The need for speed

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From the moment Leanne Tander started beating the boys on the go-kart track as a teenager, she was hooked on the thrills of motor racing. Linda Peatling reports.

Before she even set foot on a racetrack, motor sport played a big part in Leanne Tander’s life. As a little girl her weekends were filled with the sound of revving engines and the smell of greasy oil rags as she watched her dad, Mark Ferrier, race everything from Formula Vee to Production Cars. As she grew older she watched her big sister Belinda follow in her father’s footsteps on go-kart tracks across the country. Yet, unlike the rest of her family, Leanne showed little interest in the sport for much of her childhood, and by the time she’d reached her early teens, had grown positively bored with it. That was until her father convinced her to get behind the wheel of a go-kart at the age of 14 and experience the thrills for herself. Now, just 12 years later, Leanne is one of Australia’s leading race-car drivers and dedicates each day to staying at the forefront of this male-dominated sport.

7am: Leanne starts the day with a 20-kilometre cycle around the sleepy streets of Wonga Park, Victoria, as part of the ongoing fitness regimen that is essential for her to keep in shape for motor racing. “Driving a race car is a lot more physical than it looks,” says Leanne. “We can pull around 3Gs on some corners, so you need to have strong neck and back muscles,” she explains. “I’m a fairly small girl as well, and I’m racing against men, so I work out with weights a lot and I also try to go for a swim, run or bike ride every day.”

Apart from keeping up her strength, Leanne has never worried about competing against men, but her presence on the track did ruffle a few male feathers early on in her career. “When I was go-kart racing as a teenager a few guys would try to bump me off the track and when I started to win I’d hear their dads saying things like, ‘I can’t believe you let a girl beat you’,” she recalls. “Then I decided I wanted to step up to Formula Ford and one guy told me to go and get a pair of pink overalls and a pink car. It also seemed as though it was harder for me to get my licence than it was for the boys, but I just kept thinking, ‘I’ll show them’.” Two years later, Leanne did exactly that when she became the first woman ever to win a round of the Australian Formula Ford Championships in 2000. Since then she has competed regularly, taking out fifth place in the 2001 V8 Supercar Development Series, first place in the 2003 Improved Production Interstate Challenge, first place in her class of the 2004 Australian Production Car Championships, and first place in this year’s Formula 3 (F3) and Gold Star race at Phillip Island, just to name a few. “The guys don’t give me a hard time anymore,” she says with a smile.

8.30am: Back at home Leanne has breakfast with her husband, Garth Tander, who, incidentally, is no stranger to the racetrack himself. “I’ve spent so much of my time at racetracks I was bound to marry someone involved with the sport, but I didn’t know he’d turn out to be one of Australia’s top V8 Supercar drivers,” laughs Leanne as she recalls how the couple met when she was just 17 and Garth was 21. “I had just started racing Formula Ford and Dad hired a team in Perth to get our car up to scratch. I flew over to test the car and Garth was the team’s driver and mechanic. The first day he watched me go around the track and gave me some racing tips, and the next day his boss told him to take the day off and show me around Perth. I remember thinking he was very, very nice,” she smiles. “I’d noticed Leanne before she noticed me,” adds Garth, who currently races with Rick Kelly in the V8 Supercar Toll HSV Dealer Team. “I remembered her from go-karting – a girl who runs front gets your attention, but I was just one of loads of boys on the track so I didn’t expect her to notice me.”

9am: The couple head out to their garage to make a few final adjustments to Leanne’s $100,000 F3 car before her next race in three days’ time. “Garth is very busy with his own racing but he’s also my team mechanic, so if he’s not racing at Bathurst or something, he’s working with me,” says Leanne. “We both love racing any type of car, but open wheelers [cars with open cockpits such as F1 and F3 vehicles] are our favourite because they’re not like any normal car; they’re purpose built, aerodynamic racing machines and everything is so responsive that you have to be extremely accurate with split-second decisions – it’s an amazing feeling.” It was this feeling that took Leanne by surprise when her father convinced her to try go-kart racing as a teenager. “I was bored with watching my sister go round and round the track so I finally decided to give it a go myself and I couldn’t believe how much fun it was,” she recalls. “It’s hard to describe what it’s like. It’s not really a speed thing – my mind actually seems to slow down and I don’t feel as if I’m going so fast; there’s this hyper-awareness and I feel like I have plenty of time to check my mirrors, listen to the car, watch the other drivers and make my decisions all in a single moment.”

Like most race-car drivers, Leanne’s ultimate dream would be to race a Formula One (F1) car but, also like most other drivers, she knows that is unlikely to happen. “In Europe open wheelers are huge and there’s a natural progression from go-karts to Formula Ford, Formula 3, GP 2 and, if you’re really good, F1, but in Australia we just don’t get those opportunities,” she explains. It’s for this reason one of Leanne’s biggest heroes is Australia’s only current F1 driver, Mark Webber. “He made it,” she says proudly. “I really admire his determination, and I think he’s a good person as well. He actually rang me after I won my first Formula Ford race when I was 19 and congratulated me; I couldn’t believe he’d take the time because not everyone wishes you well, especially when they get to the top.”

12.30pm: Leanne and Garth load the race car into the back of their truck ready for Leanne to transport it to the weekend race in South Australia. “Garth and I usually drive the truck to each race meeting to cut down on costs because I’m a self-funded driver, so I have to find the money to run the car, pay my race team [mechanics, engineers and data logger] and fly them to each race, which costs about $250,000 per year,” she explains. If Leanne’s race is interstate, it might take her all day and/or night to reach her destination, but she still has to front up to the track the very next day.

“Sometimes we’ll drive all night on a Wednesday, spend Thursday trialling the car on the track, Friday practising, Saturday qualifying, Sunday racing and Monday driving home, so it can be pretty exhausting,” she sighs. As a Formula 3 racer, Leanne competes in eight race meetings per year and is only allowed eight separate practice sessions. “I’m not on the track that often, so most of our time is spent pulling the car apart and putting it back together between each race,” she explains. “Just about everything on the car has to be imported from Europe and it’s all about refining. I really enjoy this technical side of the sport; it’s a very exacting art and a good driver will listen to her car and advise the team on what needs to be done,” says Leanne.

1.30pm: With the car carefully loaded in the truck, Garth races out the door to fulfill one of the many commitments he has as a professional driver. “We hold special events where we’ll take the sponsors for a ride around the track – it’s a lot of fun because there isn’t the pressure of racing, so we can do a bit of showing off,” he laughs. Leanne, on the other hand, spends the afternoon in her home office, busily mustering up more sponsors for her lower-profile sport.

“V8 Supercars are where it’s at in Australia so F3 doesn’t get quite the same publicity as those guys; but the coverage of motor racing in general has come a long way in Australia over the past few years and I think it will only get bigger as more Aussies grow to love it,” she says.

Nevertheless, Leanne has her long-term sights set on driving for a V8 Supercar team like Garth. “It’s not going to be easy because there are hundreds of great drivers out there all vying for around 30 spots in Supercars, but I’ve got just as much chance as anyone else, so you never know,” she says with a laugh. In the meantime, the couple is also working on building their race-car management business called TanderSport, which will see other drivers hire the Tander team to take care of their cars. “It costs a lot to employ and manage your own full-time team, so hiring an established team such as ours makes sense,” explains Leanne. “Luckily, my parents made me go to university and get a commerce degree, so the business side of things comes fairly naturally to me.”

3.30pm: Leanne is interrupted by a very welcome delivery in the form of her new race suit that has come all the way from France. “It’s not pink, but it’s pretty good,” she laughs, as she eagerly tries it on. “Racing suits are triple-layer fireproof viscose and this one was $2,000. Nothing is cheap in this sport,” she sighs.

5.30pm: Garth has returned home from his afternoon at the racetrack, so the two take the opportunity to enjoy a well-earned break and go for a stroll with their beloved pug dogs, Holly and Kimba. “They’re our babies,” says Leanne, who says the couple has no intentions of adding any other kinds of babies to the family in the near future. “I’m only 26 and Garth is only 30 and our careers are really taking off at the moment, so I think we have a few more years before we’ll start thinking about adding to the family.”

6.10pm: Back from their leisurely walk, Leanne and Garth cook dinner together and then spend a couple of hours relaxing over a few games of pool in Garth’s favourite room of the house. “It’s got a race simulator, a pool table, a television and a few trophies; who could want any more?” he says with a cheeky smile. “It’s a great bloke’s room, but Leanne likes it as well… I think I hit the jackpot when I found her.”

8.30pm: Well aware of the gruelling schedule in store for them over the next few days, Leanne and Garth decide to turn in for bed early.

“I get excited the night before I head off to every race, but my days are so full I don’t usually have much trouble sleeping,” says Leanne. “Being good at any sport takes a lot of time and commitment, but I feel very lucky to be able to do what I love for work because racing is my life. I’d also love to see more girls joining me on the track. I think most women would be surprised at how much fun car racing is and how good they’d be at it if they gave it a go.”

For more information on Leanne and Garth Tander or to find out their tips on getting started in motor sport racing, visit www.leannetander.com.

Photography: Scott Hawkins. Hair & make-up: Bradwyn Jones.