Road train to the races
Porsche Carrera Cup team owner Scott Taylor gets serious when he takes his racing team to the races.
Motor-vation:
The prime mover’s 600-plus horsepower engine makes light work of this 53-metre-long road train.The Great Australian Road Trip is a rite of passage – but for some there’s much more to it than just getting from A to B. Take motorsport, for example; every week a fleet of transporters crosses the nation with their valuable cargo, going from one circuit to another, chasing that competitive rush. For some it’s a job, but for others it becomes much more than that – it becomes an adventure. For Scott Taylor, it’s all about the adventure.
Successful first in business and then in motorsport, Gold Coast-based Taylor runs Scott Taylor Motorsport (STM), a professional race team that fields second-generation racing talent Nash Morris in Porsche Paynter Dixon Carrera Cup Australia, Taylor in his own racing cars and a host of others in different Australian races.
For Taylor, a lover of driving trucks as much as driving his racing cars, the road trip is a key element to his motorsport journey. Which means when he loads his transporter, he does it in style. Taylor’s recent trip to Darwin for a round of Carrera Cup Australia saw him haul a road train over 53 metres in length in an epic six-day odyssey that traverses much of Australia’s wild, empty North.
“I have always had a liking for things with wheels, petrol- and diesel-driven and whatever else, and that extends to trucking, which is as much in my DNA as the racing itself,” Taylor says. “I enjoy the adventure of the journey to the races, the journey home and presenting our team in a professional manner and that’s why we do it – and what got us onto turning it into a film.”
Taylor’s epic road trip was first staged in 2023 and resulted in a popular feature-length documentary available on YouTube. This year the repeat journey saw things turned up to eleven, with even more precious cargo on the trailers, more stops in more remote places and even a helicopter – flown by Bathurst winning driver Paul Morris – to document proceedings. The six-day journey takes the STM road train from their Gold Coast base to Darwin via stops in Roma, Morven and through the remote town of Kynuna in central Queensland. After a stop at the Blue Heeler Hotel it’s across to Barclay Station in the Northern Territory before a run up to Adelaide River and ultimately into Darwin. In total, it’s a journey of nearly 3,500 kilometres across the most remote parts of Australia.
In Darwin, while Nash Morris raced the STM Porsche on the track, Taylor’s road train became a star attraction off it, with fans welcomed by the impressive sight as they walked through the main gates. “It’s a great adventure,” Taylor says. “We go to places where no one has ever seen anything like it, we go to outback stations and say hello or stop at pubs in the middle of nowhere and have a feed, play the guitar and entertain the locals. We start with a road train of about 33 metres and, as we get further out into the country, we add trailers to make it the full legal length of 53.5 metres. This year, we had my two Bathurst-winning Holdens, our Porsche Carrera Cup car for Nash to race, a classic truck, my old Torana racing car and, because we thought it would be fun, we even had an aeroplane on there.”
Taylor’s epic road trip is more than just a boys-own adventure – it’s the man in a nutshell; proud of his team, his truck and the community involved both on the road, and off it when at the racetrack. It’s also a way to showcase his pride in how well he presents his team and everything it touches.
Scott Taylor:
“It’s a great adventure. We go to places where no one has ever seen anything like it.”“Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a pretty proud person,” Taylor says. “So, whether it’s the workshop, or the car or the people who represent us, I like to try and raise the bar. I’ve just turned 61 and had a bit of a health scare last year, which restricted me from racing, so I decided to put a great, young guy in the car. In Nash, we think we have found that. But I still wanted to be involved, to enjoy my racing and be part of that community and when you see the amount of joy it brings people – kids and older people alike – to see the transporter rolling through town, coupled with the enjoyment we all get from it, then that makes it all worthwhile.”
