A fitter machinist by day for a cement company, Tim Auty likes to play up the smell of the oily rag that drives his weekend rally car.
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That is to portray his luck on the dirt roads as one of the quintessential battler.
And with good reason.
The Tarleton 35-year-old claimed the Tasmanian Rally Championship round in the presence of the Bates and Taylors, names synonymous with the upper echelon of the sport's legacy.
"It's just more enjoyable to be the underdog and push the guys with the budget," he says.
"The top guys do it professionally so to get anywhere near them is exciting."
Those leading Australian rally competitors spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the latest rally models.
Competitors like Auty have to break their bank account.
Like pouring his savings into a Mitsubishi Evo 8 that went nowhere.
"It just broke down lots and ran out of money pretty much," Auty says.
The rallying dream to join the professionals that started behind the wheel in 2006 was let go a long time ago.
He now waits for when they come to Tasmania once a year and observes close up the performance of the car that increases "through the roof", picking up nearly twice the speed just getting around a corner.
The winning Mazda 323 GTR from the top weekend doesn't quite move the same.
It took three years to rebuild it to the standard he wanted and then driving the car for another three ironing out all of its kinks.
But it still never ends.
"We had a few little problems on day two that caused us to lose a lot of time," Auty says of Sunday's racing with co-driver Jon Mitchell.
"One of them turned out to be nothing as we stopped in the middle of a stage because it was making a lot of noise somewhere in the drive train.
"There was something in one of the wheels smashing itself to pieces, but didn't find anything wrong.
"So we just kept going and the noise went away.
"It's a bit frustrating throwing a good three and a half minutes away and then we had a missing bolt come out of the suspension right on the second last stage.
"That caused the car to pull one way and make lots of noise with the wheels rubbing on the inside of the guard, but I guess we got home okay."
A lot of the success goes to Auty's parents and a handful of dedicated mates.
They volunteer to crew and contribute anyway they can.
"They get up early in the morning, we drive out there to the start, and they put the fuel in, pull the wheels off, change the tyres, do everything really," he says.
"But none of them are mechanics at all.
"Only one of them kind of works on cars, but that's for his own entertainment."
Andrew Mathieson
The day I realised I wasn't good enough to play for St Kilda or be the No.1 spinner for Australia was when I realised journalism was the closest I could come to follow my passion for sport. And it's not just about the scores for me. It's the back story behind the game.
The day I realised I wasn't good enough to play for St Kilda or be the No.1 spinner for Australia was when I realised journalism was the closest I could come to follow my passion for sport. And it's not just about the scores for me. It's the back story behind the game.
