Racing Driver – V8 Supercar

If you want to know what it takes to become a V8 supercar driver rising star Rick Kelly has some advice: “110 per cent focus.”

The 24 year-old from Mildura in Victoria is a member of the Toll HSV Dealer Team, a motor sport team that takes part in the V8 Supercar Championship, driving powerful Holden VE commodore race cars.

Last year Rick became the second youngest person to win the 2006 V8 Supercar Drivers Championship a victory that topped off his 2003 performance as the youngest person to win the Bathurst 1000 – the biggest car race in Australia.

Rick attributed his success and that of his older brother Todd, who is also a V8 supercar driver, to “getting started early.”

“My family has always had an interest in motor sports so I was three and Todd was seven when we started riding motorbikes. We then had a crack at go-carts. I was five and Todd was nine. Dad used to run behind us in case something went wrong,” he said.

By the age of 17, Rick was involved in Formula Ford, the entry-level series to motor racing, driving single seater open wheel cars. Less than a year later, in 2001, the budding talent had the chance to drive Formula Holden, V6 commodores.

Holden Young Lions, a program that has launched the careers of a number of V8 supercar drivers, then took Rick under its umbrella and made a success of him in Formula Holden before propelling him into V8 supercars

After only five years in the race car industry, Rick has made his name here and abroad and is thrilled by what he does.

“I love the competition and the satisfaction of winning but driving the car is always so exciting.”

However, Rick says being successful takes a lot of hard work and it’s not all done in the car.

“It’s a full-time job we do. Apart from the appearances for our sponsors there is a lot of physical training. Driving cars is a very physical job; temperatures in the car reach 60 degrees and you’re in the car for over two hours so peak fitness is extremely important.”

Rick also spends a lot of time with his team going over plans for races or debriefing after races.

“We have 14 race meetings a year [each] spaced over three days; Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But, we’re only allowed six test days a year that’s when we actually take it on the track and do a test drive.”

Such limited practice means that Rick and the team of mechanics, engineers, data engineers and team manager are focused on making sure the car’s components are finely tuned, as one small change can make a huge difference to a car that is being raced at nearly 300 km per hour around a corner.

“We need to analyse what the car is doing all the time so we can maximise the small amount of practice time we have on the track,” he said

Rick said he concentrated just as hard on his work outside the car as he did when he was driving the car and never took his job for granted.

“It’s really tough to get into the sport and I’ve been lucky.”

His advice for aspiring race drivers was to seize all opportunities and to be disciplined.

“From the outside this sport is perceived as glamorous but there is a lot of work and training that goes in to every race meeting,” Rick said.