Spotlight: Charlie Schwerkolt
For someone with a limited motorsport career of his own, Charlie Schwerkolt has carved out a strikingly prominent presence in the world of Supercars.
He’s the figurehead of the rising Team 18 outfit that is knocking on the door of its first podium and was at the helm of Dick Johnson Racing when it won the 2010 title through James Courtney.
But Schwerkolt built to this point in a manner distinctly different to many of his peers.
Simply put, being around cars during his childhood fuelled what would become a lifelong passion.
The first key moment was Schwerkolt’s parents Charles and Helen starting the Studebaker Car Club in 1967.
“The passion, the love for car racing started very early,” Schwerkolt recalls to Supercars.com.
“There was always cars in our family of all sorts of varieties.
“We lived not that far from Sandown so we used to go to Sandown when I was a kid quite often. Seeing the cars go around, it was something incredibly exciting.”
Schwerkolt would eventually try his hand at karting in his late teens, though he confesses he never truly gave it a chance of blossoming into something more.
“I think I was OK… but I was too busy building a forklift operation and I couldn’t really devote myself to it,” he says.
“I was at Oakleigh Go-Kart Club and was a handy steerer I think. Probably my best was a top five at the nationals at Brooklyn [near Melbourne] way back then.”
The blooming business he makes reference to is the empire that is Waverley Forklifts, a national forklift rental company.
“Dad had a family bottle recycling business and back in ’73 the councils changed the way bottles were collected and Dad got into forklifts,” says Schwerkolt.
“So I joined in ’76 as an apprentice mechanic and went through the business, truck driving, forklift operator, et cetera, and took over Dad’s business in the late ‘80s.”
A Gold Coast resident, Schwerkolt in usual circumstances commutes three to four days a week to work from Waverley Forklifts’ headquarters in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
Throughout the business’ growth, Schwerkolt maintained an interest in motorsport and it was a mates trip to a round at Winton in the early 2000s that would lay the foundations for his involvement in Supercars.
“We flew up in a small plane. Somehow one of our mates offered Dick and Jill [Johnson] a ride back in our plane,” he says.
“We got chatting, he needed a forklift and I thought oh well, there’s a bit of a chance to get involved in a team.
“So I think I gave him a forklift and he gave me a ride in a car, and a door, and I became involved in the team.”
Schwerkolt remained in the background until reaching a deal with Johnson in February 2008 to buy a 50 percent share in DJR. He took the reins as chief executive and managing director.
The now 58-year-old has mixed feelings about the 2010 campaign that would net a coveted championship but see a well-documented breakdown in relations with Johnson.
“It was incredible but very disappointing and gut-wrenching the way it all ended,” Schwerkolt says of the title run.
Spending the next two years leasing out his Racing Entitlements Contract, Schwerkolt in 2013 began running a customer car, working with Ford Performance Racing and driver Alex Davison.
Jack Perkins would be behind the wheel the following season, with Lee Holdsworth coming onboard as the squad switched to the Walkinshaw stable in ‘15.
“At the end of ’15, I remember at Pukekohe talking with Lee, ‘I think we can do better than this’,” Schwerkolt recalls.
“Putting that team together at the end of ’15 was incredibly hard.
“I employed Jeff Grech as team manager, and with all his connections, we found a rental premises and secured some great staff, built a relationship with Triple Eight Engineering and purchased car chassis #30 and got to Adelaide just in the nick of time.”
That was the beginning of Team 18 as a standalone operation; after a further three years of mixed outcomes for himself and Holdsworth, Schwerkolt revamped the squad for 2019 as Mark Winterbottom and IRWIN Tools came in.
Twelve months later, he would up the ante again by expanding to two cars, the second ZB Commodore going to Scott Pye.
A podium as a standalone has been elusive thus far, but not for too much longer, Schwerkolt believes.
Priding himself on partner relationships and activations, he is determined to deliver sooner than later for his loyal supporters.
“The end game is to get results for our sponsors,” Schwerkolt declares.
“That’s what we have got to do, we have really got to challenge for podiums and I think the group is bonding extremely well together.
“It just can’t happen overnight and it’s a process to build. We’re building a really great team around us.
“I want to get some results for all of our sponsors, especially Stanley Black & Decker and some of these people, Fuchs, Pulsar, Manitou and Toyota, have been with us for many, many years.”
Schwerkolt is in the relatively unusual situation of dealing with those stakeholders at both a sport and business level.
“I love the sport but also it ties in with my business a fair bit with some of these partners,” he says.
“I get a real buzz out of working with these sponsors. I really enjoy it and there are some incredible people involved.”
Funnily enough, his car club family background hasn’t been lost on him, either.
Schwerkolt has added to his personal collection of prestigious cars over several decades, featuring brands from Cadillac to Jaguar, plus a pair of DJR Supercars: Will Davison’s 2008 BF Falcon and Courtney’s 2010 championship-winning FG Falcon.
