CHRIS PITHERASHLEIGH MAXWELL SPEAKS WITH NEWLY-CROWNED V8 UTE CHAMPION ABOUT WORKING WITH McLAREN AND THATV8 CRASHWHEN DID YOU START RACING?I raced go karts from the age of six until I was 12. I grew up in Palmerston North in New Zealand and raced over there when I was younger. In New Zealand, you can get your race licence when you are 12 so I did that and ran a season in Formula Vee. They were the first cars I raced.WHERE THERE OTHERS AS YOUNG AS YOU COMPETING?At the time that I started racing Formula Vee I was the youngest in the world because NZ is the only country that allows you to do that so young. It's pretty cool; it gives you a bit of a head start.AND WHAT'S THISI HEAR ABOUT YOU WORKING FORM CLAREN?I was fortunate enough to win what they call a Bruce McLaren Scholarship in New Zealand, which is basically for an upand-coming driver. Part of that was going over to England for a week and spending a week with the McLaren F1 team; basically a week's work experience, which was pretty unreal really. I was 16 at the time and I went over there on my own and didn't really know what I was doing. It was definitely an eye-opener for me, trying to figure out where to go and how to get places. Each day I'd spend in a different department, so it was really awesome. It wasn't originally planned but I was lucky enough for them to invite me along to go to a test day they did at a runway doing high-speed testing.IS RACING THE FAMILY?When I was five I wanted a motorbike. A couple of my friends had motorbikes and I thought that looked pretty cool and I wanted a one. But my mum put a stop to that pretty quickly. I don't know if my dad consulted her about it or not but he went a bought me a go-kart instead. So that's how I got started and after that I was just hooked.YOU'VE RACED IN A BUNCH OF CATEGORIFS. WHAT'S THE BEST RACE CAR YOU'VE DRIVEN?I love racing any form of motorsport. I've raced a lot of different cars now over the years, just anything I can get my hands on really. I've driven single-seaters, HQ's, Utes, Supercars, Formula Toyota; I've driven a lot of different things and they've all got aspects that I enjoy about them. My ambition has always been to get into V8 Supercars full-time, so when I got the opportunity to do that, that was pretty special. V8 Supercars has probably been my favourite car to drive because it was my aim to get there and it's where I wanted to be.WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER YOUR CAREER HIGHLIGHT?Making it to V8 Supercars would be up there, because it was my dream to do that. The first was Bahrain in 2006 with Team Kiwi after a season in the Fujitsu series. That was definitely a highlight. Another memorable race was the AGP in 2004. I came over at 16 years old. We shipped our Formula Ford over here and had a run as a one-off event and we ended up second. My father and I ran the car and came over just to have a crack so that was pretty cool, I'll always remember that. And obviously more recently, definitely the biggest highlight would be winning the VB Ute Championship here. I had two years out of the sport after I had my crash at Bathurst in 2008 to get back into the motorsport scene in Australia and the first full season of V8 Utes to win would be the biggest highlight of my career so far.AND YOUR LOW LIGHT?The crash at Bathurst was definitely the lowlight. It was difficult, really. It was my dream to get into V8 Supercars and I'd managed to do that and that was going fairly well. That one incident brought everything to a halt and made it too hard to get another drive. It basically forced me out of the sport for two years and I was just fortunate enough that a friend gave me the opportunity to run in the utes over in New Zealand to have a bit of fun over there. I got some miles over there and then the opportunity came up to run with Ice Break Racing, so grabbed that with two hands.We managed to do a pretty good thing there and have an awesome year. Going from having nothing basically, and going to work every day as a fitter and turner -I just worked in a machine shop for a couple of years - and thinking I'd lost everything, to getting back involved and then winning the championship was really cool.DID YOU CONSIDER THROWING IN THE TOWEL AFTER THE BATHURST CRASH?It was pretty difficult. I feel that I got a pretty unfair rap out of that and I think most people didn't see the full story. I copped a pretty hard rap about it, which made it difficult for me and it did take me a while to get over it.WHAT DO YOU DOFORA LIVING?We're a small team at Ice Break Racing and I'm the only guy that is full-time. I'm pretty busy with whatever has to be done. I drive the truck to the event, I pack the truck before it goes, I do what work I can on the racecar. That, with the promotional events we have for our supporters take~ up pretty much all my time.WHAT DO YOU GETUPTOIN YOURSPARETIME?I haven't really had any, to be honest. I like to go back to the Gold Coast when I can. I've got a couple of old cars that I like to muck around with. I've got a 1967 XR Fairmont station wagon and I've got a Mk1 Cortina, which was my first car that I bought when I was 15 over in New Zealand. I decided I didn't want to sell that, so I brought it over here to Australia.WHAT'S THE GOAL LONG TERM?Getting back into Supercars full time and making a career out of it. I'm still trying to build my profile and hopefully the results will help the opportunity come up to go on to main game again. We're not sure what we're doing next year yet, but we've ticked the box with V8 Utes and hopefully something bigger and better will come along.SO IS THIS WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU'D BE DOING WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP?V8 Supercars is something I've always wanted to do. I started when I was really young and I've spent basically my whole life working towards achieving that and it's not something I'm going to give up anytime soon, I don't think.