Ever wondered who the hell Dale Brede is? Sure, you see him racing around the circuits of Australia in the Konica championship, in a blue and red NRC Racing Commodore. But have you ever wondered about the man behind the helmet? V8X hunted the man down at the GMC 400 where he was doing a one off Formula Holden race for Hocking Motorsport in his hometown of Canberra.

Dale Brede is a Canberra boy, born and bred there in fact. He is still based in Canberra even though his racing team is in Cheltenham, Victoria. His family lives there, his Malaysian born Mum, Australian born Dad (which explains his dashing good looks) and younger brother. Dale lives with his fiancee Melissa and 18-month-old son, Jacob.

During his younger years, Dale was into other sports, he's good at running and swimming, and he played rugby union, waterskied and rode dirt bikes. He was never really interested in motor racing until his later years.

Dale began racing after he left school and has had a relatively short career in comparison to many of his fellow competitors in the Konica series. When Dale left school he began working at his father's business, National Capital Motors, as a car salesman, which is where he still works today.

Unlike most racing drivers in the country he manages a family and to hold down a full time job. His full time work funded his early racing career. Like most current drivers he began in Karts. He had some success in the ACT titles and came third in the Victorian State titles in his first year. After Karts he looked to the next step, being Formula Ford. He ran one event in the Queensland State championship where he finished second; incidentally that was his first ever car race. His second event in a Formula Ford was in the NSW championship where he crashed out on the first lap!

Dale then looked to Formula Holden, where he picked up a drive with Arthur Abrahams' NRC International racing along side Christian Murchison. He drove with the team for two years and had his best result at the final round of the championship at Mallala last year with a fourth and a third.

He also helped teammate Murchison take second place in the 2000 Australian Drivers' Championship. Mid last year Arthur approached Dale and asked him if he was interested in going V8 racing for season 2001 and of course he said yes!

So here they are, and with a limited amount of experience compared to the other competitors Dale is doing extremely well and, with aspirations to run in the Shell Series next year, all is looking good. As with every driver though, it's subject to budget. Dale wouldn't be where he is without the support of his sponsors, the major ones being Gulf Western Oil and Esanda Financial Services. Others include National Capital Motors, Diamond Guard Distributors, ACT Tyre Power, Bas Enterprises Cleaning, Audio Tech, The Canberra Times, City Electrics, Town Centre Auto Electrics, Canberra Carways and Scott Wilesmith Smash Repairs.

He landed second place on the grid at Wakefield Park on debut and with a best result of second in race two, round two at Oran Park. He's currently lying sixth in championship just 166 points off the lead. He found the transition to V8 racing a huge learning curve, one which he has enjoyed a lot. Over the last year he has worked hard on his race craft and making some serious improvements.

"At the end of the day you just have to work really hard and make it all work for you." He believes that "Given a lap of any circuit I could probably keep up with anybody."

Although beginning his career late he is very dedicated to his racing. He never really had the aspiration to go overseas and race open wheelers, he would rather stay in Australia and run in the Shell Series. Dale loves competing and winning, and hopes to make a career out of racing cars, especially V8s.

Arthur Abrahams has been an instrumental part of Brede's career to date and he hopes the partnership will continue and go from strength to strength. He has a great rapport with the team and they are all mates away from the track, which is reflected in his close friendship with former teammate Christian Murchison.

Away from the track, you couldn't find an easier going, more lovable lad. He has a warm persona that is very welcoming, and a calm air about him that makes him extremely approachable. He has a brilliant sense of humour, which makes him well liked among other competitors. Dale's a generous person who is willing to help out others, but this is also seen as a weak point because others take advantage of his generosity.

He is very hard on himself when he doesn't go so great, but that makes for a better driver as he pushes himself from within rather than being driven by outside forces.

Dale Brede was once one of the boys, he would go to work all day and then to the pub all night! Now at 26, he has settled down somewhat and he likes to spend a lot of his free time with Melissa and Jacob.

But Dale is still the life of the party if given the opportunity: he loves going out and dancing the night away in the nightclubs of Canberra. He's also not afraid of the odd boyish prank, for instance, at the end of last season Arthur took the team on a trip to Hamilton Island where the boys got up to much mischief. They stole a statue from the local Chinese restaurant and were caught by the chef but they managed to get away. That was the end of their night, however: they couldn't go out again in case they got caught.

The next morning they were checking out of the hotel and this guy came up to Dale and asked him his name and he said "Dale, who are you?" Then a uniformed cop went up to Murcho and asked him what his name was and he said "I don't have to tell you anything"; the cop replied "We can lock you up for 8 hours for no reason at all!" To this Murcho says, "why don't ya?".

"So the cops pull out this badge, they'd called the Ds on us, the next we knew they were putting us in the back of a divvy van, they arrested us and took us to the local cop shop for questioning.

"We were questioned in the interview room for two hours, we didn't deny taking it but they claimed that we damaged it and we denied that. The whole incident ended up costing us $100 each!" Dale relates.

They also tried to put buggies from the hotel golf course into the lake by putting a brick on the pedal, with no success.

There were also two, by his own admission, very 'out of control' weeks in New Zealand for the Tasman series in 1998. He wasn't driving over there, it was when he first joined NRC Racing, he was over there to do some commentary work. He wouldn't say any more about what happened in New Zealand, but when Christian entered the room they both laughed and kept saying it was 'out of control'! One can only imagine it must have been very messy!

The above describes Dale more than 12 months ago. In the last year he met Melissa. They met through Dale's brother and are due to marry on December 8. Not only has Melissa changed his life, so too has her little boy Jacob. "If someone had told me at this race 12 months ago that I was going to be married with a child, I would never have believed them, they are the best things that could ever have happened to me."

Together they spend time with their friends and they have made it a ritual that the three of them go out for breakfast every Sunday morning. He enjoys playing his Sony PlayStation but Melissa hates it, he was also watching Big Brother when we met.

In terms of music he likes the top 40 stuff, he also likes heavy rock bands like Live and Lincoln Park, and a lot of R & B.

Dale hopes to have a long and successful career in V8s in Australia. With the help of Arthur Abrahams he will go a long way in achieving this, not to mention the support of his sponsors. In his racing career and private life, things couldn't be going along better for him at the moment and this can only breed further success on the track.

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