Staying power

Calling time on a full-time career in sports isn’t easy. It’s a decision fraught with doubt, an answer that poses more questions, such as the inevitable “What next?”

Perhaps mercifully, for Greg Murphy in 2012, retiring from full time racing wasn’t a decision he had to make.

"2012 was a miserable year,” he says with trademark frankness. “Right at the start of the season, I was involved in a big accident with Jono Webb that severely damaged a disc in my back.

“I couldn't even operate the car. I couldn't put weight on my leg, and I had no strength in it at all. It ended up requiring a fusion procedure and obviously, I then missed a bunch of races as well.”

Throughout that year’s underwhelming season Murph says he grew disillusioned. He knew that if he was going to have another chance at a full-time drive, he didn’t want to be experimenting with a new car and certainly not with one that didn’t have a Holden badge on it.

“The problem was, by the end of 2012, I wasn’t in any position of power in pit lane. I ended up just, you know, slowly disappearing into the background. But it did allow me to open up conversations with HRT about an endurance drive and, having been with HRT earlier in my career, that option had a nice storyline to it.”

While not a bolt from the blue, Murph’s semi-retirement did leave many wondering if he had more to offer than endurance co-driver duties. And whether he had stepped back too soon.

“In some ways I think I was actually just tired,” he says. “You don't want to make that decision of course, but in the end, I didn't really have any decision to make. I'd come to the realisation that it was probably over. But on the flip side, honestly, it didn't take me long to feel comfortable with that outcome either. At the end of the day, I didn't miss the stress and the disappointment and the anger of not achieving. I didn’t miss that side of the sport at all.”

After two decades in Australia, perpetually packing for the next race meet or sponsor engagement, Hawke’s Bay was calling. It was time to come home, and it was time to change everything up.

A phone call from Supercars Head of Television and Content, Scott Young, did just that. Young offered Murph a spot on a revamped FOX broadcast plan for the 2015 Supercars season. The opportunity would put Murph back on the grid in an unexpected way.

“Scott saw I could add value in pit lane, but a prerequisite of the gig was that I couldn’t do enduros anymore. That’s interesting in hindsight of course, because the two blokes doing TV now [fellow Supercar alumni, Craig Lowndes and Garth Tander] have clearly got different rules in their contract than I had!” he laughs.

Nevertheless, Murph once again became a beloved figure in Australian Supercars, no longer as a driver, but now a pit lane reporter with the unique viewpoint of his vast experience in the series. His insights, along with the openness of drivers and teams when talking to Murph for the cameras, helped reinvigorate the Supercars spectacle. The audiences were loving it. Right up until Covid arrived.

“The job was amazing while it lasted. It could be quite stressful, always trying to add proper value, trying to keep an eye on what's going on and offer up quality input. But broadcasting is a bit like a race team. The presenters stand out front and that can be hard work. But we can be made to look good by all the work that's done behind the scenes by a lot of other people.”

Murph remains a regular on TV with co-presenting duties on Sky Speed, showcasing the fortunes of Kiwi racers competing around the world. It seems a long way from the fiery press conferences and on-track argy-bargy he was once known for. But now he’s also front and centre in a debate that is as important to him as racing: road safety.

He’s been open about his own indiscretions as a young driver and sees New Zealand’s current approach to road safety is failing the most vulnerable on our roads.

“In New Zealand, new drivers don’t require any proper learning in order to get their licence. You pass a standardised multi-choice test where you don't need to know why the answer is the answer: you just need to know what the answer is. That's the first failure right there,” he says.

“Same with the restricted driving test: it's just a memory thing. It's too simple a process. And if a new driver passes the restricted driving test, that's the end of the learning phase. That new driver is left to learn about rational decision making behind the wheel on their own. For some that means learning from a near miss, but sadly for many young drivers, one single bad decision all too often results in a tragedy.”

Murph is adamant that giving drivers more information about a vehicle’s limitations will help them make informed decisions on the road.

“We allow new drivers to get six months off their restricted licence period by sitting in a classroom for four two-hour sessions in order to get a certificate confirming they’ve done a defensive driving course. But they haven’t actually sat behind the wheel of a car.

“There isn’t even a pass or fail: all you've got to do is turn up and you get a certificate. How does that benefit anybody, especially our most vulnerable and those that have the least amount of experience on the road?”

In Murphy's vision, the path to safer roads is not paved with half-measures or the political expediency of lowering speed limits – he’s looking for more tangible outcomes.

“Sure, if we were all driving at 20km/h everywhere, motorists would be more likely to survive an accident. But the reality is that’s just not going to happen. The numbers suggest that lowering speed limits hasn’t made an impact. And I reckon that approach is incredibly short-sighted. It’s just box ticking. It’s an easy thing to do, right? But it doesn’t identify the issue. Lowering speed limits is wilfully ignoring the reason why people crash.

“NZTA is spending $4 billion a year and in the last two financial years has spent over $600 million on consultants. That’s seriously disturbing. In my mind it's dead set criminal that we continue to have a system that is so badly thought out, that operates with such a lack of concentrated effort and has brought about such little change.”

He might have had beef with Marcus Ambrose on the track back in the day, but this, clearly, is not a fight Murph plans to walk away from.