To fans he's the Messiah, but officials think Russell Ingall is a very naughty boy.

The working class hero of V8 Supercars has always raced hard and spoken out for what he believes in. And that can get expensive. Last year alone, the class bad boy racked-up more than $20,000 in fines.

"I'm liable for all my own fines," Ingall says dryly.

"We didn't go away for Christmas last year that's for sure. My wife wasn't too happy."

Ingall's 2000 season turned sour early as he struggled to squeeze speed from his sluggish Castrol Commodore.

He couldn't handle mixing with the also-rans, his frustration often boiled over and he ended up in the stewards' office so often that they missed him on the odd occasion he wasn't there.

The Enforcer says he doesn't mean to go out and get into trouble.

"I don't want to be a rebel and paint something black just because it's white," he says, like a school kid asked to explain himself.

"It's just that if I see something that's not going to harm anyone then I'm going to do it," referring to his wicked doughnut show for the crowd at last year's Canberra GMC 400 - it cost him $1000.

"It was down an escape road, I reckon it was a pretty boring race and I was driving in it, so I thought 'bugger it'. I had people coming up to me and saying that they would have paid the entry fee just to see that. It was nice just to have made a few people happy ... it cost me enough!"

Officials weren't as impressed as the crowd was and were especially upset that the bad lad was revelling in his naughty deed by telling one Melbourne newspaper the next day that the burnout was a 'really good one' and that it 'totally smoked the crowd'.

Rusty copped much bigger fines for punting off back-marker Mike Imrie at the Queensland 500 and attacking slow drivers at Bathurst in a media conference.

A sheepish Ingall admits he regrets both incidents and wishes he had kept his cool, and his mouth shut.

His followers say Ingall was penalised for being honest; The Enforcer says he was raised to tell the truth, even if it gets him into trouble.

"It's a tough one, because I come from a simple background and call a spade a spade.

"I wasn't brought up to be a rocket scientist, I haven't been to Harvard and I believe that if you have a problem with someone you should tell them.

"People have branded me as aggressive, but I'm just telling it how it is."

He may be out of place. These days more and more drivers in V8 Supercars are polished, positive and sponsorship friendly, putting a spin on every statement they make.

"Now every other team has got a media person telling them what to say," Ingall says.

"It's like your house has been burnt down and you are standing there in front of the smouldering wreckage and you are supposed to say that you are having a great day and everything is going well."

There are no slick spin doctors in the Perkins team censoring any rude words or frank observations that the drivers make, and it makes race weekends much more colourful.

But after copping a list of fines that reads like a politician's credit card statement, Ingall is ready to tone down his comments about officials.

"At the end of the day you can't fight the establishment.

"I've never been very diplomatic and now I realise there are better ways of doing it."

It seems like a case of 10 times bitten, twice shy with Ingall who probably doesn't want to be stuck at home in Beaumaris (Vic) this Christmas.

"I used to be very critical and at the end of the day stewards do make mistakes. They'd be naive not to admit it, but that's life and we all make mistakes," he says.

With drivers whingeing whenever the racing gets rough, stewards have to act, says Ingall.

"You could say it's the stewards' fault, but ultimately it's the drivers moaning about other drivers. They are only guided by what the drivers say."

The constant mega-money punishment has taken the edge off Ingall's door-bashing racing style that has thrilled race crowds and armchair spectators.

"I have been tamed and I really resent that," he says.

"I don't think I drive as hard as I used to. When I first came back (from Europe in 1995) I didn't give a shit who I was racing, I just saw a number on the door of another car. It was a lot more fun."

But he is hoping the arrival of other hard-edged drivers like Marcos Ambrose might encourage stewards to allow a bit more paint-swapping.

"I'm hoping with more guys like Ambrose around I can get a bit more support. I want to get back to racing hard."

Ingall wants permission to rumble and says that fans will turn away from V8 Supercars if fender bending racing and intimidation tactics are clamped down on.

"If we can't use tactics it takes away from the spectacle," he says.

"We are on a wave of success now, but it could go the other way. I think the racing is a bit soft, you hesitate before passing someone because you think 'Ooh I'll get a stop-go if I stuff it up and hit him'."

He is pretty much saying that the V8 class headmasters should back off and let the kiddies sort out their playground squabbles by themselves.

"If it's blatant, then a stop-go is fine, but if it's just a bit of panel rubbing or whatever we should just sort it out on the track."

It's bad enough when Ingall is called into to the principal's office, but he hates it even more when he gets dobbed on.

"You go into the stewards' meeting and sometimes they (other drivers) are out to get you.

"I've been to stewards' meetings when other drivers have flat-out lied; they admit it later and say it is all part of racing. You commit it all to memory, but what can you do? It should just be a matter of drivers sorting it out on the track."

In Europe it's different - there are no inquiries and the officials let everything equal out, says Ingall.

"But you can't get away with anything here."

Some drivers say The Enforcer's racing style is often too rough, but he reckons that bumping and barging is a valid racing skill.

"There is a difference between driving a car fast and actual wheel-to-wheel racing. That's where I think the level is low (in V8 Supercars)," he says.

Ingall knows what he is talking about when it comes to racing hard. He spent the first half on the 1990s in Europe racing with old machinery and bugger-all money against cashed-up aces.

Some the guys he raced against, and sometimes beat, in open-wheeler classes made it through to bigger and better things including David Coulthard, Rubens Barrichello, Alex Zanardi, Giancarlo Fisichella, Stefano Modena and Max Papis.

Now he has to stay up until ungodly hours and prop himself in front of the TV to watch the open-wheel titans fight it out like the rest of us Formula One wannabes.

"I was racing (Formula Three) against Coulthard and Barrichello in a Van Diemen and they were all in better cars. Sometimes I think 'Shit, I was racing those guys'."

But no-one can say that Ingall didn't pour his guts out trying to reach racing's Holy Grail.

"It's hard when you are scraping and scrounging and you are up against the big name teams," he says, "but tough times help a racer hone his skills.

"It actually makes you a good driver because you have to try harder to achieve what you can.

"If you don't have any money you can't afford to have a bad year, but with money you don't have to worry. We did it pretty tough. We'd think 'how are we going to pay the rent?'."

Ingall says if he had made the right choices and had a bit of extra cash he could have made it in F1. It would have been great to see David Coulthard being 'enforced' and Ingall making the clean-cut F1 boys look like a lot of blouses.

There would be none of this sipping Gatorade stuff and being sickly sweet in the post-press conferences like the current breed of Ken Doll F1 drivers.

Ingall would have probably drunk most of the champagne, pointed out that Schumacher drives like a sneaky bastard and won the respect of every racing fan outside the Fatherland.

But he was forced to return Down Under and had a crack at the V8 Supercar racing.

His return was about as subtle as a Scud missile attack and local drivers didn't know what had hit them.

Ingall immediately earned his 'Enforcer' tag and booked regular meetings with race officials who thought the new kid needed some discipline.

"In my first year I copped plenty of flak," Ingall says.

"Established guys were whingeing and moaning and saying I was too rough."

It didn't help that most Aussie drivers and fans didn't know who Ingall was, or how good he was despite the guns he had been sparring with overseas.

"When I turned up people thought 'who's this peanut?'," he says.

Ingall doesn't boast that he won Bathurst with Larry Perkins in 1995 and 1997 or has come second in two Shell Series championships, he is just an normal bloke who happens to be a good steerer.

He built half of his home in Beaumaris and services his Commodore himself.

"If I was a Hollywood driver I'd take my car down to the local Porsche dealer. But I don't feel that I have to change," he says.

You won't find any Armani suits in his cupboard and when he's not racing, the scruffy bloke gets about in a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt.

Ingall says his fans respect him because he is one of them. He buggers things up sometimes, says things he shouldn't, gets in to trouble for showing off and doesn't try and hide any of it.

"People who live in normal working class areas can pick if you are being yourself more than the ones who live in rich suburbs.

"People like that like me because they can see I haven't changed."

Ingall loves his toys. When he's not mucking around on his Hyperstimulator computer game, the big kid is blasting around on his bikes: a Cagiva Raptor, Ducati 916 Senna or his latest machine, a thumping KTM motocrosser.

Ingall admits he loves playing with his shiny machines, but says he has worked hard for them.

"Yeah, I've got a few toys, but I went along for a lot of years on the bones of my arse."

He often tears up some mud with Greg Murphy and Steve Richards on a dirt-bike bush-bash, which doesn't go down too well with Ingall's team boss.

"Larry gets pretty nervous about me trail-riding," he says.

You could imagine the veteran team boss waking up in a cold sweat after dreaming of Ingall turning up on Bathurst race day with a couple of busted legs. But Ingall is the type of driver who would race anyway - you just wouldn't want to be the bloke talking to him on the radio.

Russell's Y2K Hitlist Exhibition race at Melbourne GP: Careless driving FINED $3000 Round one Phillip Island: Conducting burnout FINED $1000 Round six Canberra GMC400: Speeding in pitlane FINED $200 Conducting burnout FINED $1000 Exhibition race at Gold Coast Indy: Dangerous driving NO FINE Round seven Queensland 500: Careless driving FINED $10,000 & DOCKED 20 points. Round 13 Bathurst 1000: Bringing sport into disrepute FINED $10,000 (reduced to $6130 after appeal). Total: $21,330 (That's worth more than 712 slabs of VB from my local bottle shop - Ed.)

Mrs. Enforcer He might be pretty aggro at the track, but Russell Ingall isn't so mean away from it, according to his wife Julia. They have been married for three years after meeting at a go-kart race 12 years ago and Julia sees a different side to her hubby than his V8 Supercar opponents do. "At the racetrack he's obviously very tough, but he's not like that at home," she says. "He's actually very shy. He likes being at home." Julia, who now works in human relations, followed Russell overseas in 1991 when she was a sports photographer. "He's very handy around the house, he builds all sorts of things." But The Enforcer's enthusiasm to help out around the place doesn't extend to the kitchen. "He doesn't know where the kitchen is," Julia says. "He has got me for that." She says Russell loves messing about with computer games, bikes and cars. "He's like a big kid, he loves his toys." But Russell gets serious when it comes to race time. "He just wants to race cars and win. He's got a bit of a temper. He desperately wants to win and gets frustrated when he can't, but he's all right away from the racetrack." Julia might not have been too impressed with all the fines he ran up last year, but she is proud that Russell says what he - and everyone else - feels. "A lot of drivers are too scared to say anything, but he doesn't mind," she says. "He's always said that it's much more important what the fans think rather than the other drivers." She says Russell is a really private person, but doesn't mind when fans say hello. "He has come to the supermarket with me and been asked to sign something and said 'Oh my god, someone wants my autograph?'. But I think he likes it."

A Mixed Bag of Russell About The Finger "We were at Oran Park trying out a new engine in a go-kart and I got tangled up with some bloke going up over the bridge and flipped over. It cart-wheeled and ripped the finger off. I went to hospital and they said I was out of action, they stitched it up but the next morning I checked myself out." About Last Year "I went through a bad 12 months. A number of things combined to make it a shocker. There was staff turnover, I wasn't driving well and I lost interest." About This Year "We sifted out the driftwood (in the team) and we have some really good guys now. Larry's focused on getting more hands-on and that has helped. I'm more focused and back where I should be." About The Boss "We have had plenty of blues and at a few points I nearly walked out, but I've ended up staying there. "We are very similar in many ways. We have had blues because we are honest with each other. In the end you get along with someone like that." About Lowndes "It's bloody good that he changed. People were moaning that Ford had no good drivers, now they do. "You used to get a lot of complaints about parity and now they have nothing to whinge about. Their cars are going quick and they have fast drivers." About Back-markers "They have every right to be out there, but there's so much pressure that tangling with a back-marker and losing a position is like your dog has died. "If you are out of a drive you are buggered. There's a lot of pressure on the guys at the front, we are playing for sheep stations."