In Focus: Damien White

Damien White is arguably the most well credentialed touring car driver to come out of the Illawarra. Having followed the proven path from karting to one-make racing in the now defunct Kuhmo Tyres Suzuki GTi Cup, he rose to prominence in the Poolrite V8 BRute Championship with back-to-back titles in the early noughties.

A driver in demand; Damien spoke exclusively with Racing Line recently about WPR’s withdrawal from the Development Series, Bathurst’s failure to break him and why V8 Supercar team owner’s shouldn’t forget his name in the near future.

Racing Line: Well done on the weekend.

Damien White: Thank you. I was always going to Perth because Channel Seven had called and asked me to do some commentary for the Porsche [Carrera Cup]. And then on the Monday, Mini Challenge, which is owned by BMW Australia, called me up and invited me to take part in the weekend’s event

RL: Is the Mini Challenge a strong Championship? [Despite being newly-formed,] does it still carry that prestige that makes it worthwhile?

DW: It was James Courtney actually who said it to me once, after I won my second Ute title; I remember saying something to him about it, and it appeared to him to as if I was talking it down, as in “Oh, it’s just a V8 Ute, not a V8 Supercar, or an open-wheeler,” and he made a very valid point. He said, “Look, it doesn’t matter if it’s V8 Utes, V8 Supercars or Formula One, right?” They’re all competing for the same thing. When you beat them, you are the best. So the speed of the car might be slower, but the level of difficulty or the level of competition is really no different. And he argues that if you can win in one thing, then you should be able to win in another. And I took from that that I can be pretty proud of two consecutive Ute championships in both a Holden and in a Ford. And in more recent times when I jumped into the Fujitsu Series, and I had pretty good success in that too.

RL: So touching on the Fujitsu Series; 2007 was a good year. You turned up with a new team, in a new car… and to an outside observer, it looked like 2008 might be even better. But it all seemed to fall over before the New Year got underway. What happened?

DW: You know, I just finished covering off using James’ example, that everyone’s using the same rulebook, and competing with the same cars. For V8 Supercar, that does vary a little bit. I’m a believer that James Courtney, Garth Tander and Mark Winterbottom are the three best drivers in V8 Supercars. But at the moment James doesn’t have the car that the two factory teams have. The car is important in V8 Supercar. The level of car that you can put on the track is relative to the level of budget you can throw at it.

Without quoting numbers, our total yearly budget was about equal to that of two rounds of budget for some of the other teams. …The fact we were able to punch well above our weight with a complete rookie team; to get three podiums in our debut year was an amazing effort. And the reason it didn’t continue in ’08 is Wollongong Performance Racing [is] you’re in motorsport because you want to win, and with the same budget going into ’08 that we had in ’07, we were not going to do any better than we did in ’07 …it’s an extraordinary effort with the car that we had, but it was a waste of everyone’s money when you’re going out there to win. We knew we couldn’t win. So I’ve moved on with other opportunities and [WPR have] moved on with their team …They’re still a good unit, still a good race team, just without the right level of funding to do what we wanted to do, and that was win [at that level].

RL: Dean Canto said recently… that he believes there are ten or more drivers [in the V8 Supercar Championship] who are employed solely because they’ve paid for their drive this year. Do you think that’s an accurate statement?

DW: Absolutely they are… And while the ego may find that hard to accept, that’s the reality of the game. I could twist it to say… Russel Ingall? He’s a championship winner, dual Bathurst winner; he’s a legend of the sport. I would argue that he’s paying for his drive. How does that work? Well, it works because Super Cheap Auto would not, in a million years, sponsor Paul Morris Motorsport without Russell Ingall there. So why isn’t it viewed that Russell went and got Super Cheap Auto sponsorship, and went shopping with it to a team, went to Paul Morris Motorsport and said “Look, I’ve got this sponsor, I want to drive in your team. I’ve got ‘X’ amount of dollars from this sponsor, I want to take out ‘Y’ or ‘Z’ as my salary, and away we go.” Isn’t that someone paying for a drive? Paying for a drive doesn’t always means it comes from family, it might mean that the driver’s got off their arse and gone and got the sponsorship to do it.

RL: Moving on to something a bit broader; the Bathurst 12 Hour this year, [where] you beat some more fancied rivals.

DW: For me it was a big moment, because while I’d raced a Supercar at Phillip Island six weeks after my big shunt, it was my first return to Bathurst since the crash and for a lot of people the focus on me leading into the event was “How are you going to handle it? What are you going to do? How’s it going to affect you?” and you don’t know until you’re there if it’s going to affect you at all. I mean, definitely, the first time I got into a Supercar at Phillip Island I was shaking like a leaf, there’s no question. But, heading into the 12 Hour, I’d been to Bathurst countless times and done 1,700 laps, so I knew that that crash I had in the BOC Falcon was the first time I’d scratched a car at Bathurst. So the way I look at it, there’s a one in seventeen hundred chance in me doing it again.

As far as the race is concerned, each car has a combination of professional race drivers and ‘gentleman racers.’ …they can still pedal a car, but as you would expect they’re not as quick as a professional driver. [But] the gentleman racers pay for it, you need someone to foot the bill …And I actually enjoy that extra pressure of being that professional driver that has to carry or lift that little bit more, to cover that deficit you’ve got from those slightly slower drivers. …There was a good mix of talent in the field, and the fact that my last stint was just under three hours and we were just under a lap behind, and I caught that lap and passed Grant Denyer for the lead was hugely satisfying.

RL: Is racing [overseas] something you’d like to pursue?

DW: No… There are so many options and alternatives and ways you could cut it. Certainly, if I was twenty-two, I’d go to Europe, I’d go to America, I’d go to new Zealand, I’d go to Asia. I’d go everywhere and try to create whatever opportunities I could for myself. I’ve established now a very good relationship here, a great amount of respect, and for me, now it’s about tapping into the right sponsors, and once I get the right sponsor I could go to any team at any time and secure myself a drive. No question. So, no. My focus is here, and it needs to be here.

RL: You’ve done a bit of commentary with Channel Seven, doing some support card stuff; how did that come about?

DW: I’ve done commentary now for Seven, Nine, Ten, SBS and Fox, and it’s just something I put my hand up for. I think certain drivers would be doing well to accept that it’s not just drive that you’ve got to do to prove yourself to people, they need to prove they can articulate themselves to people, that they can speak publicly, that they can get on a TV and talk, that they can write …I think you’ve got to demonstrate you’ve got a brain and you’ve got more to present to a team than just the ability to drive. So, initially I out my hand up just to do that, to show that there’s another element to me. It turns out that they – being V8 Supercar TV and Channel Seven – think I’m reasonably handy at it. So, when the opportunities are presented I take them with both hands and do them.

RL: So, in five, ten years on [from now], what is the Damien White story?

DW: … In five to ten years, Damien White will be a part owner in a V8 Supercar team, racing, if not in the Main Series in his partly owned team, then in the Fujitsu Series with endurance racing duties. Enjoying himself, still living in Wollongong. Why would I leave here?

RL: Being locally based is a big part of that?

DW: For me personally, not necessarily for a team. I think V8 Supercars is heading down a path where NASCAR is, and in NASCAR you’ve got team owners who own twenty cars. I think that you’ll see more and more three and four car teams in the short to medium future in V8 Supercar, and I’d like to be a part owner in one of them. If you can’t get employed by the team, buy the team. The picture of motorsport, and my business and my life is always evolving, as is the case with everyone. I’ve never had a normal life in that eight to five has never been my thing, and it likely never will be. I’ll just keep racking up the frequent flyer points and see where it takes me.