CAFE CHAT: Andrew Fisher on his racing projects

Andrew Fisher tells Speedcafe.com’s Tom Howard of his hopes of returning to TCM action in his Falcon XY GTHO and what’s in store with his latest community-orientated car show.

Fisher has been forced to bypass the Australian Muscle Car Masters event at Sydney Motorsport Park starting on Saturday week as he sources a replacement engine for the Falcon.

As his racing schedule sees him add TCM to his Australian V8 Utes Racing Series assault, Fisher is also being kept busy with his selfless Life Choices program aimed at helping high school students and people in custody.

SPEEDCAFE.COM: This is your first year juggling full TCM and V8 Utes schedules. How has that worked out?

ANDREW FISHER: We’ve also taken on running the team ourselves for the first time which has been a big learning curve. To be honest its been a tough year.

In the Touring Car Masters we’ve probably been punching above our weight.

Up until the last round we were second in the Pro-Am section.

The GT, she’s certainly not one of the leading cars in the championship.

We are currently building a new shell and are getting and engine built.

This year was our learning year and next year we will have a proper weapon.

We’ve qualified beyond what the car’s capability is to be able to pull a good lap time and be further up the grid than probably what we should be.

We are the only car in the championship that runs a wet sump engine, so we will go to a dry sump motor.

The wet sump engine let go at Queensland Raceway.

We aim to have a dry sump engine in the car for Bathurst and then at the end of the year we will change everything over to the new shell.

The new shell will drop about 170kg out of the car.

SPEEDCAFE.COM: Moving onto the V8 Utes, I take that has been quite challenging?

FISHER: To be quite honest its been one of our worst years.

We’ve had reasonable pace and just haven’t had a good run.

It’s been frustrating so we are hoping the back half of the year serves us better.

SPEEDCAFE.COM: So it sounds like you will be forced to miss the Muscle Car Masters at Sydney Motorsport Park on Fathers Day weekend?

FISHER: Yes unfortunately we won’t be there in the GT. I’ve got a couple of people talking about giving me a drive in a car they’ve got but the reality is the GT won’t be around until Bathurst.

SPEEDCAFE: What engine will you have for Bathurst?

FISHER: We’ve just acquired one and then we are also building a new one as well which will be our engine for next year.

It will give us high horsepower, high torque so it will only be an interim measure for Bathurst.

We are 95 percent there for Bathurst. It’s just a matter of finishing the details and shaking the hands.

SPEEDCAFE.COM: Moving onto your other activity, tell us more about your community event at SMP on October 31?

FISHER: We did a men’s event last year and there were 700 or so people there but the feedback we had was to bring the whole family out.

So this year we have put on a family day which starts from 2pm and goes until about 8pm.

We’ve got a kids zone and a car show which will be bigger and better than last year.

We’ll have about 300 cars on display with Armor All backing the car show which is a proper show where people can win prizes for their displays.

I’ll do some on-track demonstrations on the front straight later in the afternoon where I’ll do a bit of circle work in one of the Utes.

SPEEDCAFE.COM: How did this idea come about and what are you trying to achieve with it?

FISHER: It’s all about community engagement. We do the Denny (Deniliquin) Ute Muster every year we take our Ute down and engage with the community.

A lot of people say to me they don’t get the opportunity to get up close and personal with race teams and race cars so we see it as an opportunity to engage with the broader community.

The whole purpose of racing is about entertainmentm engagement and challenging people’s paradigms about what we do, the christian faith and that sort of stuff.

We had one of the 25-year anniversary McLaren’s at the car show last year and it will be back again this year.

There’s another couple of McLarens, Audi R8s, Lamborghinis and the list of exotics goes on and on.

SPEEDCAFE.COM: Aside from the exotic road cars, what race cars will you have at the show?

FISHER: We’ll have our TCM Falcon XY GTHO, our V8 Ute, several cars from the Australian GT Championship; the Porsche which Duvashen Padayachee drives and the Audi R8 which Greg Taylor drives.

There will also be a range of historic racecars. The BMW Car Club is bringing a range of cars such as the 2002 model from the early 1970’s.

As well there will be a range of drag cars, drift cars. So there will be a wide variety of race cars that will be on display.

We also intend to have a couple of Development Series V8 Supercars on display too.

SPEEDCAFE: Why did you use motorsport with your Life Choices program as a platform to engage with the community?

FISHER: Motorsport is such a combative sport. You’ve got gladiators driving a 250km/h plus all fighting for the same piece of real estate.

We specifically chose the V8 Utes because of its combative style because that’s the last place you would expect someone of faith taking part in it.

We’ve competed in that championship for a long time now.

It’s what I call a noise breaker. I communicate to 20,000-plus high school students every year. I’ve been doing it for seven years.

I talk to them about important areas in life and decision making and I challenge them around what I call, making courageous choices.

I talk about, smoking, drugs, social media, road safety and spirituality.

What motor racing does is basically its the attention grabber.

You take a replica race car with you and put on some video footage and at least you’ve got their attention.

So we have the high school program and I go to jails as well as detention centres.