When Richie Stanaway left the Supercars in 2019, he had no intention of coming back.
The then 28-year-old had come to the end of an underwhelming two-season stint in the series, having returned from Europe to Australia after plying his trade in the World Endurance Championship with Aston Martin.
His first year at Tickford was unconvincing, but his switch to Garry Rogers Motorsport, pushing out Garth Tander in the process, was even worse. The change of scenery failed to revitalise him, and despite barely having had the chance to catch his breath and settle into being back Down Under, he was out of the sport at the end of the year.
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The driver widely tipped to be New Zealand’s next big thing, who had previously been billed for Formula 1 before breaking his back climbing the junior ranks, was without a drive for 2020.
Disillusioned and tired, he called time on his career.
But the memory of him refused to fade.
Boost Mobile founder Peter Adderton was determined to see the Kiwi back behind the wheel and hatched a plan to jump start his career with a wildcard drive at Bathurst.
It’s a story recounted in the documentary Wildcard: One Last Shot, streaming now on Kayo.
It turned out the hardest part was to convince Stanaway to take the bait.
“Initially I wasn’t interested due to the fact that I was fairly certain when I stopped racing in 2019 that I’d closed that chapter,” Stanaway told Fox Sports. “So it was quite a difficult decision to decide to come back.”
Two factors were crucial to bringing him out of retirement.
“It was the prospect of having a quicker car than I’ve probably ever had at Bathurst,” he said. “And driving with Greg.”
Greg Murphy, the four-time Bathurst winner and New Zealand racing icon, was the crucial second part of the plan.
“If I was driving with anyone else, I probably would’ve said no,” Stanaway said. “There was just too much right about the opportunity to turn it down.”
It turned out the feeling was mutual for Stanaway’s boyhood idol.
“I’ve been a fan of his ability and watched him and was just very aware of what he was capable of doing for quite a long time,” Murphy told Fox Sports. “I just wanted to see him back in a car to prove again to the motor racing world that this guy is special and needs another shot. That was my motivation.”
But reviving a career isn’t the work of a moment. Stanaway’s speed has always been well regarded in the paddock, but his brief time in the sport isn’t held in the same high esteem. His two years were blighted by some mystifyingly slow performances and ugly crashes as well as off-track disciplinary issues, one of which led to his standing down by GRM at the 2019 Gold Coast 600.
It wouldn’t have been enough for the old Stanaway to return to Bathurst. He needed to be ready to seize the opportunity.
“I was quite close to the whole fallout through those couple of years that he was in Supercars before he disappeared,” Murphy said. “I just felt sort of let down by the game and the sport in a big way.
“The sport that didn’t help so much, but he also didn’t help himself in many respects as well, so there was a combination of things, but it was just so significant that these things conspired the way it all did for him to walk away for the sport, which I saw as a real waste.
“He and I hadn’t communicated for 18 months since he left. To speak to him and hear him changed and evolved and have learnt so much emotionally but also the way he had grown as a person and changed — it was like, man, you know what, he’s in a powerful place to acknowledge things that had passed.”
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Stanaway admitted to having done much reflecting in his three years out of the sport.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what went right, what went wrong and what led me to where I’m at today,” he said. “I don’t know if I’d use the word regret; you just learn from everything over the years.
“I went through a difficult period towards the last two years racing full-time and then that first year or two out of the sport. I had committed basically my whole life to a certain career path right from the age of five and then all of a sudden you have to change path, so you have a career crisis and you have to do a lot of development on yourself in order to rebuilt your life and career in another direction.
“By the time everyone reconnected with me, I’d been through big changes in my life both personally and career-wise.”
What hadn’t changed was his fundamental make-up as a racing driver.
“I surprisingly felt a lot more comfortable with the situation than I probably should have given the circumstances,” he said of the moment he strapped into the cockpit in his garage at Bathurst. “I don’t remember ever feeling so relaxed during a race weekend.
“I was a bit worried I would be stressed given you’re thrown into the serious drivers that compete full-time and I hadn’t raced properly in three years.”
It was vindication for Murphy’s instinct that getting Stanaway back in the car would be a success.
“He didn’t need to go back and do it again, he was content with walking away from the game and embarking on a very different life,” he said. “But seeing him back in a car — that’s his natural habitat that he needs to be in.”
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Despite technical problems and an unpredictable weather forecast, the Murphy-Stanaway pairing exceeded expectations for the weekend. Richie qualified a superb fifth, putting Murphy fourth on the grid after penalties, and they brought the car home 11th after one of the more eventful Bathurst races in recent years.
But the performance wasn’t just an expression of his speed; the calibration of the team was crucial to getting the best out of him after both Tickford and GRM tried and failed to crack the Stanaway code in 2018 and 2019.
“I think Boost realised that that environment was very important for me to come back to, which is a big part of why they got Greg to be involved,” Stanaway said.
“It made me lift my game and it motivated me to do my preparation as well as I possibly could because I knew I would be sharing a car with him. For me it was a very, very motivating situation to be in because I wanted to perform at my best.
“You can always obviously do better, but I felt like I got the most out of myself.”
But the ultimate measure of success is whether the drive has done enough to insert Stanaway back into the driver market.
As the third-last round of the year, Bathurst came too late into proceedings for Richie to play a significant role. Adderton’s attempt to enter a full-time car into next year’s championship was also rebuffed.
He seems likely he’ll get his hands on some wildcard entries during 2023, and a Bathurst return will surely be on the cards.
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Murphy is adamant that the sport must work to bring his compatriot back into the fold.
“He’s one of those drivers that gives motorsport enthusiasts and fans pleasure to watch,” he said.
“He’s an exciting race car driver. He does things in race cars that we want to see, which is make moves, push a car to the absolute nth degree of its grip and ability.
“We want to see people drive cars at that level, like Shane van Gisbergen does, on a regular basis.
‘There are benefits for him to be able to get those personal rewards, but there are benefits for the enthusiasts and the fans as well to be able to see it. That’s what I want to see.
“Hopefully he does get to do some races next year — that will be a real success for this whole program and the wildcard and the future of motorsport.”
Wildcard: One Last Shot is streaming now on Kayo.