“We really struggled with the budget early in the year. Between Dad and Yellow Pages we bought the car, but we simply didn’t have the money to run it. At one point, we were so behind on payments that we decided to ask David Campese for help. He played union with dad for the Queanbeyan Whites, so he knew our family well and if anyone was going to buy into what I was trying to do, we thought it would be him. In the end he paid something like £50,000, which was just unbelievable and it meant that we could keep going.

I then got a call from Norbert Haug. I’d introduced myself to him at the Grand Prix Ball in Australia the previous year and he rang out of the blue to ask if I’d replace Alex Wurz at the Nurburgring round of the FIA GT Championship. I actually said no because I wanted to have a test in the car first, so they got Roberto Moreno to do the race and I then tested for the team at the A1 Ring. They liked what they saw and we did a long-term deal that meant they’d pay for the remainder of my F3 season. For the first time in my career, I was going to get paid to race a car, which was huge.”