“I’ve done my bit. I’m proud of what I’ve done, and I think I’ve got a good reputation. So that’s not too bad.”
Tony Quinn (pictured top with grandson Ryder Quinn) is keen to downplay his contributions to Motorsport. As a businessman first and foremost, Motorsport has been a “hobby” for the 68-year old Scotsman. And it’s fair to say that Motorsports in Australia and New Zealand would not have been the same without Quinn’s involvement.
Quinn’s Motorsport story starts as a teenager in Scotland, although early aspirations to a career in Motorsport were extinguished very early on.
“I started racing Formula Four in Scotland, and I was doing quite well,” Quinn said. “I thought I could make a career out of it, like every young fella.
“Then a guy came over; his name was Eddie Cheever. And he smashed us! Never been to the track before, and just smashed us in it.
“At that point, I knew I’d never make a career out of Motorsport.”
And the story could have so easily ended there – Quinn ended up taking over the family business, before emigrating to Australia and ending up at Yatala, Queensland, managing the V.I.P. Petfoods company. It was there that Quinn’s accountant suggested they enter the 1999 Targa Tasmania in a late 70’s BMW. And the passion for Motorsports was reignited.
“I decided to do Targa Tasmania, and I loved it so much,” recalled Quinn. “And since then, I’ve just carried on.”
Quinn “carried on” to become a significant player in the Motorsport scene in Australia. After piloting a Porsche for the following few years at Targa Tasmania, Quinn created the Australian Porsche Carrera Cup Championship in 2003 – debuting before the GB equivalent – before going on to create the Aussie Racing Cars Championship. Then in 2011, Quinn bought the Australian GT Championship.
For Quinn, after building up Carrera Cup, it was a natural progression to then do the same for Australian GT.
“[Getting into] Australian GT was fairly obvious,” Quinn said. “When I did the Carrera Cup, what I came across was you could only get sponsorship from someone that likes Porsche’s. So if you go to a CEO and say, I’ve got this Porsche thing.’ [and the response is] oh, I like Lamborghini’s’, it was hard for them to do a deal.
“But then I thought with the GTs, it’d be so much easier because you’ve got such an array of brands that you’re bound to fit some brand into a CEO’s desire. It was easier to get sponsorship for the types of cars that we race.”
The Australian GT series grew rapidly with Quinn’s involvement, alongside GT’s popularity worldwide, and the increased profile of the Bathurst 12 Hour. Across Quinn’s tenure as series owner, the calendar expanded to include separate Endurance and Sprint championships, started seeing grid sizes in the mid 20’s, and thanks to a complex driver rating and corresponding handicap system, saw races where out and out professionals like Christopher Mies could be upstaged by an Australian Am driver.
“We built the Australian GT Championship into something pretty special,” Quinn reflects. “The GT3 series has been, I think, one of the best categories invented. Stephane [Ratel] has done a good job – the BoP, the driver seeding, it’s all been good.
“But I must say, the driver seeding we had – the 12 seeds – Stephane Ratel said to me he’d wished that he’d done that system,” Quinn adds with a smirk.
The seeded driver ratings system Quinn installed featured 6 different Am categories and 6 different Pro categories, each with an associated handicap time for their pit stops. This meant that any combination of drivers could, theoretically, be competitive against any other combination. Quinn’s justification for the system was simple.
“It was a much fairer system. Because there are some ‘Am’s’ that are pretty good, and there’s some Silvers that are also pretty good. There needs to be more dissection of talent or skill – more recognition or a driver’s level.
“I think there’s work to be done there, but Stephane’s probably busy enough!”
Tony held onto the Australian GT Series until 2018, where he sold off the category to Trofeo Motorsports. The category then went through a series of lean years, before becoming a victim of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the 2020 season being delayed and eventually cancelled outright. The SRO bought into the category and revived the series in 2021 under the GT World Challenge banner, formally incorporating what had been a standalone national series into the SRO network.
Speaking to Quinn about that period, there is little regret.
“I sold the category because I was getting fed up with the competitors,” Quinn said. “When I sold [the series], it fell into some hands that didn’t quite understand the whole thing.
“Now it’s in the rightful hands of the SRO, which I think is good.”
But in Quinn’s words, “you’ve got to be happy with the deal on the day.”
It’s a lesson that comes from Tony Quinn, the Businessman, which has been at the root of everything Quinn has done in Motorsports.
“Just about everything I do – apart from going to the toilet – is about business,” Quinn clarified. “I enjoy building things, creating things, putting value to them, increasing the value, and selling them.
“That’s basically what I’ve done all my life.
“You can’t have regrets when you sell for a profit. For example, I sold V.I.P. Petfoods for $410 million. I kept some percentage of it – 10%. We sold it two years later for a billion dollars.
“People have asked you’re not pissed off that you didn’t keep it?’ – No.
“Because any business deal, you have to be happy with the deal on the day.”
And in the business of Motorsport, Tony Quinn has done well for himself.
“A lot of people can spend money in Motorsport,” Quinn quips. “There’s the old saying: if you start off with a big fortune, you’ll end up with a small one.’
“But I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to reverse that… It’s very difficult to make money in Motorsport.”
“I’ve been able to promote my other endeavours outside of Motorsport, and there’s probably not a true value you can put on that. The chances of a major retailer seeing my product on television is quite high. Even if they saw that a year ago, they can go yeah, I’ve seen that on TV!’ I think that is sometimes undervalued.”
And as any Australian Motorsport fan will say, the black car with the yellow paws and prominent V.I.P. Petfoods branding was always recognisable on the grid. And when that company was sold, the orange Daryl Lea car was the next Tony Quinn company to adorn the grid.
Motorsports has been an enjoyable playground for Quinn, and one that he parallels with his business interests in how they operate.
“I enjoy the people in the industry. I think race car drivers, engineers and team members – they’re all good at making quick decisions.
“In business, that’s an advantage. If you can make a quick decision quite often it’s a good decision. I quite enjoy that environment.
“It just so happens that Motorsport is my chosen passion, so I guess I combined the two desires.”
It’s been a combination that has persisted through the family, with two of his sons – Klark and Kent – both accomplished racers in their own right, and now grandson Ryder has taken to the track too. At the Bathurst 12 Hour in February, the four Quinns all got behind the wheel of an Audi GT3 machine, in what Tony called his ‘best weekend in Motorsports.’
“We decided to come back for the 12 hour this year with the family and have a crack,” Quinn said. “That was, without a doubt, the best weekend in Motorsports that I will ever have.
“It’s just an amazing story of a family – generations of families – just enjoying themselves through the weekend.
“It was quite surreal; there was a race going on, but we were doing our own thing. I asked Josie [Spillane, Quinn Group CEO] after the race, WHO won the race?’ That’s how distant we were from what was going on.
“And we thoroughly enjoyed it.”
The Quinn car kept their nose clean and incident free to finish the 12 Hour this year, and in the hands of Tony’s grandson Ryder, even dipped into the 2:02’s in qualifying.
When asked, Quinn was very proud to talk about his family.
“[Ryder’s] dad was fast too! [Klark] was an Australian GT champion [in 2012 and 2013], and his grandfather did alright at times as well,” Quinn smiled.
“What makes me proud too is that his father, and Ryder both acknowledge that whilst they love Motorsport, and they enjoy it, they don’t want to make a career out of it. And they’re happy to have it as a hobby and be good at it.
“There’s far easier and more financially rewarding ways of making a living.”
Nowadays, Quinn is a key stakeholder in Triple Eight Race Engineering, owning 40% of the team, while also owning the Hampton Downs, Highlands Motorsport Park, and Taupo circuits in New Zealand, and Queensland Raceway in Australia. Quinn has also started his own foundation – the Tony Quinn Foundation (TQF) – to support young New Zealand-based drivers in getting their starts in Motorsports. For Quinn, this is all in the name of giving back to Motorsports.
The TQF has already proved a success, with F1 driver Liam Lawson the first of what Tony hopes will be many drivers to come through the ranks.
“We support a lot of young kids in different ways. Liam [Lawson] is the one that everybody knows about, but I can tell you, there’s a couple of 12 to 14-year-old kids in New Zealand that are well worth keeping an eye on!”
As far as his own racing career is concerned, Quinn is currently enjoying the Monochrome GT4 Australia championship, where he races the #101 Game Over Toyota Supra GT4, and he has nothing but praise for the category. “GT4 is a good product. There’s 30+ GT4s [racing in GT4 Australia].
“When you think about it, the GT4’s go around the same track [as GT3 cars] only a few seconds slower, but they’re easier to drive.
“And they’re more suitable for slower drivers. [The team] were just discussing how reliable the cars are, because they’re not stressed or anything. You can run a GT4 car for, I don’t know, five years, I don’t know! but you can just keep running them.
“Put tyres and fuel in and away you go!”
Quinn is also realistic about being closer to the end of his career than to the start of it. After a big crash in a Carrera Cup car a few seasons ago, Quinn has given away driving GT3’s (apart from the Bathurst 12 Hour one-off), and is sticking around until I don’t want to anymore.’
“I acknowledge that I’m getting very old, and I try to stay out of the way!” Quinn said. “I’m going to carry on doing it until such time that I become embarrassed.
“I’ve had a great journey, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.”
And with over two decades of involvement, Australian and New Zealand Motorsport has been better for it.
Pictures GruppeC Photography, Jack Martin
