Australian sporting icon Peter 'Perfect' Brock is going Super Touring - in a Volvo 850. He  talked exclusively to Peter Clark.

PC: Has the TWR link that Holden and Volvo Motorsport share been the major influences?.
PB: That has been secondary. As a racing driver you become aware of the technical developments that teams undertake, the levels of information they possess, and since the one company (TWR) is responsible for the design and manufacture of both cars (the 5 Litre HRT Commodore and 2 Litre Volvo 850), that does remove a potential "stumbling block". However, it came about because of my long association with George Shepheard (Volvo Racing Australia team manager). He initially approached me to do a few one off races. I got to know the Volvo people well, and during these little forays (production car races). I became more and more impressed with their honesty and integrity, and their ambitions and aims, and we got along famously..

PC: Were you free to negotiate with any 2 Litre manufacturer?
PB: Yes, and there were certain reason why one would be more less attractive than the other. I have a non-exclusive contract (with Holden Racing Team) and that allows me to pursue other activities .

PC: How much testing will you do?
PB: We're doing some promotional work to get Volvo's motorsport activities known to the press and the general public, and we're shooting a television commercial etc., which will utilize the motorsport activities to the utmost.  I hope I'll have one or two genuine test sessions. I think Lakeside (near Brisbane Queensland) is probably near enough: it's a very fast sweeping circuit, it's bumpy etc. If you can drive a car around Lakeside competitively, most other tracks become a breeze.

PC: Do you think you can win the 2 litre Championship in your first year?
PB: WEll, I see no reason why not. At this point I'm confident. I mean, looking at the speed of the car in Great Britain during 1995, and at the level of competitiveness that exists here, I see no reason why I won't maintain that potential to be on the front of the grid, and to run fast up the front. How that works out of course ... we know anything can happen!

PC: Approaching your 51st birthday, do you find it easy to maintain the level of fitness required be  front-running racing driver?
PB: Yes, I take great care with my health, I watch all aspects of my life that contribute to my abilities to operate at my highest levels. Too often we accept what others tell us we should fell at certain ages. I don't feel any different than I did 20 years ago. It's how you approach things - the mind is extraordinarily important these issues. Once you start losing your enthusiasm and motivation, everything suffers and certainly your ability to withstand the rigours of motorsport suffers with it.

PC: How do three 20-minute races in the ATCC compare with 2-3 hour stints at Bathurst in Tooheys 1000? One imagines the ATCC 10/10ths all the way but in the Tooheys there are times when you can back off to 9/10ths?
PB: They are different, there's no doubt about that. You tend to hop out of the 20 minute races feeling like it's just a practice session, a tyre test you've just conducted, and if doesn't seem like you've exhausted yourself. Bathurst is no longer a race where you tend to be able to back off. The only advantage is if they send a pace car out or perhaps when coming down the main straight, allows you to have a bit of a breather compared to the twister circuits. I'd expect to lose between two and three litres of body fluids during a stint at Bathurst, in the 20 minute races, it'd be more like a litre a time.

PC: Have there ever been time in some of those long stints that you've felt that you'd have to stop?
PB: Never. I've always been so immersed in the activity of driving - staying in front or catching someone - that time just flies. When you get into the car and you're not as motivated, perhaps your fitness is suffering a little, then you start feeling the pain, but while you're totally immersed in it, it becomes the thing that you're doing at the time. I don't know if other drivers feel the same. I suspect a lot do because you concentration is so total that everything else is irrelevant.

PC: How many years do you thing you'll race?
PB: I come from a school of thought that says "If it feels like the right thing to do at that time, well that's the thing to do." To me, one of the great things about a long distance race is the strategy and the patience, the way that you can out-think someone by being consistently smooth and accurate, knowing that the other driver may well be working the car a little too hard. In a 20 minute race, you can get away with a lot of mistreatment of the machinery: in a long distance race it's not so simple. Now, while as a driver you see that challenge, you're going to continue to be competitive, and you're going to continue to want to do that.
Retirement will become evident to me at the time. Many people , because they aren't participants, tend to impress their own sense of limitations upon those engaged in the activity, and I don't take much notice of them. It might be a valid opinion for them to say "Brock's turned 50, he's over the hill, he can't do something nearly as well as he did before" - therefore that person must feel the same. When you're a participant, your motivation and point of view is usually quite different than from being an observer.

PC: Okay so what has been the best decision?
PB: The call from Harry Firth (manager of the Holden Dealer Team in the early 70's, who recruited Brock for Bathurst in 1970) probably was! Prior to getting a call from Harry, I was offered a drive in a traded-in Holden from a dealer who couldn't sell the car. At the time I running my home built special and no-one knew where the car was good, or bad or indifferent, or if the driver, because how can you tell with a special - it was so radical. I accepted this Holden drive, prepared it, towed it up there, and did the whole thing for nothing, as a kid you do these things. That was at Winton in 1969, and I finished third I think behind a fellow in a Porsche, and another guy in a Cooper S. On a tight twisty track, that was all I could hope for, but I thought, "I should have been able to clean those guys up". But it meant I got that call from Harry Firth, who at the time was forming the HOlden Dealer Racing Team. I had no idea, and subsequently learnt that they had no idea what sort of driver I was, but they said "This guy's okay, we'll give him a go." So I say to people when they talk about how to get into the sport., "Make the most of every opportunity that comes your way".

PC: When you do retire, would you like to run "Brock Racing" in the Fred Gibson (former racer now head of Gibson Motorsport) has done?
PB: Not at all. I had a dozen years of running my own team, and I'm not interested in doing anything like that again. I'm happy to be a consultant to teams, to give them the benefit of my experience, but I enjoy dealing with sponsors and companies, public speaking, working with dealers, and product endorsements. I enjoy very much working with disadvantaged youth, and just with people. I've  had this tremendous support out there over the years, an it gets to the time of paying back to society. I'd suggest a lot of people in sport feel the same way. People complain about fame, and the invasion of privacy, but I see it as - you want the fame, it's part of the deal.
The main reason I mention this however, is nothing to do with anything personal, or that I expect anyone to think differently of me. What I would like is to encourage other people, particularly in motorsport, to get out there: they'd be surprised at how much they can contribute, whether it's in Australia or any of the overseas readers reading this magazine. People admire racing drivers because kids would love to a racing driver - we can say and do things that the establishment can't get away with.

PC: Have any of your children expressed a desire to become racing drivers?
PB: The boys are both very uncompetitive. they love doing stuff, but they don't do it  to beat anyone. As a kid, my point of view was "Oh, you just walk away from people, just to get that race result", but we change with time, and my kids have been brought up with the idea of "Hey, let's have a go. Give it your best shot.  It doesn't matter if you're better than another person or not. This is as good as I could do and I did pretty good today".
The moment my kids come to me and said "Dad, I want to do something." I'd help them. But I won't be pushing them. My eldest, James is 19, and he is currently building up an Historic Touring Car, a torana XU1. I suggested he'd probably get as much fun from building it up, because he is an excellent fabricator, as what he will from driving it.
The other day, I had Rob - he's 15 - out in a go-kart and he was going pretty fast, and I said "You didn't fo through this corner here flat, you can do this and that," he said "Yeah, Dad, but I'm doing okay". He was having a ball, and he wasn't interested in changing his approach to it. And I though, "Well, that's just where he is coming from".

PC: Have they found any difficulties in having the Brock name?
PB: Any kid with famous parents would recognize that it's difficult - they have to gain respect in their own right. I don't fill the house with trophies, my home is as normal as possible, and my kids see me as just Dad who goes racing. I haven't tried to 'protect' them, but I haven't pushed them into the limelight. If for instance I've said to Alexandra, "I'm being interviewed on TV, do you want to come?" she'd be there, because she sees herself as an actress in the future. She's 13. But if you said to her, "It's time for you to be interviewed", She'd say "Oh no I just like to be here".

PC: Your Australian motorsport magazine column has a very philosophical flavour. Have you always be a philosophical man?
PB: In my younger days I just wanted to get into racing cars and drive them fast, bust as time goes by you start analysing the why's and wherefore's. You say "Is that all there is to life? This is a bit hollow, shallow" So you start looking a life a little differently - "What am I contributing to society? What could I do?" When I write an article I'm aiming to motivate people, to get them to look at things a little positively, instead of as though they're a victim of life.
Bev (Peter's wife) has always been a great influence on me in those areas. She's quietly behind the scenes, and most people that are successful in public life would admit that they're had a person there, that's always supported them and had the ability to bounce things off them and discuss thing, letting you view a matter in a positive light rather than feeling sorry for yourself and wallowing in self-pity if something does go wrong.

PC: If you hadn't been a racing driver, what would you have done in life?
PB: I enjoy football. I think I would have been good enough to play Aussie Rules, I had the basic skills, but of course the training and the commitment is something else again. I committed myself to motor-racing. I have a farm, and I enjoy farm work, creating a new environment planting  orchards, market gardens, a few animals to tend etc. I enjoy painting, I enjoy car design I did during the 80's with all those Commodores. It was like falling off a log, it just came to me, so that was something I really loved, putting that deal together. They were much-loved cars, and they're still collectables.

PC: Peter, thank-you for the interview.
PB: Can I finish off by saying I really am thrilled to be involved with Super Tourers, and feel that it is going to be very special.