Ice Break Racing V8 Ute team claims Championship victory.
A lot of media post Homebush is already in circulation. Personally I don’t think it always comes across 100% - it’s like Chinese Whispers - so now I have the chance to give you my version first hand!
After a busy season everyone feels somewhat relieved it’s over. It didn’t come easily, but the hard work and effort applied by the entire IBR Team carried us through the season. I strongly believe it was the drive and dedication demonstrated by the team when things didn’t go our way, that won Ice Break the championship. In motorsport we seem to occasionally have highs but more regularly have challenges and low points, so it’s very important to minimise damage during bad runs and put in extra effort to overcome the challenging hurdles thrown in front of you. One thing I have learnt during my career is that without the bad days you don’t really know how great the good days are.
After being out of Australian motorsport for 18 months, I was starting to think I would never get another drive, let alone win one of the toughest championships in my first full year. Team that with such talented competition with guys such as Cameron McConville, Nathan Pretty, Grant Johnson and David Seiders and their engineers, all of which are top of their fields. Guys like; Luke Seiders, Walkinshaw Performance, Dave Murphy, and the one and only John "Barrel" Patchos with numerous V8 Ute titles under his belt. These guys are what I call outstanding and talented drivers with equally as good engineers. We identified them as the teams to beat. We knew Ryal Harris, now with a great team, great car and awesome engineers in Joe Devries and Cam Wilson, coupled with a high profile new sponsor, VIP Petfoods, had been blessed with all the tools anyone needed to win a championship. But being in the series for 6 years, he had developed that bin it or win it, or trophy or the trees driving style as Grant Denyer described his driving at Bathurst. That type of attitude is great for your own ego but doesn’t win championships so my team told me it would only be a matter of time before he would crash out of contention. That point was made to me again on Sunday night. Harris knew the drama we were having and cost himself any chance at all of catching us in the championship whilst leading race 2. He had no one to blame but himself. The kerbs were the same for us all and he was clearly out in front still monstering the kerbs unnecessarily. My team called it a true rookie mistake to keep punishing a car when it is not needed. That is one of the things I have relearnt this year and that’s to think and listen to the team on the radio. Darren has always said to me "There are plenty of great drivers out there. Drivers who can out drive the tyres, the suspension and the car. These cars are effectively road cars with brakes and suspension so a little bit of mechanical sympathy goes a long way". People say it is bad luck as an excuse, but most call it rookie mistakes. One thing in racing is that you develop a style and it’s hard to change that style unless you really work at it, listen to your team and park your ego at the entry to pit lane. That’s where I’m lucky. The IBR team were always prepared to step up and go the extra mile for me and also step up and tell me when they thought I could have done something better. They have taught me in times of trouble to remain calm; being angry or flustered will generally compound the problem.
Darwinis a great example. We crashed badly in the reverse grid race 2 after being hit from behind. There was nothing left in front of the wheels, the chassis rails were bent and our championship hopes were fading away. I radioed the guys and told them it was a big one but we still had power to drive. We had someone watching the Telecast footage live and 2 people on radios, one in the pit area and one on the wall. The team member watching the telecast called that we had lost our radiator and all the coolant, the member on the wall was looking as I went past for anything that could be dangerous. Jake radioed through to me and said to finish the race at all costs. The engine was one round old and the team had made the call to toast it and finish instead of parking it to save the engine. That netted us 12 extra points we wouldn’t have got had I gone with my gut feeling and pulled over to save the engine. Even with a destroyed Ute we were prepared to drag it around the track with no front end for a further 2.5 laps to make sure we finished and gained some points! Everyone involved was then motivated to work all night and were still bolting parts on and applying stickers while I was driving the car up to the dummy grid with minutes to spare. Even the Wake Up boys jumped in as we were heading up to the start. It was at this event we were lucky to meet Simon through a fan at the track and he was prepared to open his panel shop - Streamline Collision Repair Centre – and let us use his equipment all night to get the Ute out for Sunday. Our team works with a philosophy called ‘Paying It Forward’ which basically means do something for someone without expecting something in return. Since Simon showed he was prepared to go the extra mile for people he had just met, we thought he would be an asset to our team for the rest of the season, and he has proven that he is.
If you thought Darwin sounded tough, I think my birthday was right up there as well. While I had a bit of a sleep in, the guys were up at 4.30am and heading in to Homebush on Saturday morning to fix the gearbox leak. They stripped and rebuilt the box making sure it was well sealed. We headed out to qualify which went really well and I banked 2 quick laps early before engine dramas kicked in. We put the Ice Break Holden on the front row of the grid for race one! We couldn’t risk running the Ute the same again. The guys hooked in, the engine came out and a brand new motor was fitted for race one. I got one of my best starts of the season and pulled into the lead before turn 1. The crew had done an awesome job. The Ute felt better than ever and I was full of confidence. I was pushing hard and could watch David and Ryal fighting for 2nd position in my mirror. I felt the clutch start to slip slightly on a gear change. The first thing that came to mind was that the new clutch was a dud! As the laps counted down, smoke started trailing the Ute. I made sure I got off the racing line to ensure we didn’t get a black flag or block anyone. It was obvious that we hadn’t fixed the oil leak and it was all over the clutch. I tried my hardest to nurse it along but soon enough I fell back to 2nd place as I made room and David went past, then I let Ryal through, who felt he had to give me a whack in the door on the way past. As I got slower and slower I fell back through the pack but kept circulating. I did about 6 laps and every lap I did it was getting worse. The team kept talking to me telling me to bring it home and don’t get tangled up in someone else’s accident. 6 laps felt like 100 by the time I crossed the finish line and I was flat out doing about 60kph! I felt I’d be able to jump out and run faster at the time! I knew every point we lost applied more pressure. The result was better than expected. You can have one guess where I finished the one race on my birthday, 2 engines later, a gearbox rebuild ...., Unlucky 13th! It was funny, when I returned to the pit bay. The team just laughed and said happy birthday, it can’t get any worse. Obviously we were all a little bit disappointed with that but we still salvaged a result in a tough situation. It was pretty amazing actually; the boys had already got all the gear out ready to start working on the car as soon as we got it back. Then some of our fans, Juliane, Linda Mel and Sandra came over with the most amazing birthday cake. They had made a cake the shape of an Ice Break Bottle (see the pic on our Facebook page), including all the writing on the bottle and we celebrated my birthday. That definitely lifted the team spirit. The guys started looking for the problem thinking it had to be the gearbox but we noticed that it had deposited oil on a different area telling us it was a new problem. It was clear this time that it was engine oil on the underside of the Ute. They did paper scissors rock to decide who would lay under the Ute while we ran it up to look for the leak! Truckie “Steeb” was investigating everything on the car. He cleaned the engine spotlessly and used some powder over the suspect area and fired it up. We still couldn’t find where it was coming from, and then once it was hot Steve noticed a real slight weep on a small cast aluminium plate. The aluminium plate on the new engine was porous. With that found we thought great, swap the plate off the other engine and fire a new clutch in and we’d be back in business. The mood of the team lifted but remember it was my birthday and we had finished 13th. Steve went to remove the flywheel and called out to the guys that we would need another new engine out of the truck! Everyone thought he was kidding until he started removing the engine. When pulling off the old flywheel Steve found a terminal problem with the new engine which had only done 12 laps. Steve has mucked around with a few Holden engines in his time and knew straight away this was far from ideal. Unfortunately at 10pm on Saturday night when everyone thought it was nearly time to go home and relax it was time to start pulling out the new engine after one race for the third motor to be installed for the next day. The team sent me home to rest telling me to be 100% fresh and ready to do my job and they would stay back and fit the new engine. That was done and dusted by around 2am. It turned into a very long day for everyone. At this time of the morning people came up with some interesting ideas. Check out this link to see what they got up to. We had been told we couldn’t do any burnouts or slides after the race to celebrate so the boys told me they had a new way for us to celebrate our win. The video was taken on Sunday afternoon after the technique had been fine tuned. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GqEX4kTJbE
When we looked back on the season we were consistent and had control over a majority of the year. Out of 8 rounds we were on the podium at 5 of them. We left Clipsal in 3rd, Barbagello leading, Darwin in 4th and Townsville leading and we would retain that position for the second half of the season and to win the championship with one race to go which is a true testament to how good the team I had behind me were. We also drove the entire season with the championship in mind. We know people never remember who won the races, but who won the championship and we drove accordingly. It was interesting to see that out of 26 races over the 8 rounds Ford won 17, Holden 9. Falcons claimed pole at 7 out of 8 rounds. Taking those facts into consideration I think it shows how well our team managed the season and how all of the Holden competitors had to work extremely hard to get a good result. Our team manager summed it up very early in the season. After Clipsal where we qualified 7th but were the fastest Commodore with the nearest being Nathan in 13th followed by Cameron and Grant his words still ring clear in my ears. "It looks like this is the year of the Falcon. It will be a smart Holden team that beats the Falcons to win this championship. We will work harder, drive smarter and we will win this championship mark my words". We all thought, this is his second year in motorsport and running a team and he is making a big statement like that, WOW. At no time during the season did he waiver. He would always say that we are here to win but I don’t want you guys getting lazy. This was a common saying he would use every time he lent a competitor some of our spares, or tell our guys to go and help another team that had problems if we had nothing to do. People would walk up to him and ask, "Why do you help the guys that are your biggest competition? He would always say, “What is the point of winning a championship if you’re not racing the best, and besides I don’t want these guys getting lazy." People always thought he was joking but he was serious! He would regularly say it to us. "To be the best you need to beat the best. We want to win against the best then no one can say it was handed to us”. It is something he said all year. I remember at a conference he was speaking at before the GC 600 and he said in front of 400 people "We will win the championship because we tell Chris he will win the Championship! We have a great driver, a great team and great equipment. We have all the ingredients to win and we have a great strategy to pull all three together". And to his word we did. Not once did he doubt the team we had assembled. Everyone knew what they had to do and they did it. Even now we all ask how he could be so sure. His only answer has been “You all wanted it more than the next guy and the team had the heart, the dedication and winning culture within to make it happen”. If we didn’t have one of those ingredients, it wouldn’t have happened and if he didn’t think we could win in my first full season he wouldn’t have raced in the first race. To win you need to believe in yourself and believe you are the best. He has always said to us and that’s why we do not celebrate second. “If you are happy with second at this level you will never win” I still remember him using those words at Barbagello. We had a good round and had raced side by side with Grant Johnson showing our best form so far for the year. It came down to the last race and Grant had better tyres and took the round victory. We walked into the truck and someone said to him, you must be ecstatic with that, his only reply was, "Did we win, did I add up the points wrong?" We sat down and had a team debrief. We knew Grant would be quick on his home track but we were just as quick. We both had good equipment. The only difference was that Grant and his team were able to make their tyres hang in longer than us. The decision was made to stay over in Perth and test on the Thursday with new tyres and do the exact same laps as we had done in qualifying and the 3 races with a different tyre strategy. That test day was a turning point in how we managed our tyres so we had better tyres to run hard in race three.
For myself, I think I have matured as a driver, and it is a real buzz to win the Australian Championship and the New Zealand Championship. It hasn’t been done before, let alone in the same year, so it’s nice to have that first.
We are exploring a number of opportunities for 2012. My aim is to get back into the V8 Supercar Championship Series. My mentor Darren Park believes that we have a better chance of gaining the funding to move me straight back into the main game than he has to get funding for the Fujitsu Series or Carrera Cup. Some have already said it is a big step up. He said straight out to me "You have the talent, you listen, you can bring a car home and you have honed your race craft in a pretty wild series and proved you can park your ego and bring a car home". His theory has always been not to hang it on the fence for one point and at risk of losing 32 points if it doesn’t come off. He would always rather finish with sayings like "to finish first, first you must finish". An old cliché but has proved so true for us this year. He always says if there are 2 drivers both with equal talent but one wins it or bins it he would always take the other driver. You can only fund rebuilding written off cars so often and every cent spent rebuilding is another cent not spent on developing a better car.
A special thanks firstly to Ice Break – Real Coffee, Ice Cold and Darren, for giving me a second chance to accomplish my dream. They had other drivers available to them with a higher profile and more experience than me, but they took a punt which was a risk and gave me a shot. When I asked why he picked me his only answer was, "You called me up and told me the good and the bad points, asked for a test and said you wouldn’t let me down". He too had his chance when he was younger and told me he always said he would give someone a break if he could one day. That day came and I got the chance. I still say today it was one of the best calls I have ever made. I’m happy I was able to be part of the team that won Ice Break the championship and was lucky enough to get a second chance at something I truly love. Thanks to all of our partners, Ice Break, Repco, Gull, Mack, Fast & Ezy, Sam’s Walkinshaw Performance, Excite Signs and Wholesale Suspension. Thanks to the guys in the team at the track and behind the scenes as well: Jake, Matt, Simon, Hodgy, Coxy (get well), Tony, Frank, Hayden, Jesse, Andy, Danielle and Hayley. The last few years have been an amazing journey for me that I can’t really put into words. I joined a brand new team that had only run one race before. People told me I was crazy to join a brand new team that had so little motorsport experience. I would have taken a drive in a billy cart to get back into Australian Racing. The team was right behind me like we had been together for years from the word go with clear direction that the rest of the year was a platform to win in 2011. I loved the fact that there was a definite plan to win and I was now a part of that plan. I think the show that the team has put on this year has been second to none from our pit bay to car prep. I think they are the best team any driver could have beside them.
In summing up, I’d like to thank everyone that has been a part of my comeback. This year has been amazing and you have all been a part of my journey.
Cheers,
