Saturday Sleuthing: Greg Murphy

It doesn't feel like seven years has passed since Greg Murphy drove his last race as a full-time Supercars driver.

In part that's because he's never really left: after Homebush 2012 he did a two-year stint as a hired Enduro Cup gun, and now you'll still find him trackside at every event – albeit as a pitlane reporter rather than as a driver.

But the four-time Bathurst 1000 victor still has plenty on his plate when he's not on our screens…

Away from a Supercars weekend when you’re on the tele … what does an average day look like in 2019 for Greg Murphy?

I've got plenty of things to do here in New Zealand – there’s never a dull moment!

I have a TV show that I'm involved in with Sky Speed, I still have a heap of commitments with people that I've had relationships for a long time – the likes of Castrol, Holden, HSV, the Giltrap Group – and some other companies on the road safety side of things.

One of those is AutoSense, which is the distributor in New Zealand for some pretty amazing facial recognition technology for the transport industry, and I do road safety stuff for Holden Street Smart. I'm advocating quite a lot around road safety over here, including lobbying for change with the government side of things.

Then, on some of these weekends when the Supercars are on, I flit off over to Australia and wander around trying to make myself look like I know what I'm talking about!

What got you interested in motorsport?

My father was an avid follower of motorsport – moreso the Australian touring cars and the championship – when I was growing up. Then we got involved in our local karting club. That was about when I was eight years old. From that point on I became an avid fan of motor racing.

You first came to attention in Australia in Super Touring … what were those years racing with Brad Jones like?

I turned up in Australia in 1994 and did the Australian Drivers' Championship in Formula Brabham, and from that got a couple of gigs in some Super Tourers that year thanks to Peter Adderton.

With Super Touring getting a bit of a kick from Peter and Terry Morris, I ended up getting involved with Brad Jones Racing, the Audi Sport team. That was pretty amazing; in fact, it was essentially my first professional job as a racing car driver. That alone was pretty special.

That also gave me a chance to get a bit of recognition and the offer from Jeff Grech at the Holden Racing Team to come and do a test and become an endurance driver.

You hold a remarkable record in the history of ATCC/Supercars: pole for your first championship race at Calder in 1997, and you also won that first race! Not a bad start to your Supercars career!

No, it was a pretty good start – but I had a pretty good warm-up. I was with a team that, through 1996, was at the top of its game and winning championships.

The time I'd spent in the car through 1996 with quite a lot of testing, and with a lot of very good people who helped me understand and be quite efficient inside a touring car.

I also got the chance, after winning Bathurst with Craig Lowndes, to head to New Zealand for the Mobil Series in November at Pukekohe and Wellington to race for HRT alongside Brocky; essentially I was on my own for that series as well, which was probably a really good lead-in for the following season.

It was a pretty dream beginning to the championship in '97, to start that way. But I soon started learning a lot more lessons throughout that season. It didn't quite go on as planned, and as good as that. There were lots of things that happened through '97 – both good and bad.

You’re so closely associated with the #51. Did you have any attachment to that number before you started racing with it in 2001?

No, there was no number in any way, shape or form before that.

There's a pretty basic story as to how the #51 came about. When the whole Kmart Racing team was formed under the Tom Walkinshaw Racing banner, there were a lot of licence issues.

At the time there was the Holden Young Lions team running and they had car #15, but when the other licence turned up there was no number associated with it.

I think it was our sign writing guy at the time, Doug Brumby, who was like, 'why don't you save on cutting different numbers; why don't we just reverse the 15 and make it 51?'

Everyone was like, 'oh yeah, that's a good idea!'

So nothing superstitious or an amazing back story – or any Days of Thunder links!

I’m sure you’ve been asked this a million times, but what was it about Pukekohe … why were you so good there? Was it purely track experience? Was it just that it suited your style? Was it the home crowd?

It definitely wasn't track experience. I hadn't actually done a lot of racing at Pukekohe prior to all that. A little bit of single-seater stuff and bits and pieces, but I wasn't more experienced there than anybody else, that's for sure.

I definitely enjoyed – like a lot of the drivers – the fast stuff. Fast corners, big commitment corners, that kind of thing.

But I think if you talk to any of the Kiwi drivers in Supercars at the moment, being in an environment like that, it really is quite a difficult feeling to describe: a tight, amphitheatre-style race track with the crowd very, very close – and very patriotic.

For some reason there's a special connection there. I don't believe in all that palaver about there being an 'aura' and that kind of stuff, but there's clearly something there that works pretty well and connects us Kiwis to the place.

I don't think I'm any better than anyone else there; it's just the way it worked out. There were a few years there where I wasn't very competitive, remember.

You've got to have all the good tools and a car that you're very comfortable in, and that doesn't matter what track you're at. You've got to have a car where you can tell it what to do and not be dictated by what it's doing.

I was pretty fortunate for certainly the first five years there that I had a car I was very comfortable driving.

Would you trade any of your Bathurst wins for a Supercars Championship?

Nope. Absolutely not. Not a chance. They are so special and mean so much.

I'm incredibly honoured to have had the chance to have success at Bathurst; how many drivers ever get the chance to experience that?

I was really disappointed, I suppose, for a while when it became a part of the championship, but now I understand. The championship is a very difficult thing to win – especially across all the different formats that we have – and now including Bathurst makes it even harder.

I think most drivers generally, if they're being honest, treat it quite separately and aren't thinking about the championship when they're at Bathurst.

You want to win that race. You'll do things there to put it on the line to win that race, and not be thinking about the championship.

Was there a team where you felt most ‘at home’ in your Supercars career?

Yeah, definitely, that period at Kmart Racing, and I felt pretty at home in those years with HRT as well.

HRT definitely made me feel very welcome, and it was just the effort and desire to succeed … it was a great environment for me to learn, and that carried through into Kmart Racing.

For those four years at Kmart Racing it was a great group of people, and I think we punched above our weight. You think that we were connected to the mother ship at HRT, but we were very separate in many ways and left to our own devices for a lot of things.

There was definitely a strong competition between the two teams and we certainly wanted to beat them – and I know that the HRT side of things didn't necessarily always like having us around.

I had strong relationships with Erik Pender, my engineer, and Rob Crawford, the team manager, and all the young techs and mechanics that came through Kmart Racing. It was a pretty amazing time.

After years of racing yourself, you’re now watching your son Ronan going racing in Formula Ford. How has that transition been for you?

I don't mind watching him going racing; it is what it is and I accept the risks that are involved with it, but I don't see motorsport these days as being particularly risky or dangerous.

It's more about the challenge of being able to go through the stages and find a way to progress through the stages of motorsport, and how difficult and challenging that is and the resource that's required to make that happen.

He doesn't have a pathway laid out or unlimited resource to achieve it. It's more about how hard it is and the struggle it is to be involved in it, and then maintain an involvement in it.

For me, I get it and understand it; making him realise it and understand it – which he does – and it's not a given that he's going to go car racing, because it's not. It's so far from that it's not funny.