probably got to energize, you know, Perth will energize
the start of the year when that comes on stream.
But we've got to energize the sprint cup, probably have some more things to play for
within the sprint cup.
And, you know, I see it as sort of the first third of the year being, you know, quite a
pivotal part of locating it at the right spot and being able to do it the right way with
the right weather conditions.
Yeah, the weather, big part.
I mean, you've got to have people wanting to go and having an environment for them to
want to be around and want to begin.
There's so much that's been said and everyone's got their views and everyone's got their
suggestions, I've had a few over the time.
How do we get that front half of the year?
I mean, the back half of the year is no problem with in the calendar.
We've got all those big events, finals, Bathurst, Enduros, Gold Coast, Adelaide, no problem.
It takes us so long over the year to build up and maybe Central Coast can form part of
that and the Perth Street race can form part of that.
What else can the sport do to get more regularity?
I mean, you're a football follower.
We're jealous of football, aren't we?
No matter what the code, because they've got a weekly formula of they play.
There's the preview.
There's the review.
There's the team ins and outs.
There's the injuries.
There's the tribunals.
There's the coaching.
There's something always going on.
How can we have more things going on more often in supercars racing?
Yeah, look, it's a really good question.
And look, that's the cadence that you're talking about.
They've got a real rhythm, you know, the two preeminent sports in this country as
the AFL and the NRL have got a great rhythm that that that cyclic nature of what you
just explained is a really, really strong part of what latches the customer to the
sport each week.
And there's a storyline each week.
And we just don't have it.
I mean, to be fair, we have tried even way back from when we sold the
business to Archer, Tony Cochran and I were talking about at that point, we're
talking about 18 events in 40 weeks, and we were trying to basically do this
thing where it was almost every second week.
Now, certain things make differences there, mostly governments, because
governments determine they're our sanctioned fee or stakeholder engagement
where you can't necessarily go against when they want to put it.
So for instance, Clipso was the gun start to the year.
It was unbelievable.
And we've purposely done it pre-football codes and we finished post-football codes.
So if you think about that as the two bookends, when the Premier in South
Australia said, look, I want to change it from the first part of the year to the end,
what we've done is in the end design a final series.
So it's not a dead rubber.
So essentially, we've been able to cater for a really big buildup to the
final part of the season.
I take your point.
I think the early part of the season needs to be really rejuvenated and refreshed.
And you know, I start later.
Could you start later at all?
Well, I just, again, I'm always low thinking about starting it in the 40 season.
You know, straight away, when you do the Grand Prix and the 40 season,
when they correlate together, it actually hurts both events.
So, you know, I think starting it earlier is still smart, but then having
things to keep it energised is really important.
And even as silly as, you know, we've spoken a lot about why we're doing
that motor racing 360 show as a weekly thing, because you're trying to deliver
up motor sport, but principally supercar content each week.
Stuff that you do all the time, you know, speak, Cafe does the same thing.
Everyone's trying to improve the cadence and improve the rhythm.
Just so happens that you've only got 14 events and you've got to spread it
across a big period and you've only got 24 drivers.
You've got 11, 12, 11 teams, whatever it might be.
You don't have 18 AFL clubs with 40 players on the list with coaches,
assistant coaches, presidency, AFL staff, broadcasters across every element
of media, it's just a bigger beast.
And that's why it's not just a case if there's not as much to talk about,
but how far can you dig and how often can you go there and how often can you
fill an hour of TV every week or a podcast every week or a website of content
every week. It is a bit of a grind.
It's not a case that everyone's asleep at the wheel.
I think everyone's trying to do stuff and there's more stuff now.
I mean, I think back what 15 years, baby, how much content was actually around
to watch if you're a car racing, tragic or a supercar's fan.
But he had extra.
We end that remember on seven.
Yeah, half an hour show.
Half an hour.
Yeah, half an hour.
I think it was Saturday lunchtime, Chal seven.
No one saw it.
Not much other stuff in between.
Yeah. Yeah.
There's probably now more stuff.
And that's where podcasts and online shows and YouTube and all that stuff's
been great because it's actually opened up the platform for other people to do
other things to help fill some of the gaps along the way.
But there's still gaps.
So yes, it's a bit of an ongoing.
You mentioned motor racing 360.
Obviously, there's a change in your board in Tally this year.
Have you found it?
Have you found the reaction?
What are you doing on your supercar's weekends because you're not the track anymore?
Yeah, it's been really interesting.
It's been, you know, I've got to say, it's been quite difficult to adjust to
because I've just spent my whole life at the racetrack, right?
And, you know, the captain's call that James Warburton made, I, you know,
made the comment earlier this year that he helped me with my golf handicap,
my boxing regime, which was nice of him.
And, and, you know, I suppose in a similar way, there's a bit of form there,
given he did the same thing with Lee Matthews and Bruce Bakker,
who I've only added to the AFL coverage.
So, you know, for Neil and I, it was it was quite difficult, not just the.
I mean, I think generational change is completely fine.
And I think, you know, all of us would be big, big enough and and measured enough
and sophisticated enough to come up with a plan around however that was going to
work if it was done the right way.
And based on doing it the right way, you you bring people along on the journey
and and you you seek to make the product better.
So, you know, when you lose someone like a Neil Crompton, for instance,
I would argue that he's the best motorsport commentator in the world.
So you lose someone like a Neil Crompton, you lose a massive amount of IP.
And that part, I think in terms of delivering the output for supercars,
hasn't hasn't gone as well as as you would like it to go.
And then part of what was going on in the off season
because of how late it all was and the things that were going on in the background.
The 360 show, I've been trying to get the 360 show going
basically the whole time I've been with Fox and finally we've been able to get it going.
And there's just so much good stuff because motor racing under that scenario,
you cover all the things that Fox have got and other stuff.
Yeah.
So, you know, I find my weekends now probably busier in some ways
because I've got to watch, you know, I've made sure I was sitting up to watch.
Well, I was obviously watching Monaco qualifiers, one of the best things I've seen in a long time.
And then, you know, motor GP I've always liked, but I probably haven't had time really to watch it properly.
So there's so much of that that I've really enjoyed.
You know, obviously Van Gisburg and, you know, in the States,
I've been watching a lot of what's going on in NASCAR land too.
So the the the culmination of all those things actually,
it's turned out to be quite quite good and I'm enjoying it.
So really it was a case, not so much of the what, it was just the how.
In the how it all went down.
And is it a case that you're just waiting for an answer?
It seemed like everybody else was talking about it, but the person
that's involved in the topic is the one who's kind of not involved in it.
It always tends to feel that way, whether it's a driver who's leaving a team
or it's a team principal who's leaving a team or someone leaving a television role.
They're generally the last person to really be told about it.
How does this all work in this sport?
It's very weird.
Yeah, well, that is really strange.
And that's really, again, that's probably the thing that Neil and I struggled
with the most, it was just the level of communication and and and being able to
sit down and get an answer and do the things that we needed to do
to plan out whatever the next step was.
So again, you know, those those things are never really nice.
You know, they're they're difficult to adjust to, but they're also just
difficult to accept that, you know, when the output, I mean,
and again, a lot of the keyboard warriors will, you know, whack me for,
you know, supposedly being a triple eight fan or whatever.
You are.
You are.
They say you are.
You are.
Yeah.
You don't know this.
Well, well, you can only ever look at how people operate their businesses
and look at how people operate their race teams.
And if you weren't impressed with how Brock Feeney and that triple eight
organization operated last year, there's something wrong with you, right?
And so that's pretty impressive.
So so when you think about all that stuff and then you then you look at
what actually happens and what you want from it, the the Bathurst race
and the Bathurst call, you know, Neil and I shook hands with each other at the end.
And that's sort of as good as we can do.
And if if you've got someone better and you can do it better, then best of British
The
Winton Festival of Speed is back for 2026 with new dates, new events and new cars.
Over 500 racing display cars will gather across three big days as racing history
takes set a stage.
The legendary heritage touring cars are back.
There's touring car legends, touring car tributes, classic sports cars,
Formula Ford, historic touring cars and the Fitzy Cup for Porsches in honor
of Peter Fitzgerald.
It's an event for fans of all ages.
Get your tickets at the gate or online now via Humanityx.
Kids under 17 free, single day passes from $30, two day passes from 50 bucks
and campings also available.
And if you can't make a trackside, catch the two day live streaming
coverage on Blendline TV via YouTube.
Pencilated to the diary, July 24 to 26 for the Winton Festival of Speed.
Like, did you approach that last round in Adelaide as if if this is it,
we're going to go out in style.
We're going to have a good old go at this.
Yeah, yeah, we did.
Yeah. And you know, you know, we, we great mates and we take
the piss out of ourselves, you know, pretty regularly and, and we, and we like that.
I mean, that's tough.
The thing, the rapport, I mean, that's probably what I miss the most, to be honest.
It's really the rapport, you know, the rapport with, with Neil in the box and then
back into Larco in the lane, 33 blocks that have lived their life,
loving car racing.
And, and, you know, you like the personalities.
You like the differing views.
You like the way that you're trying to tell a story each weekend.
And that, that narrative, you know, is really important for the quality of the game.
Does Tony have to get you out of the house on a race with, because you sick of
you watching and having a recent former motor racing on for a whole weekend?
Well, that's a bit like it.
It's always been, but yeah, for different reasons.
Yeah. But the girls, so my oldest daughter is at Trinity College in Melbourne.
So she's going to uni.
So she's out of the place.
And then my youngest daughter has gone to, gone to Armadale and is doing
psychology up at UNE.
So she's going to have you all figured.
So, yeah.
So, so at the moment, you know, the house, the house, tons, tons of listening to
me, watching all these different sorts of motor racing and, and the kids have
bolted. Go on, go on.
I would be scared.
Could you imagine if you're a young bloke, don't date one of your daughters
turning up to meet you for the first time?
Is that happened?
Yeah. Yes, it has.
But there is a bit of the part that's important, Nernse, is they've got to know the rules.
Right. Right.
Yeah. So there's a good boundary set.
There's a little bit of intimidation that's required when those things happen.
Have you had an angry one?
Have you had an angry one?
I don't really need to.
There's, there's, there's, there's enough, I think there's enough of that, that the
girls might tell them before they arrive.
Preloaded.
It's preloaded.
Yeah, exactly.
Hey, let's go back in the files a bit.
We've talked over a couple of episodes of this podcast about various stuff.
The first time in 2019, we talked a lot of factory hold.
And in 2020, it was COVID time.
So I think we're on the phone.
You just had a book out.
We, we did a lot of chat about all sorts of bits and pieces.
I actually was reminded the other day about something that motorcraft are doing
a bit of stuff with us in recent times in our business.
And it takes me back to the laser series, which is motorcraft backed.
And there's that vision of your car.
I think we ran this on the Shannon's Legend series.
You got Pollax one day at Oren Park, straight up the backside.
The thing's about a foot shorter.
And instead of a tow truck coming out to collect dirt or people trying to move
off the track, they simply forklifted the thing up and off and loaded it off
the track to the side.
But am I right in saying that that wasn't the first laser that was prepped
for a racing that might have ended up not too good at the end of its life?
Yeah, well, it was a pretty interesting series because I mean, it was a great
initiative for Mike Breen.
So the good year car owners club with motorcraft and Ford.
So you went down and you bought your Ford laser and it was about three
grand off the road, 9600 dollars.
Then you bought a little kit, which had the wheels and the shock absorbers
and all the stuff you went and put a roll cage in and a seat belt.
And you were pretty much off and running.
You could go run it yourself pretty much.
So Dad and I did that, no problem at all.
And and it was an incredible series, not just for how cost effective it was,
but it had a lot of really good series production.
But that's what the regulations were of the day.
A lot of really good drivers, Mark Gibbs, Peter Dane, Ken Douglas,
Stevie Williams, David Brabham.
That's right.
You know, so we there was a lot of Jim Zerafoss.
There was a lot of really good drivers of the day.
And and we and I already enjoyed it.
And and that wasn't a day to enjoy because I was leading a past Peter Dane for the lead.
I love how you remember all this exactly backwards.
This is 1986 55 yeah.
And so, yeah, so we sorry, that was 86 seasons.
First year I was 85 and then in the 86 season, I fired down the inside of
Peter Dane at the last corner of the park, got to the lead and we made contact
coming out of the corner and he fired me in the fence.
And then it bounced back out of the fence and and someone, you know,
completely liberated it.
So that was the end of that that was the end of that car.
So the option then of the day, well, what do you do?
Do you miss the last round or whatever?
And we were still in contention to win it.
So Dad and I and a really close friend of the old man, we got a Ford body shell.
We went, drove down to City Ford, grabbed a Ford white body shell.
And I just basically tortured, you know, ridiculous hours to put everything
that was still OK in that previous car and then put fresh stuff in the new one.
And all sort of hands on deck, but basically just us.
And then fired another new car out and won the next race meeting at Amory Park.
So it was just a valuable car.
Exactly. But what happened to the very first laser bar?
The first the first laser may have may have been involved.
I like, I like.
Allegedly, a little clear the throat moment.
May have may have allegedly not made the races and may have actually had a
little incident on the road before I before I got there.
What sort of an incident was that?
Well, well, Mum sort of put it in a way that she said, well,
that's the end of your laser series thing.
And then Dad come home with another one from the local Ford dealer.
And they just, they're just breeding.
So, yeah.
So the first one didn't look very flash, actually far from flash.
It was was it worse than the Orham Park one?
Not a lot different.
Because if you're going to say right off when they're written off, they're written off.
No, it's sort of how pregnant is it right off or right off?
Similar value.
Anyway, now over and out.
So we, yeah, we did have a few misadventures, but they were wild races.
I mean, I don't know whether you remember, but some of the races, you know,
there were huge incidents and and it was, was pretty vigorous.
And I loved it.
And I always remember one of my best moves.
I got alongside Steve Williams here to Daiglo and White Laser.
He was leading and for my sins, I decided to go down the outside of him at
Deadstop at Amory Park and I took basically the outside line from Deadstop
then around Rod Hudson Corner.
Then we went up the straight together over the top of the hill together
around the outside of him at the loop, come down to Mazda House to the fast
right handed down the back was still on the outside of him.
He pushed me off into the grass.
I come back out of the grass, fired down the inside of him, ran into him at Honda.
That's the only left hander.
So now I'm back on the inside and I was able to just escort Steve
a little wide and then and got to the left.
Pretty much took a lap to get a lap on the outside.
Yeah. Have you been showing the vision that's floated around?
It gets a little some of the old vision from back in the day gets a new life
on social media and there's a bit of vision from the nine
wide world of sport vault that I think they ever rolled out a few times
and it's been shared by plenty.
Maybe your kids have offered it up to you somewhere along the line.
Have you and a very young Richard Bork having a disagreement one day at Amaru Park?
Yeah, I look, I have.
I can't I can't take that back.
Daryl Eastlake was one of Dad's best mates.
So Daryl Eastlake had come down to Amaru Park to do a wide world of sports story.
It also at least young Tyro that's and we'd already done a go-karting one, you know,
so so he was sort of following the the career pathway.
And and it was a day where Richard Mork had come from about four or five
car lengths back and speared me at the at dead stop at the slowest corner
in Amaru and I wasn't very happy.
Neither was the old man and for anyone that knows when the old man steps off
the bike, he does step off the bike pretty hard.
So it was pretty ugly back in the pit area and, you know, the stewards
and all the things were involved.
But, you know, I probably should have waited and taken a few breaths
before I did the interview with Daryl.
It wasn't good.
It was great for us these days.
It's great for us.
Hey, Daryl Eastlake, tell me some Daryl Eastlake stories,
because I don't think we've really talked much about him on our on our pod.
And I think he was criticised a lot because he was he wasn't a detail guy,
but he wasn't there to add the detail.
He was there to add the all the hype and the and the, you know, the big voice
and the, you know, he did the weightlifting in the state of origin and all that stuff.
He grabbed attention and made you listen and tuned you in.
He was passionate.
He was enthusiastic, but obviously he's no longer with us now.
But have you got some Daryl stories?
Because seriously, the guy was literally lighter than life.
He was and a tremendous man, like for a big, big, tough looking, robust bloke.
He had a beautiful soft side to him.
He was a tremendous man.
He did a lot for me and he was really, really great, great friends with dad
for many, many years.
They had a lot of fun together, mostly with a few adult beverages on board.
He so originally he was the Central Coast Sports Announcer on 2G0,
so the local Central Coast radio station.
And he did Rugby League.
Rugby League was his game.
He was actually a really high level surf boat guy that that
had a real interest in sport.
He loved car racing.
He was he was a pretty ordinary driver.
I remember teaching him how to drive at the Grand Prix in Adelaide and he was horrible.
Like he was didn't he race a Leyland P76 somewhere over the years?
I reckon I've seen that somewhere.
I think I think he did, which if he's racing one of them.
Well, we used to call him P38 because only half a car.
Yeah. So so he was a cracker and and on the radio station,
he was always trying to get dad to advertise, you know, our tire service
and our automotive business.
Anyway, dad didn't believe that it ever worked.
So he he didn't tell the old man, but he said on on radio live.
If you've got a green car this afternoon, if you drive it to Russell
Scopes Place at Wyong, you can get a free wheel alignment.
Well, you could not believe the number of green cars that just arrived.
And he wanted to demonstrate that this works, right?
Well, he did.
And he thought the funniest thing was that he just didn't tell dad.
So so the old man's all of a sudden there's all these green cars arriving
at the tire service and the old man's going, what's going on here?
And then he's been tipped off.
And it's the sort of practical jokes they had all the time.
And those sorts of things were sort of part of growing up.
They were they were really, really close mates.
Do I remember you did some of those New Zealand
mobile five, Nissan mobile five on whatever they were called
in the mid 90s when you weren't you weren't racing in them.
And you and he called them for Kiwi TV, though.
We didn't get those in Australia since there's a few VHS tapes.
Yeah, I could only imagine he would have been more fun.
He would have been fun to call with.
Yeah, or hanging out with for a while or totally.
I mean, the calling got in the way of a big weekend.
Then the car exactly, exactly.
He was a lot of fun to to hang out with and you as you correctly point out,
it wasn't it wasn't really the whole lot of the weekend doing the races.
It was hanging around at the bar with him.
He had a big sense of adventure, young Baz.
Nicely put, nicely put.
So we're at this same point in time, the laser stuff.
I wanted to talk to you about a Supra.
Kind of important now that we got we got a Geo Supra racing in supercars
who would have thought that we'd we get to that point one day.
But how does the link for you to Peter Williamson come to be
and you end up driving that Supra with him in?
So that's 86.
Yes. So dad and Willow were really, really good mates.
They actually raced against each other in that Sun Seven series in Sydney.
So, you know, Willow had the silica and dad was in the Fork of Prey,
but they'd been mates for a long time in especially in your automotive industry.
Willow had Toyota dealerships and so they were good mates.
Peter was always sort of looking to bring some young guys through.
And so he and dad, you know, did a deal for me to come and drive that year with with Peter.
And we just supplied some tyres and stuff.
It wasn't it wasn't a massive sort of financial thing.
But as it turned out, he had a really big crash.
I only did a few laps and he crashed at the end of Conrod Strait.
And in those days, you know, the internals of the cars weren't anywhere near as
scrutinized as we currently have.
And the fire extinguisher actually come loose and hit him in the face.
Car was written off so that we didn't get to start at all.
But yeah, I did some driving.
I principally did a fair bit of testing at Aura Park with it.
I mean, I really liked it.
It was it for me just a massive sort of step up for for what I was doing.
And and probably it formed the basis for me understanding what the what the next step
looked like in terms of what the cars felt like.
And, you know, they were on cross-ply tyres then.
So we hadn't gone to radials yet.
There was a lot of conjecture about what was going to happen with radial tyres.
I mean, I know that sounds really weird, but that's exactly what it was.
They were cross-ply dumb ops.
So when radial tyres come along and all that stuff, fortunately,
I got to drive for Fred at the end of that year, basically,
it was September 86.
I moved to Melbourne, so I was 19.
And the following year, I did the Nissan Gazelle series in the two letters championship.
So that was a really nice foray for me to get into those sorts of cars
and and probably have a little bit of an apprenticeship that wasn't, you know,
too wild or too difficult in terms of trying to acclimatise yourself to, you know,
more powerful, more demanding cars.
Do you remember racing that Supra at the Sanddown 500 in 1986?
And I guess this is the first time on the grid with Brock and Moffat and
Grice and Johnson and Riches and, you know, we'll be here naming them all day.
But do you remember that as a real, I mean, you've talked a bit about your
first touring car championship round when you drove for the Nissan team.
But because it's not part of the championship back in those days,
we talk so much championship now, because everything counts back in those days.
There was all sorts of other events that weren't part of the championship per se.
So they kind of slipped through the cracks a little bit.
But how does that sit in your memory bank from back in the day?
What sticks out?
Were you we overawed?
Were you thrilled to be there?
Was it a combination of everything? Yeah.
Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it.
I mean, that's what it was.
It's all of a sudden he's a foray into the highest level racing that there was.
And and Peter Wimson was actually a really good driver.
I mean, a lot of people didn't didn't really because he wasn't in the open series that much.
Probably didn't get to see him at his best, but he was one of the best drivers
in the country at the time.
So for me, just to be able to compare myself against them and then be on track,
you know, when when, you know, the superstars were out there, as you as you point out,
it's actually quite humbling.
You think back about, you know, how that works and and and there's little things like that.
You know, I remember very clearly then coming out of that into the into the gazelle
and then and then in 88 in the wet at Sand Down, Glenn and I were the two fastest,
you know, I wasn't driving those those cars all the time then.
But in the rain at Sand Down, Glenn and I were the two fastest cars.
You know, Jimmy Richards was right with us.
And and those sorts of things, they're really symbolic because you you use them
as little measures, little milestones of, you know, am I driving the things OK?
You know, what do I really compare like?
And in those sorts of conditions on a wet weather day at Sand Down,
it's pretty low grip and pretty hard.
So that was that was one.
What was that car like to drive?
I mean, you look back at if you took that super of 1986 versus
Chas Mostert, Rottenwood, Andro-Homegartner,
whichever the Toyota likes now and you park the the super supercar next to it.
I mean, they were super.
That's about it, though.
You look at the the Group A cars at the time and the interiors,
it's nothing to them.
They're very basic cars, which when you compare to what we've had since.
Wow, it's crazy.
Yeah, well, I the most stark thing for me with that is I did a
thing with Alan Heafy in a GDR just just recently last year.
And when I got in, I just like the like a race car.
Yeah, I just went, oh, my God, like there's no bars.
You know, I mean, torsional rigidity, obviously, was something
that we didn't we didn't value that much.
I know we did later.
But but in that time to think about how fast that car was, for instance,
and what it what it did in terms of just the interior safety.
Extraordinary and going.
I mean, when you think about it, the really the top speed
and the areas where you're going fast at Bathurst, for instance, in a GDR,
you know, almost exactly the same as what we do now.
Yeah, so and with no aero, you know, so you don't know what you don't know.
Small attire.
So all those things.
So you sort of think, you know, what does it look like?
We never even thought about it, noons.
No, no, this wasn't even on my radar.
No, it's funny, isn't it?
It's funny, isn't it?
You talked about racing in the rain before.
And I think that was practice at sand and with you and Glenn in those
GDSR or HR 31, what do you call it?
The same thing, but they did different names.
Yeah, it's kind of the English language.
You have a lot of words that are the same, but it's built differently.
What is when you fast forward down the line, when I think of wet,
when I think of accidents, when I think of what's that stuff?
We haven't talked about Eastern Creek 95 on this podcast
and you've talked about it a bit over the journey.
But is that one of those ones that is the biggest crash of your career
by far, straight away, no other podium finishes?
Because when you look at the aftermath of that car,
what prompted me is the discussion around the interiors of cars at that time.
When you look at the wreck of that Windfield car,
it's at 31 years ago now, it also looks unbelievably nude.
And until you have an accident like that, you don't you don't look at certain things.
But what did you learn out of that that you applied for later on?
Oh, well, I mean, we were testing that day for Yokohama
and it obviously got the drag racing compound on turn one.
And it just, you know, fired off the road at ridiculous speed.
And and because it fired off the road and then made the grass,
there were concrete barriers that we shouldn't have ever been there.
I mean, circuit safety is deep on the grass,
not way back at the concrete wall perimeter of the track.
These were concrete blocks on the grass in the runoff area, like halfway down
on the bitumen drag strip part off to the left, off the grass.
Yeah. So extraordinary.
And up to this point, and even the doctors and everyone I saw as a specialist
with it, I I don't remember going off the road.
So it's the last thing you remember.
I remember turning into the corner and losing control and going
going to the edge of the road.
But then when it made the grass, I can't I can't remember.
You remember everything in the lead up.
You remember you're about turning in the crashes.
They don't think they don't remember lunch time.
And that's about it.
But you remember right up until the point where Neil was going to
go in hard and it was going fast.
So it was like, that was the biggest shunt I had.
But I couldn't buy a mile.
I was in West Mead.
10 days or two weeks or something.
I broke a couple of vertebrae and ribs and.
And had, you know, really serious concussion and stuff.
I had to get my dad to trick the neurologist with the cards.
You know, he'd put cards up with whatever number of card and the old man to be in
the background going five, you know, doing all these things.
Because there's only one.
I'd still be there.
So yeah, so that was that was the biggest shunt.
And but to your point, the interior of those cars, if you remember,
they basically come straight out of group A.
So the way that we built those original supercars.
So that was the start of the 1993 season.
Those cars were just basically the same sort of build quality.
They didn't have the big side intrusion in them.
They didn't have big crossbars in them.
You didn't even have the wraparound seats at that stage.
No, none of that.
Well, that's actually what happened.
So the seat mount was effectively a seat.
Mounting to the floor.
It tore those bolts out.
So I was actually laying in the back of the car.
Oh, when they came to get you.
Yeah. When do you when does your memory kick back in?
Only back at the hospital.
Oh, you don't know anything about getting out.
Right. No.
So so the seat breaks free, breaks free.
And like that was the severity of the impact.
Like it tore the mounts out of the floor.
And I was I was effectively in the back.
So yeah, so a lot of what we learned from that.
Because now, you know, now you're talking about this
to the start of 1995.
Yeah.
So the build quality hadn't changed very much.
And then if you think about what happened from that time on,
the cars actually did improve.
You think the HRT cars say for for lounge in 96.
That was a completely different build.
This is when the bar started.
That's when all the bars started going in and, you know, a lot more.
A lot more work was being done on on shazzy rigidity, torsional rigidity.
So we checked every car and and a lot of work was done just from a
simple safety perspective at that stage.
So that a lot of the reasoning for being further back was was essentially that,
you know, being further from the from the accident.
How did you get yourself back?
I mean, obviously your dad helped a little bit clearly.
But how did you get you missed the first round
of the touring car championship at Sandown?
So this was we should point out this is at Eastern Creek.
Not this is the old Winfield triple challenge.
This was the start of the year, the drags, the bikes, the car racing.
That was the last time that that was held.
Cigarette advertising went away at the end of that year.
I think this was on a Thursday, wasn't it?
It was like a private practice before the actual race meeting kicked in the next day.
Yep. So this is late January.
You're literally rating the clock to defend your crown
because you're the reigning champ from 94.
You can't defend it because you can't do the first round.
So did you even get close to starting?
I mean, was it even an effort just to make it back for round two?
Yeah, look, I I did.
I went out
to Calder and honestly, as soon as the car just right over a bump,
I couldn't breathe. It was so it was so bad.
And there's just no way I was going to be able to start.
So then post Sandown, so I was an interested observer at the first round
of grumpy, frustrated drivers with the translation.
I think that's a better definition.
You should more accurate. Yeah, exactly.
And and then I come back for Tasmania.
So we did go out
and drive at Calder.
And I had like big
reprotector thing that was like a compression bandage thing
that went around my waist and did as much to try to absorb any of the forces.
But once you know, I mean, once you're in the car, it's pretty good, but I, you know, I
I qualified in the front row of the group. It should have been pole, actually, at Tasmania.
There you go. So no, no, so it was it was really good.
I mean, the car up I
I was happy that I qualified well, bowing, knocked me off just for pole.
And and then I ended up leading the race, you know, at the start of that one.
So it was like it was just refreshing to be back.
And and in some ways, I mean, people don't talk about this stuff very much.
And there's lots of reasons why.
But in the course of a career, you are going to have some shunts, right?
That's just a fact of life.
It can be mechanical failure like it was for the GDR when I crashed in Adelaide.
It can be your own, your own, you know, silliness or or out of control on us, whatever that is.
But when you when you actually ascertain, so I just at that point in a blender was
pregnant with Mitch,
there's a lot of things that you put into perspective when those things happen.
So, you know, the family changes for me, I just effectively bought my first house.
You know, family things were happening.
Big shut like that.
Restricted me from being able to go and
win the championship again and maintain that title.
There was a lot of things to contemplate.
But what it does is it gives you a level of maturity and it gives you a level of.
Of sensibility.
You you think about the risks.
I mean, I used to and and that's one of the things I miss the most.
It's it's it's actually doing something that's so wild.
That's so close to having an accident.
I mean, I dream about car racing every night, right?
Because I just I just it's just been my life.
And in getting in a car and driving it to the absolute limit.
There's nothing better, nothing like it.
And you don't get that.
You don't get that level of satisfaction if you haven't actually tasted how bad it can be.
And that's why I always talk about, you know, you hear me all the time.
I'm sure punters get cranky with me saying, you know, that great racetracks
who got consequences, you need unforgiving layouts.
But even some of the non-great ones have consequences too.
They can bite you when you're not really expecting it.
Totally, totally.
And and, you know, that that level of unforgiving nature, you know,
you're like, I mean, it's epitomized by Bathurst.
I mean, if you do a lap and there were times that I would say to the guys,
I would finish a lap at Bathurst and I would say,
you could give me 10 sets of tyres and I can't drive that car any faster,
right, which is is exactly what your joe is.
And it's the thing that that sets you apart.
What about the physical element you've touched on, really, the mental element
and a little bit of a wake up call to go, wow, there's actually stuff to lose here
in life by that stage.
Physically, what flowed on from that?
Have you had any long term repercussions from it?
Are there things that you're mindful of now that you go,
oh, actually, that might be traced back to there?
Or was it a case of back on the horse, back to car racing?
Things feel OK, press on.
Well, at the time, that's exactly what you do.
You know, you basically not have to.
Well, you do, but you don't even want the others to know that you might be sore.
Right. So so I've already beaten me to the next point.
So half the thing is that you just don't want your competition
to think there's any frailty.
So I was I was making out like everything was completely fine, but he wasn't.
But yeah, you just got to get back on the horse and get cracking again.
But to your point.
So I when I rolled the GDR at at Adelaide,
it basically forced the roof down and compressed my spine at that point
and popped the disc out between L4 and L5.
So I've had that basically the whole time.
And then the other vertebra injury from 95 was at T8 and T9.
And those those two are cracked.
So yes, so so they're always, you know, for that sort of stuff,
even through the end of my career, always had to be really mindful
of of how much force you could put on those things
and try to minimize any of the stuff you did to make the seat
as good as you could, for instance, was really pivotal to to ensuring
that you could you could do it with some longevity and not be too knocked around by it.
But yeah, I mean, physically, I mean, the one that we, you know,
I mean, we probably on the bad list of talking about concussions or whatever.
But even just the whiplash stuff of if you fire in the fence at Adelaide.
Oh, God, if you stop quick, the forces are massive.
I mean, the the the noise it makes when your neck and all that,
everything's ricocheting around.
I mean, they're they're just not they're not nice.
So yeah, I mean, when when Tony's wheeling me up to the bar at the local
RSL, oh, that'll be the thing that will that'll be my neck injuries
or my lower back stuff going. That'll be what it is.
That'll be what it is.
When you see I mean, we've had that situation this year with supercars
with cool suits, you know, Will Brown and Brock at Sydney, the first round.
And there's been some other ongoing ones.
It's not a new thing that's been going on for a long, long time.
And seeing what happened has happened to say, Greg Crick,
who had that issue with the 12 hour Mercedes all these years ago,
that's really affected him.
Were there any times in your career where the heat really got I mean,
Adelaide was hot every year and it was, you know, the teams did a good job
of channeling the exhaust differently and other things to help with the driver calling.
There were just some guys who their body just couldn't cope.
The bigger body blokes of Stevie Johnson tended to always be up here with her
well, but were there times that you remember being pulled out of a car?
God, this is this is nuts.
Why are we doing this?
It's crazy because when you look back at some of that stuff,
I worry for some of you and your colleagues who it's going to take time
for that stuff to come through and trap where you've barbecued yourself,
where you've overheated or you hit a Benz or whatever it might be takes time.
But it's up to flesh out just before it's got this situation.
Yeah, I mean, there definitely will be legacy stuff
that you just know that that's going to affect you for sure.
And I can feel it now if, you know, if I don't exercise
and I don't sort of half keep myself right, it's it's harder and harder.
So those things, well, it's at some stage,
you know, they'll snowball into into issues.
They've no doubt.
But more more than a hit.
So if you think about the worst ones, we're always, say,
Clipsil early in the season and the physicality of a Clipsil.
Two and a quarter, two and a half hour race.
And the street circuit component of that,
Nernse is the bit that people don't really get because, you know,
you're taking big risks, you're you're driving the wheels off the thing
the whole time, it's it's like a big long sprint race, basically.
And I remember from the lower back stuff,
so I arguably should have won the championship in 99,
but I I lost all the feeling in my right leg at the end of that race on the Saturday
and and ended up crashing out because I was driving the whole time with my left foot.
You're right. Right foot break.
So you accelerate and break, that's like gone and had absolutely no feeling in it.
So so all I was doing is I was driving for four or five laps prior to that.
I said to them on the radio, I've lost all feeling my right leg.
I'm driving it with my left foot and and clearly you're not going to be as far.
So I started to drop a bit of time.
So then you're getting a bit desperate and you're trying a bit too hard.
And I just overrun turn 11 at the back of the pits and fired myself in the fence.
A little bit of a tender there and stopping though is not an option.
No, well, you just I'll find a way that 100 percent.
Exactly. So and I was I remember being so cranky with myself
because I just and as it turned out, it was the seat padding under
sort of my hamstring area that basically blocked off the circulation.
And we and we fixed it out of mad physio and all these seat gurus come in
and we as Tom went by, we made it so good that I never had that drama again.
But that was that was catastrophic.
And that was when Adelaide was worth like multiples of points
totally versus the regular rounds, which sort of got cleaned up in the following
years and everything kind of became worth about the same.
So that was that was one of those scenarios.
Widing back. So it really it's amazing.
So your first race in a car, obviously you did carts for a long time, was 1984.
That's right. Yep.
Actually once we're on sports at Emory Park in the rain.
I was going to say, what do you remember your first race?
Absolutely. I remember it was clear as yesterday.
So we had a drama with the car.
One of the guys when they were unloading it
didn't drive on the driver off the trailer properly and plucked the exhaust off.
So we didn't qualify.
So by the time that we got it up on stands and put the exhaust back on
and all that stuff, we missed the session, didn't qualify.
So dad knew Ivan Stibbard really well.
And he went who was the guy that used to run the ARDC and ran Emory Park.
And a gentleman by the name of John Ford was sort of the clock of course.
So he went to see them on 17 years of age.
So he's looking for dispensation here because you haven't qualified.
Yep. And he wants to start me, which so the great thing I love about this,
it's about risk. Right.
So we are a society obsessed with mitigating risk.
That's good. And this for your son in a Toronto sports sedan
in a field of roughly 20 cars, I think there's 17 cars,
you're prepared to start him in his first race
in the rain from the back of the field at Emory Park.
Like Emory Park in the rain, unbelievably wild.
The water used to run off the hill, you know, in in rivers of water
across the kink coming up past the control tower.
Like it's a wild racetrack in the dry. Right.
So but dad's dad's view of that was and has always been to that competency.
So he was confident that I could drive the car well enough
to put me at the back of the field and set off. No problem.
Now, my mum was contrary to that view.
I was going to say not on board.
Exactly. That there was there was certainly different feelings in that world.
But but dad had complete faith
that I could drive the car well enough to do that.
So we start from the back of the field.
I ran six with a fourth fastest lap time.
Was this on TV?
I was going to have been what it was a names card around here.
Yeah. Yeah. But yeah.
So not in not in 84.
And I remember the race.
I remember absolutely every lap and yep.
No, no, no problem.
And drove off and the old man was high five in me because
I didn't crash and be a come through the field even better.
And and to, you know, to to to finish six from the back of the field.
And and again, same things apply like all things in the rain.
You can't see.
So you could in the back.
It was exactly.
So, you know, in the end, in a sports at Anfield to do that,
you know, I mean, he didn't even think it was a risk.
And that was that was vindicated.
Was that a bug one car before or after?
No, that was a winter bottom car.
Winter bottom car. That's right.
So that was Jim winter bottom, who had the XU1 in Sydney.
Doomside dad and I drove down, picked it up, was green.
And we certainly changed the culprits quickly.
Green cars are unlucky.
Right. Exactly. That was that was what the theory was.
So we pulled it apart.
Barry Seton did the engine for it.
Dad had a lot of componentry that was from Bob Morris's
XU1s and stuff, and dad originally raced XU1s in 1974.
So 10 years on, it wasn't sort of really dissimilar.
And so we changed all the all the springs and shocks,
had all our own wheels made, did all the stuff,
had Barry do the engine.
And and that year in the sports and an race at Orham Park,
it would have been 30 cars are qualified on the front row.
I agreed with all the V8 blocks and and we had a lot of fun, fun.
It's wild to think when you think about it.
So it's 84 within two and a bit years.
You're lining up on the grid with at the sand and 500
from your first ever car race of any sort, not just of touring cars.
Really, it doesn't happen these days, that sort of stuff.
Like it's kids are in carts for a long, long time.
They go through the junior rungs of the later before they get to,
you know, the top tier.
It's wild when you think back and compare to now.
Yeah. Yeah. Look, look, it is.
And then and then, you know, you you sit back and you watch
Kimmy out nearly on the weekend and you and you look at what can be done
at certain ages and stages.
And yeah, like I didn't even think of it.
In fact, I thought the progression was too slow.
I was massively, massively frustrated by not.
Two years, not too long.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I was frustrated by it.
So so, you know, I think and that's always that's
part of being the beast when you when you you're aspiring to do something
and you want to do things well and you and you've got your heart and you
and everything set on on, you know, making a career out of the thing and pressing on.
It was it was I remember, you know, really clearly.
And a lot of that is an attitude thing.
You know, you've heard me say before, you know,
there's an old saying my grandfather used to say, you know,
you're much better off with young blogs to be able to go woo woo woo
then giddy up, up and that's
that's certainly what sort of dad did with me.
It was mostly sort of trying to try to contain my contain my enthusiasm
a little bit, which which is sort of something that you're probably better off
to have that that mechanism than the other way around.
Yeah, jumping around a little bit because that's what I tend to do.
Mm hmm.
I've written a lot about HRT cars over the years.
A couple of books, research some very heavily.
You've driven a lot of them over your time and one in a lot of them.
And there's always something new, though, that you learn or you hear or that slips
out that didn't get mentioned in previous eras or books or or researchers.
But what can you tell me when I say Project 590?
Does it spring to mind to you?
Yeah, I remember it.
It only just popped up for me recently that this was an engine program
at Clayton Holden Racing Team, very dominant days of HRT.
But there was developed that you'd ever stood still.
So this was an engine development program that we haven't really heard about before.
But now we've heard about it.
So we have to talk about it.
Yeah, well, it was in an era where we're and worldwide, this was a trend
where they were basically trying to reduce the reciprocating mass.
And and they were doing lots of things worldwide, if you want, especially
to put all the weight, for instance, in the center of the crankshaft
and all the reciprocating mass was being reduced.
So just in terms of what it did was that on the dyno, it didn't really
say a different number, but it allowed the thing to accelerate faster
because of that reciprocation.
So we had effectively qualifying engines being done.
And if you have a look at the engine that might have been in Murph's thing
for the lap of the gods, that might have been a pretty good engine.
Might have been.
Might have been.
So was this a dedicated engine program?
Was there involvement from TWR in?
Oh, there was a lot of discussion with what they were doing.
But obviously we were doing our own thing.
But there was, yeah, there was a lot of work going on.
And one of the things about cost, when you think about, you know,
we were right in that period of time when things like cost containment
were being discussed and, you know, they have qualifying engines
in our cars of the day, probably didn't make a lot of sense.
But but it made a lot of sense if you were thinking about trying to get a result.
If you're looking for an upper hand on everybody else.
So these were, in essence, special engines.
This was a dedicated program to create these items to get another advantage.
Totally. Yeah.
And then that, I mean, that was going on with lots of different things.
And if you think about the phasing of all that stuff, so.
You know, when the current supercar series was really promulgated,
the 1993 version of the cars had Holden engines and Chev engines.
So Larry continued on with the Holden engine.
And then over a period of time, it become the Chev engine.
And then as the Chev engine and the Ford engine actually got to be,
in terms of specification, much closer together, there were lots of things
that were done to make the cylinder head designs and the inlet manifold.
Larry actually drew up the rules.
So he he come up with a quite a scientific way of of of basically limiting
the amount of downstream effect you could have on an inlet manifold, for instance.
There were lots of people doing lots of other things.
We were the we were one of the first at Gibson's, for instance,
to have the engines on the third harmonic, which meant that
for that race at nine in 95 at Bathurst, not only did we have
all our own inlet manifolds and all that being done, but not only did we have
a car that was arguably the fastest car, it was going to have one less fuel stop
than everybody else in 95.
So there were lots of things going on in that time.
It was actually really from an engineering perspective.
It was a really interesting period of Australian touring car racing.
There was stuff happening every would do stuff everywhere, everywhere.
And and then the correlation, you know, at the board, say at Tiga,
with, you know, us Holden guys sitting on one side
and the Ford Blacks on the other side and trying to emulligate a different
engine every time or trying to emulligate a different part
or trying to agree on what the right process was.
And I mean, man, they were pretty volatile days.
Yeah, full on the wall stuff for some of those meetings.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, those notes would have been good out of these meetings.
Just probably I would have thought while we're in that sort of era.
We haven't, I don't think really talked about it much, but it's been talked about.
General Bathurst O6.
I was
HRT PR actually at that point, because the previous fellow had left
and decided to go to FPV and was thus removed from the office very quickly
that day, Tim Permanent's office in Albert Park.
There's been a lot said about that race, about the start, obviously.
We know how it finishes with Jack Perkins parked in the rear end of of your car.
On the record, for sure, 100 percent marks gave
what the fuck happened on the grid that day, because
I've heard a million and one theories about it all.
But what happens from inside your car on the warm up
on the build up to the grid to the aftermath from the horse's mouth?
Well, there is no story.
That's where all the goons have been saying, you know,
it was in the wrong gear or, you know, the third gear.
Yeah, just ridiculous.
So you've got to go back a little bit, because it was obviously a really pressure-filled week.
It was not long after the passing of Peter Brock and we were the red hot favorites.
We had a tribute bonnet done for the livery of the car for that race.
The lead up could not have gone better.
You know, we were fast, fast, fastest in every session, qualified pole position,
shortest price favorites in the history of the great race.
And I remember saying to Garth Tander, as we drove into the track together,
you know, five o'clock or whatever it was, what will the day bring today?
GT, you know, and it was one of those.
So and I think that's one of the things in life.
You contemplate every time that you drive in on a Sunday morning to
to Mount Panorama, because it is, it can be the most rewarding, most beautiful,
incredible event, and it can be the most soul-destroying, you know,
destroying is the word that got me, because that's what it's like.
It just it can smash you.
And yeah, so basically my rule was in those days to not heat the rear tires up very much.
So on the out lap, you know, you're minimizing the fuel usage,
you come up, you form up, get in the car, warm up, let it come back for the grid.
I was never, I never, because I always wanted to have a bit of wheel spin rather than clutch slip
or bog it down.
And so it was, and this is absolutely factual, the clutch that we won the 2005.
For 2005 when we won, it had a brand new clutch in it.
They were, you know, 12 grand of the day.
Tilton AP.
AP clutches, yep.
So that clutch was the clutch that was shimmed after the win at 05, put on the bench and put
back in the car for the 2006 race.
Because it was bathers, full tanks, brand new, good to go.
We already knew it would do it.
It hardly wore in the 05 race.
So it was pristine, a multiple to be brand new.
So we did that up to the line, did all my normal stuff.
And even at Bathurst, I never used to even preload the clutch very much.
I used to just leave it off the adjustment point.
So red light on, first slot, brought the clutch up.
And as I just brought it up, as the light went out, I went to move it.
And it didn't actually wheel spin, which was quite a surprise.
So I redid the clutch.
Yeah, you can see in the video, it goes again.
Yeah, yeah.
And then I redid the clutch and went again.
And then it just buzzed up with just this mad level of clutch slip.
And I just reported to the guys, I said, this is a drama.
On the way up the hill, it started to get a little bit better.
But again, I don't know whether it would have recovered and you would have been last,
obviously.
We didn't get to see what would have evolved.
But yeah, it was not anything different to what I would normally do on a Bathurst start.
And no warning.
No warning.
Nothing on the warm-up lap that makes you go.
So a little bit weird.
Nothing, not one bit.
Did you ever get to the bottom of what went wrong?
Or is there anything left to look at to drive it through?
The clutch was half-fried when the guys looked at it.
It's a little bit like you're looking at accident damage.
What caused it?
Where do you start?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Literally where do you start?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, there it is.
There it is.
It's on the record.
It's on the record.
And that's where we're going to stop and pause right now.
I might chat with Scafi.
But good news.
Part two is loaded and ready to roll.
You can go and press the ignition button now wherever you're listening to this podcast.
There's plenty more great stories.
And you'll hear MS as he reflects on those late HRT years.
It's really interesting stuff.
I'll catch you there with the VO2 podcast,
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About this episode
Mark Skaife (Part 1) is framed by motorsport calendar talk and the return of the Winton Festival of Speed in 2026. The conversation then dives into how race programs and engineering evolved—“qualifying engines” built for response, and how rules and cost containment shaped special hardware. Skaife recounts early racing battles, rebuilds after crashes, and the way wet grip and chassis priorities changed over time. The episode also sets up Eastern Creek 95 as a later, in-depth crash story.
HE’S back! Kicking off the new season of the V8 Sleuth Podcast powered by Parramatta Toyota, Mark Skaife is back for his third appearance with Noonz, once again retelling some mega stories from his four decades in the sport.
In this two-part special, the five-time champion talks about the prospect of Supercars on the Central Coast, his formative days in the sport, driving a Toyota Supra at Bathurst, the current TV situation, Darrell Eastlake memories, his massive 1995 Eastern Creek testing shunt, some special programs at HRT, and that Bathurst 1000 race start in 2006.
The second leg covers when he knew he was finished as a full-time driver, leadership, and his latter years at the helm of the Holden factory team, plus being first on the scene of multiple major accidents, both on the road and on the racetrack.
Buckle up, it’s story time, and Skaifey is at his very best!
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