Koalas, Kangaroos, Fosters Beer and No Rear End!
“G’day mates”. I can’t help but feel that Brad would be disappointed with me if I didn’t begin the article like that! Koalas, Kangaroos and Fosters Beer. Now that I have gotten all the “Australian” out of my system, we can move on with the story. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Tom, and I am the Navigator of Car # 15 in your programs, but #1 in your hearts. Team Rusty Red x Team EDI International Vehicle Shipping (email me at tom@edicustoms.com.au for any international vehicle shipping needs, yes that’s a shameless plug!). I am lucky enough to navigate for and support who I believe to be the best driver in the race, John Leggett. For those fortunate enough to have not met either of us yet, please feel free to come up for a chat if you see us at next year's Spring Rally or Great Race, we love meeting new people and chatting over a beer or two.
The story you will hear is one of true grit, determination, and just a few cold beers. As we headed into Stage 7 of the 2026 Great Race and rolled out of Flagstaff, Arizona, there was a slight hangover hanging around from the night before, but nothing we hadn’t dealt with before. John and I had always toed the line when it comes to making sure we are competitive in the race but also ensuring we are having the best time we possibly could, and this year was no different. Stage 7, in my opinion, was going to be the best stage of the race, I mean, wild donkeys, come on, how cool. We were feeling on top of the world, we were sitting in 3rd position overall after having a dream 6 first days, by far our best start ever, and just loving the Great Race at that point, not to say that we don’t always love it, but it is a spectrum. Safe to say that vibes were high this morning in the Marauder, and as any good navigator does, I was pumping John’s driver tyres up big time this morning after the excellent job he had done the day before behind the wheel. We cruised through the morning, 6 secs up until lunch, how easy is this, or so I thought. As we sat down for a quick spot of lunch, John pipes up that he had been hearing a “new noise” through the morning coming out of the left rear end. I quizzed him what he thought it was, he wasn’t sure, after all, old cars make plenty of noises right? As we recommenced rallying after lunch, I admitted I could now hear the noise myself. As we climbed the beige hills behind Kingman, the noise was starting to get worse, and by this stage we figured we could have a real problem on our hands. I could tell it was really starting to stress John out, and it was distracting him from driving. To his credit, we managed only 5 seconds through the hills stage, a real testament to his driving ability and concentration skills. We limped to the start of the next transit and began what would be one of the dodgiest freeway drives of the trip. We could barely maintain speed, the noise was knocking as bad as it had at this point, and as we were overtaken time and time again by Trucks and Trailers, John was sweating absolute bullets. We arrived at what we now know to have been the final restart point and jumped out to inspect the car. The rear brakes were hot and leaking fluid, which was smoking as it burnt off. Worried about a fire, out came the fire extinguishers (just in case). As we conferred with each other about our options, we made the decision that we needed to do what we could to limp to the end of the day and then assess from there.
We restarted, and things were going well, the noise had appeared to have ceased, and we thought we may have dodged a bullet. Little did we know what was about to happen. As we turned under the interstate and onto the long bouncy stretch of road leading up to the Wild Burrows town, John was doing well to maintain speed, and we thought surely there couldn’t be much longer left in the day. Then it happened, a loud bang, which, safe to say, scared the absolute s**t out of us. Now, with John gripping the wheel for dear life, with barely any control over the wheel as it felt like the whole rear tyre had exploded at this point, he managed to safely control the vehicle enough to pull off to the side of the road in a moderately safe position. We jumped out, fire extinguishers ready for anything. What we witnessed was the rear left wheel had nearly exploded off the vehicle, and if it wasn’t sunken into the rear fender, it very well may have flown off and rolled off into the desert without us! The car was now virtually immobile, and without knowing what damage was behind it, we thought that was our race done and dusted.
As we sat there, staring at the Marauder on the side of the road, we knew there was only one thing to do. John has run several successful businesses over the years, and has mentored me for 20 of those, so both of us operate under the 6 x PPPPPP Rule, which is: “prior preparation prevents piss poor performance”. Now I know some of you are thinking, they have all the tools in the vehicle to complete the repairs on the side of the road and get rolling again. But that isn’t what I am talking about at all. I mean we are prepared in the sense that there is ALWAYS an Esky (translation = Cooler) of cold beers in the car. From that point there was nothing else to do but sit in the shade of the boot (translation = Trunk) of the Marauder, crack a few Tinnys (translation = cans of beer), put on some music and wait for the sweep truck to come along. As we watched Rally car after Rally car roll past us, with a slight breeze in our faces and cold beer in hand, it was almost pleasant. You wouldn't even know it was damn near 40 Degrees Celsius (translation = 104 degrees Fahrenheit). As we loaded the Mercury onto the trailer and hopped in the back of the Truck, I thought to myself that it was quite civilised riding into downtown Lachlan, NV in the back of an air-conditioned vehicle.
We rolled into the Aquarius Casino parking lot, had the vehicle unloaded, and sat there staring at what we thought was going to be the final stop for this year’s race. Little did we know that our mates, Shawn Lednick and Cliff Lee, had watched us arrive on the back of the trailer and decided to come down and lend a hand. They had such a can-do attitude that I knew at that point we weren’t going down without a fight. With the Marauder up on the jack, and the rear axle ripped out, we began to diagnose the problem, which appeared to be a blown axle bearing and brakes that had all but been disintegrated in the desert heat. At that point, we knew what was needed to get us back on the road the next day. Enter in Jack Pontius, Connor Miller, and Glayden Douglas to further assist, and we had the best part of a full pit crew. A quick dash to two Auto Parts stores (shout out to them being open late on Fridays!) and we had mostly all the parts we needed to get the repairs completed. An hour later, the wheel was back on, and the Merc was rolling around the carpark for a test drive….albeit without any rear brakes, but nonetheless we were back in the fight. The boys even refused to take any payment for their assistance, they just did it out of sheer kindness, and I simply cannot thank them enough for what they did for us.
When anyone asks me what I love about The Great Race, my answer is always simple, and that is the camaraderie with my fellow racers. Yes, we are all competing against one another, but I have never had anyone refuse assistance or to answer any questions I have had. This has been particularly important to me, as I never had a “Rookie Year” as a Navigator, as John was Sportsman class by the time I started joining him on the race, so without an official mentor, I relied on collating information I learned in pieces from other racers. I can only hope that I am able to pass on that same information to future rookies and other racers and share the same goodwill and kindness that had been shown to me over the last 3 years by the Great Race Family. Whilst we are still nearly a whole year away from next year's race, I am already so excited to get back into the Marauder, stopwatch in hand, and see all the friends that we have made along the way.
Tom Ditchburn,
Navigator, Car #15