The secret to Scott Dixon’s success Pt 4 – Because racing IS life!

Look, if I was Scott Dixon I’m be getting a bit embarrassed about all this attention. That said the rest of us are like moth’s to a flame when one of our own morphs from being a mate to someone others decide has ‘the X-factor.’

I should have noticed it at the time, but my job – initially as his ‘PR’ then as the ‘secretary’ I suppose you could call it, of Scott Dixon Motorsport, for a year or so – was actually to draw attention to Scott, and by definition, his extraordinary skill. So when all sorts of people started contacting ME for info about Scott I was only too willing to oblige.

Some of these ‘others’ had the best intentions at heart. Like the old fella who slipped a $10 note into an envelope with a hand-written note he stressed only Scott could open. Or the helicopter pilot who phoned out of the blue with stories of flying Hollywood A-listers (who might or might not be interested in helping Scott out with a dollar or three) in and out of the Mackenzie Country to fabulous lodges you and I can only dream about.

I was like ‘yeah right’ to that one, until I asked around (as one does here in NZ) and found that 1) the bloke was indeed a chopper pilot, and 2) he was apparently, absolutely right in his assertion that on any one day – and Tom Cruise’s recent stunt runs here tend to lend real credence to what sounds in the first place such a fanciful yarn – you will find at least one gen-u-ine Hollywood A-lister slumming it in the South Island High Country.

Sadly, the absolute worst of these ‘Johnny-come-latelies’ were other journos or PR people. One in particular took it upon herself to harangue anyone who would listen about 1) what a shit job I was doing promoting Scott, and 2) how she would be able to do much better. She even – God bless her – wrote me up as such in one of her books. To which all I can say is I was flattered.

Another- this time, big-time, TV producer decided that, rather than using the Mt Wellington kart track as a metaphor for Scott’s humble start and how far he had got at that stage (my suggestion) she would come up with a stunner of her own!

OK it was only Australia at that stage (though there was already talk of heading further afield but work with me here!) but in what I would go on to find was typical of the sort of headstrong genus of ‘I’ll-kick-down-this-door-if-I-have-to’ stroppy female reporters/producers employed by TV at the time, her ‘Brainiac moment’ was to get Scott to ‘roller-blade along Tamaki Drive…..’

“Good luck with that!” I said….before having to play middle man as Scott naturally refused to even countenance such a flagrantly stupid idea, and I had reporter Mike Valentine (this WAS 60 Minutes after all) on the blower wondering where we were!

“But it worked really well when I did it with Beatrice Faumuina” (I think it was), she lamented, as we finally drove to Mt Wellie where Scott was patiently waiting……….proving in one simple statement how little she knew, or for that matter, cared about, the subject of the story.

And I could go on (and on) until – of course – the Aussie who snagged the PR guy’s job at PacWest (Brett ‘Crusher’ Murray) had me – as good as – fired for (what else?) doing my job – which was to keep the world informed of Scott’s achievements.

With Kenny in pit lane at all the big US races I could watch Scott’s Indy Lights races ( or at least the lap data) via the internet in real time (usually between 4.00 and 7.00am Monday morning NZ time), the dial up Ken’s mobile and – after the usual pleasantries (How was his race mate? To which the answer would invariably be either a considered, ‘yeah, good’ or an emphatic ‘shithouse..’)

Kenny would pass the phone to Scott while he was still sitting in the car, nine times out of ten he would concur with Ken, and I’d be left to bang out a quick ‘press release’ complete with genuine driver quotes which would be enthusiastically lapped up by Radio NZ and Radio Sport for their 9.00am sports bulletins way down here in NZ.

This of course pissed old Crusher off to distraction because by the time Scott had 1) been ushered into ‘the room’ to give a urine sample, then done the compulsory TV partner post-race interview then the compulsory sponsor cap swap-around photos it could be over an hour before he could even get near Scott for a couple of words, let alone the quality debrief his own team press release deserved.

And this remember, was for the support class……………..

Why am I telling you this?

Because it is important to know how much stress each and every person involved in Scott’s career was under. Mine were – for me anyway – bad enough for me to eventually resign my post as ‘secretary’ and head back into the real world of a ‘proper’ job.

What Ron and Glenys went through knowing that their extraordinarily talented son was still their primary responsibility, or how PJ coped with the stress of trying to keep some sort of balance to the books, God only knows.

Through it all the calm at the absolute middle of the storm was Scott Ronald Dixon.

In all the time I knew Scott as a kid in a kart, then car, I never saw him stress over anything. Initially I figured it was because he was a kid and had no concept of the value of the cars he was driving or, indeed, of the life he was leading. Slowly, however, I began to realise that it was a key part of his personality.

This is the quality, after-all. that earned Scott the nickname ‘The Iceman’ not long after he graduated to the IndyCar wold series, and this quality which – on reflection – has stood and continues to stand him out from any of his peers.

I once asked him what was the key to his seamless transition to ovals; given that prior to his first run in an Indy Lights car at Homestead that first heady year in the US, his only real oval experience (and that was clock rather than anti-clockwise direction), was at his kart club, Mt Wellington’s annual ‘oval meeting.’

‘You’ve got to be able to concentrate,’ he said after thinking about it for a couple of seconds. “You have to know exactly where you are every lap.”

Which, in a nutshell, says it all about the bloke – and why a bunch of us went out of our ways to back him all those years ago now – doesn’t it?

Scott was both literally and figuratively ‘born to race’ and the rest of us have been lucky enough to play bit parts in his incredible journey. As the great actor/racer Steve McQueen said as he tried to explain it in the movie Le Mans; ‘Racing is life, anything before or after is just waiting!’

That’s the last – in this series anyway – of columns focused on Scott.

Your job, as readers, is to take time to go and see Born Racer, the documentary on his life so far, make your own mind up and share your opinion with us here at Talk Motorsport.