Brad Ward talks about sideswiping concrete walls and flipping cars at high speed with the steely nerve that only a race car driver can. And it’s this nerve, in part, that sealed his victory in the Aussie Racing Car Series at the Gold Coast last week.
But to drive at speeds of up to 220 kilometres per hour, it takes a lot of more than nerve to keep you in the race, Brad explains, “It’s a combination of things. Probably having the mechanical knowledge so you know what’s going on with the car as well as being able to concentrate. It requires heaps of concentration to drive on the edge from start to finish and drive the car as hard as you possibly can for the whole race. ”
The esteem that he holds his sport in is obvious when speaking to Brad but he also talks just as happily about his day job, Assistant Manager in Audit, based in KPMG’s Sydney office.
Brad manages his racing career with the support of his work team and KPMG colleagues. “Each race meeting is three or four days usually over a weekend so sometimes I need to take annual leave to go to a meeting. ”
“Most people I work with day-to-day know what I’m up to and they follow the series and they support it and are happy for me to give the time that I do. And three people I work with in Sydney actually came up and watched me race in the last series so that was great. ”
In the world of Audit, a word like ‘risk’ could be considered a dirty word, whereas in world of motor sport, it’s what makes a good driver.
“Most people don’t understand how an accountant can do that [race] on the weekends, just because it’s so different. You’ve gotta take risks and its scary – motor racing is scary. You are driving around a circuit as fast as you can on a circuit with 40 or 50 other drivers going as fast as they can. ”
The Aussie Racing Car series is a family affair with Brad’s father founding the series and continuing to manufacture, by hand, each car that competes. The cars are smaller than a regular sedan or super V8 and are cheaper to build at a cost of around $45,000-$50,000 each, but this is what makes the race the most popular amongst competitors in Australia.
Brad is sponsored by the Yokohama Racing team.
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