Above: Finals officials (from left) Simon Carson, Mark Ngatuere, Don Wilson and Grant Turner during the driver briefing Top left: The finals of the driving championship are held in the carpark of the Claudelands Arena, while the RTF annual conference is going on inside Left: Class 4 category winner Andrew Crandon (right) – here receiving his award and cheque from TR Group MD Andrew Carpenter (left) and chief judge Don Wilson – has only been driving for less than a year
and cattle all over the North Island, and occasionally picking up bulls in the South Island. He shrugs off “getting covered in shit every day” and says he’s “loving the livestock work. It’s bloody good. “There’s the challenge of the animals and you get out in the backblocks. I just enjoy it, you know.” Ask him how he gained the driving skill that impressed the likes of Simon Reid and others and got him so close to the title and he reckons: “Probably from a lot of f***ups along the way. I learnt because I broke and bent shit when I started. I’ve learnt to look where I should be looking now.” You have to, as he says, “LEARN from your mistakes.” He’s also learnt to “ask questions – they’re cheaper than f***ups!” He reckons that he gets the greatest pleasure in his job from “all the small things achieved through the day, like one-shot backing into a race, right load-count, getting through tight roads and gateways without any problems.” His approach behind the wheel is to “drive like I’m coming the other way. I mean, if you’re going hammer-down on a tight road and the person going the other way is too, you could be in the shit!” The other thing is: “TRY to be patient.” Interestingly, his performance at the nationals repeated the success his Dad (who now drives for Middle Hills Contracts in Central Hawke’s Bay) achieved (as a runner-up) 15 or 16 years ago. It also followed his own first taste of the driving competition in 2015, when he reckons: “I sort of got a bit flustered with the convex mirrors (on the driving challenge truck)…I sort of lost it from the start.” That experience though helped him this time. As for the rest, he laughingly reckons his standout performance at the nationals was probably down to “the way I held my tongue I ‘spose! I mean there was plenty of other good people in there and it’s how your cards fall on the day. “I guess skill had something to do with it. But I mean there were a lot of good fullas doing it – and there’s a lot of better people out there 76 | Truck & Driver
too.” While “I definitely gave it a good go” (you have to, he insists, after “people put a shitload of effort into putting it together”), Jackson’s approach was also to keep things lowkey. Thus he didn’t worry about trying to jump in a tractor unit/semi trailer combo before the comp to update his rusty knowledge: “Nah…I try not to think too much about things or else I get all wound up, you know. “It’s just a matter of ‘take it as it comes.’ I definitely gave it a good shot…but oh yeah, I knew I wasn’t going for the All Blacks or a World Cup or anything like that.” The same approach maybe helped when it was revealed at the nationals that the reversing driving challenge had been made tougher: “I don’t overthink shit too much, so it was just get in and do it – don’t worry about it too much.” The best moment, he says, “was when they called out my name for that shootout….that you made it up there, that was quite cool.” Jackson came away happy with his victory in the Truck-Trailer Combination category, committed to supporting the championship and happy that his win automatically qualifies him for the 2018 finals. And he adds: “You hear people talk about how popular the contests were back in the day. That’s the sort of thing you want – for a lot more people to get involved in it. That’d really make it exciting.” John Baillie is very experienced, very accomplished in driving contests, having attended his first nationals 30 years ago and having made it into the top four in the previous two finals – and winning the Tractor-Semi Combination honours at each. He reckons he was hooked on driving comps from his youth, when he worked for a bloke who was King of the Road champ back in the early 1970s. Although his 2016 class win qualified him directly for the finals, he contested – and dominated – the Auckland heat. He won the truck and trailer AND tractor/semi divisions, and top-scored in the theory test. As he sums up: “I had a great run in that.” His approach in the comp was very different to Matt Jackson’s –