Dale Wood, The Man Who Loves To Race And Compete

From an early age, Dale Wood has had motorsport in his blood. At age 12, he was racing motorbikes and dirt bikes; it became a passion for him. One day, Dale had a bad crash on a motorbike, which resulted in a neck injury. However, Dale felt that, being on a bike, injuries were inevitable; he had already suffered a few broken bones. At the time, his younger brother was racing go-karts and his mother wanted Dale to do the same, as it was safer.

When Dale was driving Formula Ford, he became a fan of New Zealand racing legend Greg Murphy. In 2007 Greg Murphy Racing signed Dale for the upcoming Development V8 racing series. Dale felt these were some of his best racing days, as Greg was always willing to help. “He was a massive supporter; he and his dad were really good to me. I had a really good sponsor behind me at the time – INI Helicopters. He had an earth-moving business as well but wanted to promote the helicopter business too. He looked after me and gave me a massive leg up.

“Driving for Greg Murphy Racing was good fun, with a really good core of people and mechanics on my car. I remember the day I signed up to drive with Greg Murphy Racing; Murph came in and we had a good chat. He blazed in with heaps of character and introduced himself like he’s nobody. Straight away he hands over his phone number and says, ‘Any time you have any questions, give me a call.’ He always supported you at every race, whether it was out the front of his garage or hanging in your window yelling things at you. He was really good.”

Dale found that going from driving Formula Fords to the Development Series car was a step up, as he had to adjust to the key differences between the categories, such as the fact that with Formula Fords you get a full view of what’s going on around you. Your vision is more limited in a Development Series car. Also, with Formula Fords, you know when you lock up your wheels, whereas in the Development Series it feels like it’s happening in slow motion; you don’t know what’s going on.

In 2009 Dale made another big step up, from the Fujitsu series to the main game, as he was signed by Kelly Motorsport. He was lucky enough to be involved with both Todd and Rick Kelly (Rick was involved mostly with the team, while Todd was more involved in the engineering side) as well as team manager Nick Ryan, who was taking over the team from Australian motorsport icon Larry Perkins.

Dale felt Larry was an unreal guy and a good bloke. “I remember my first round with Kelly Racing, in 2009, obviously at Adelaide, things started off pretty well in the opening laps of practise. Then I put it in the wall at turn eight. I came back in and Larry, I think, called and said I was a cock, which was pretty classic of him. It was something you would have expected from him and something I probably deserved at the time. Larry is someone I would pick up the phone for and have a yak with as well.”

Unfortunately, in 2010, after the Darwin round, the team dropped Dale. “That was probably one of the toughest times of my life. Racing has always meant a lot to me; it’s what I live and breathe. I got that opportunity to get onto the team, and then being dropped was gutting. I remember sitting up in my hotel room in tears after Darwin, wondering what I was going to do. It was a tough few months working out what I was going to do.”

Dale moved back to the Dunlop Series with the Greg Murphy Racing team and Matt White. For the next few years, he thoroughly enjoyed himself and rebuilt his racing career after the shocking drop from Kelly Motorsport. “I met some really good people and repositioned myself. When I got back into the Dunlop Series with Greg Murphy Racing in 2012, I had an older car, probably not the greatest car in the field by any means, but by the end of the year we had awesome results – I think it was three or four podiums in a row against some heavy hitters at the time, like Triple Eight who ran Scott Pye and Chaz Mostert. In 2013 I got into a really good car with Matt White in the FPR car and went about and won that championship.”

In 2015, Dale got back into the main game with Brad Jones Racing, racing under the Jason Bright license. He enjoyed his time with the team, as they were a good bunch of guys who lived motorsport. With a hands-on owner like Brad Jones, the team ran extremely well. The team was like a family, as they all worked together to achieve success. The team’s engines were supplied by a Queensland company called Noonan Engineering; Brad got on well enough with the company that they could get good engines to make the cars more competitive.

In 2016 Dale moved from BJR to Nissan Motorsport, which was run by Todd and Rick Kelly. It was the only factory team Nissan had in the competition. Dale found that the team was a completely different organisation to be a part of. They had found their feet and weren’t piecing things together to form cars and teams. It was a more polished organisation and he felt good about being part of a factory organisation for a year. Still, Dale found it a tough year. Not only was the Nissan a different car to drive, but by the time he’d found his footing, time had run away and he was looking somewhere else. Dale knew that after Bathurst the writing was on the wall; the Kelly brothers were going to sign Simona De Silverstro.

Towards the end of 2016, Dale had talks with Erebus Motorsport owner Betty Klimenko about a move to her team. It was an easy move to make, with his main sponsor GB Galvanising agreeing that it was a good idea, as Dale didn’t have many options on the table. After moving to Erebus, Dale had a good start to the year, with good results and a good car speed. His best race results were in Tasmania and Philip Island (finishing eighth on both occasions), and his best qualifying performances were in Tasmania and Sandown, where he started from seventh.

After the good start to the year, Dale feels that the rest of the year has been ordinary. He has struggled to get the setup how he likes it. “The Nissan was different in the way it handled. Getting out of that and into a Holden is different. We had a test day that went pretty well at the start of the year but I think we did only about ten laps for the day. It was a tough start to the season to not be able to get fully comfortable with the car before racing.”

However, he feels that in the last round he and partner Dale Wood were on the pace before the blown tyre. Dale feels that at Bathurst he can “finish the year out well, as I know my car a lot better than what I did a few months ago. I’m more comfortable in it. I think at Bathurst we should be able to run really close to the top ten, if not inside that.”

Looking back to when Dale first started in the V8 Supercars, Dale prefers the uniqueness of the old generation of Supercar, as it was fun to drive but had to be driven in a certain way because of the lock differential and solid rear end. Also, you can’t beat a Supercar with flames out the exhaust.

Outside of Supercars, Dale is busy with regular rides on motorbikes, as he has a small track at his home. He also runs a small sign writing company with four guys. He enjoys spending his free time with his wife and two young kids, Jacko (4) and Cammy (2), especially going camping in their campervan.