When Jason Bright joined Holden from Ford and Craig Lowndes went the other way, it caused a commotion. In the two party system that is the V8 Super car series, few have dared to cross the floor. Other sports might call such movements transfers. In this sport, they’re called defections. This is considered major betrayal, unlike that Cheryl Kernot business. All she did was step out of her go-kart Democrat party to occupy a passenger’s seat in the big league.

Most fans follow brands, and some actually follow drivers. The popular, unassuming Bright brought his share of fans with him to Holden along with his considerable driving skill. But there’s another key to his success. Three days after his last interview with me, he took out the gruelling Clipsal 500 in Adelaide in 2001. It was his last big win. Three days after this interview, he clean swept Winton, and no doubt spent that evening rummaging through his stuff for my business card.

I last spoke to you just before your great win at Adelaide last year. Things haven’t gone along sensationally well since then, especially this year.

Well, we’ve probably got the fastest cars in the series. We just don’t have the results to show for it. But I’m happy. Adelaide we led all the way and crashed with a couple of laps to go. Phillip Island we got penalised by the stewards, Canberra we got penalised by the stewards. Eastern Creek we blew an engine. So it hasn’t been a great start to the year, but since then, we’ve got back up to second in the championship. The sad thing is, Skaifie’s got a massive lead through everyone else falling off. He hasn’t put a foot wrong. We can all just sit and wonder what might have been. But we’re still aiming for second, so that we get first and second. It’ll be a tough last few rounds though.

You and Skaife lost points last year because a mechanic did a burnout after the race. What the hell was that about?

At Eastern Creek. It was a tough period in motor sport. There’d just been a death at Eastern Creek in the drags, and it was frowned upon and they wanted to make an example of it. I think it was a good bit of PR for our governing body.

Are they like the AFL or NRL? I mean, are you allowed to comment on decisions you think are ridiculous?

Oooh. They don’t really like it. Yeah – if you said the wrong things they could do something. But if they’re not doing a good enough job, you’ve got to comment. They don’t mind making a point out of when a driver does something wrong. If we make a mistake we lose money or points, but they’ve consistently made bad decisions in the past. All drivers know it, all the teams know it, but there’s not much you can do about it.

You’ve said you’d prefer Indy car or F1 to what you’re doing now. Does that mean you haven’t achieved your ambitions in motor sport?

I do enjoy open wheelers. I’m lucky to have been able to drive Champ cars. If I’d raced touring cars and never really got to Champ cars, I’d be really happy with my career. I’m still making a living out of motor sport.

When you did the Champ car thing, you raced against guys like Zanardi, Villeneuve, Andretti. How do you think you compare?

When I stepped in at the Gold Coast meet in 2000, which is one of the toughest, we were in front with ten laps to go, so we didn’t make fools of ourselves. It was a hard race to just jump in and do.

Wouldn’t it be great to create a category that allows the best drivers in all categories to compete, just based on their driving skills? 

It’d be great, just so hard to do. Every driver around the world in their professional categories have contracts with their own manufacturer and they’re pretty restrictive on what you can do. From my experience of racing in different categories, the quick guys are as quick as anyone else. It’d be great to pull a few guys from every series and put them in the same category of car.

What’s the hairiest part of any track you’ve been on?

Oval racing in America is by far the most exhilarating, because the speeds are so high. There are some tracks where you average 290-300 kph. Outside of it is a concrete wall. Make a little mistake and you’re gonna have a big crash. If something goes wrong, you’re gonna have a pretty hard ding.

Talk about hairy – what’s the closest shave you’ve ever had? And has there ever been a more blatant attempt in your experience to introduce mention of a sponsor – Gillette, in this case – into a question?

Mmmm. No, that was good. My closest shave was on the oval in America. What was the simplest of spin put me in the wall at 160k. It was probably a slow crash for an oval, but with the angle of the impact and everything, it made a mess of my back. It created a haematoma and my entire back filled up with fluid and blood. In hospital that night, on a stretcher with a neck brace and suspected broken back, I spent the time wondering ‘what the hell am I in this sport for?’ But as soon as they told me it wasn’t broken I wanted to try and race the next day. I checked out at seven the next morning and got the team to pick me up, but they weren’t going to let me race with all the drugs they’d pumped into me.

What do you think about Brocky’s comeback?

I respected him a lot when he retired. He could have gone on a few more years. But he stepped aside and opened up the doors for a lot of other guys. He can still drive. It’s not something you forget. I’d be very surprised if he won his tenth Bathurst.

Is it like any other sport? Hard to come back?

Sure. Since he retired in ’97, a lot of things have changed.  The series has gone gangbusters since then. Back then there were four or five good teams. Now there’s ten top teams. In ’98 there were about four paid drivers. Now there are fifteen or twenty. It only got its name, V8 Super cars, back then.

What’s the big mystery about car setup?

You’ve got half the field Holden and half Fords. Everyone’s got very similar equipment. Everyone’s got the same running gear, same horsepower. All on the same tyres. There’s only a handful of shock absorber brands. If our information goes down the road to another team, when we’ve put a lot of work into developing the set up we’ve got, they’re getting it for free and automatically their car’s as good as ours.

One of the biggest factors is shock absorbers. A lot of money goes into those. You don’t want that information going down the road and try protect it by hanging onto your employees. HRT are very good at that, and other teams aren’t always.

Do you get industrial espionage?

Most teams are protected. You do get it, but there’s a lot of money in motor sport. They put in the big hours and they want their team to have the winning advantage. They don’t want to give anything away to anyone.

So in what ways are guys like you and Skaife a team?

At the end of the day, the guy you want to beat most is your team mate. He’s got the same equipment as you, so he’s the one you gauge yourself against. But everyone gets on. We can race hard all day and even swap a bit of paint, but they can still buy you a beer that night.

 Who are the blokes you find are most enjoyable to be around?

They’re all a bunch of pricks, really. Well, not really. I guess I’m a little biased but I get to spend a bit of time with the Holden guys. But it’s something Ford never used to do as well. But Rick and Todd Kelly, Garth Tander and Ingoll are all great to be around. But I’m still mates with Steve Johnson and he drives a Ford.

You guys give out a lot of autographs…

That’s all thanks to Brocky and Johnson. They set a bit of a standard. You do sign a lot of autographs over a weekend. You get there on Thursday and by Sunday night, you might have signed 3 or 4 thousand. You wouldn’t give up the fan base. We’ve got the best fans of any sport. They’ll stand out there in freezing cold in Canberra or stinking hot in Darwin.

…whose autographs would you seek out if you had a chance?

I don’t know if you mean alive or not, but my hero as a kid was Gilles Villeneuve. He was spectacular. And Senna. They were my favourites. Either autograph would have made me happy.

Both killed. Where were you when Senna died?

I was at home watching. It all looked very serious up on the podium afterwards, and when I woke up the next morning and found out he’d died, it was unbelievable. You just don’t hear of guys like that being killed. Dale Earnhardt was another one. It’s incomprehensible. That’s the biggest shock…when they’ve been at it for a long time.

When it does happen, it happens in the most spectacular way. It must affect everyone’s consciousness.

It does. They sent shockwaves through the racing community.  Racing is a close knit community and when such a big name dies, it wakes everyone up and makes them realise it’s a dangerous sport. The injuries and deaths of the seventies when cars were nowhere near as safe has made cars a lot more safe. Cars are extremely strong now, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be improved even more.

You’ve got to be pretty smart to be a driver. How did you go in the national IQ test?

No I saved myself from that one. But yeah, there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye. You need someone who can develop the car to be quicker, deal with sponsors. There’s a lot more involved in just those areas alone. Most drivers handle themselves very well compared to a lot of other sports.

What’s the difference between an Australian redneck and an American redneck?

Racing’s so diverse. You’ve got the corporates at one end of the scale and at the other you got a bunch of guys who are out for a good day and they’re going to sit up on the hill and drink plenty of VB, and by the end of the day their all hard work’s paid off. They’re pretty critical. But I’ve never had much trouble here or in America. I guess Australian V8 fans are rowdier than the American fans. But saying that, we never really got right into redneck territory in America. Most meets are in the north. But they all give it a great atmosphere. The MCG would never have been the same without Bay 13, and Bathurst is just Bay 13 spread out over a bigger area.

You’ve got a bit of Maltese in you haven’t you?

On my mum’s side. I’ve been to Malta when I was five. There’s not too many race tracks over there. It’s big enough to be a race track.

Is your private car a manual or automatic?

I can see a lot of advantages in just cruising along. But I’d probably be bored if I had an automatic. If you’re going to have a HSV Coupe or whatever, you want a manual for performance reasons.

What do you drive?

At the moment I’ve got a Club Sport, but I’ve got a HSV Coupe coming up.

You’re 29. Where do you expect to be at 35?

I expect to be where I am now. But there are two races I’d love to do before I retire – The Indy 500 and the Le Mans 24 hours. And probably the Daytona 500. If I was a racing driver for the next 15 or 20 years I’d be happy.

Published in Inside Sport, May 2003