Superb Read!
My tuppence worth...
Volume I - the roots of it all
Got hooked in 1981 whilst on Holiday just outside Cromer - saw a Holiday Buggy in the woods and even managed to get to have a go. Two months later, for by birthday, I can still remember my dad coming home from work clutching this blue beatties holdall and a carrier bag with my own Holiday Buggy 'deal' with an extra 6V battery and fast charger. Immense.
'Bashed' (how I hate this term) for about 2/3 years and upgraded my Holiday Buggy for a Grasshopper after Colin Strauss (now a director at Ripmax - then working behind the counter at Radio Active Models in Chelmsford) told me that it was faster than a Rough Rider.
Tore down the Holiday Bug to take out the R/C gear to fit into the Grasshopper and 'bashed' that for a bit. (Still got the Holiday Buggy even today)
Must have been about late 1984 when the Springfield Buggy Club started - racing on a saturday afternoon. I was working on a Saturday but managed to get a day off and went racing. Finished 2nd to a guy called Phil Olson (now my brother-in-law) who was 1/12 Euro Champ at the time. He was running an RC10. I didn't even see him lap me but he blew us all away and finished 5 laps ahead of me.
One race meeting and that was it - I HAD to go racing.
The guys who ran the Springfield Buggy Club back then (even before the legend that is known as Keith Wright started to run the club) put on a one-off meeting at Blake Hall in Ongar - behind the model railway shed. My 2nd race meeting - my grasshopper was, by then, knackered and I was rubbish. But I met George Land there for the very first time. He also had an RC10 and it was so cool that he could drive it straight off the straw bales we were using as a rostrum and it didn't break! Now I HAD to have an RC10 and NEEDED to go racing.
My Dad attempted to buy me an RC10 from Nick Adams but he didn't get on well over the phone with him. Nick's pretty laid back and my dad didn't think he really wanted 'the sale' - so in a pique of rage, he slammed the phone down and took me down to Radio Active where I got my first 'race' car - not the RC10 I so desperately wanted but the newly released Turbo Scorpion.
Ditched my saturday job working in a shop, started cleaning windows and cars (which meant I could be finished by midday on a Saturday AND go racing)
Raced my Scorpion during the winter (my dad reckoned that he would fit wheels to the roof of it cos I'd do more laps that way) but didn't really gel with it. Bits kept coming loose and I didn't really understand the car's geometry or set up.
Began to desperately want a Hotshot so, with Xmas 85 looming, Mum and Dad bought me a Hotshot from Radio Active and told me that I couldn't build it until Xmas day. Good job they did as two weeks after they bought it, the Optima was released which threatened to blow the Hotshot away. John and Sylvia at Radio Active were really good - took the unopened Hotshot back and I got one of the first 3 Optimas they received. The other two went to Michael Wray and my best mate Rich Gandy I seem to recall as all 3 of us then started to dominate the Springfield racing back in early 86 - when Terry Lawless wasn't there anyway.
Raced the Optima during 86 - even fitted RC10 shocks to it and got a SWB Cat for the following Xmas. That's when the 'bashing' officially stopped and all I did was race. Upto 4 times a week, I craved racing like an addict. It was insatiable.
Was only still racing club events in and around Essex but went to Wings and Wheels where I finished 2nd in atrocious conditions and where I managed to borrow a motor from George Land on the day. At the end, George said I could keep the motor (a team Parma modified with #232 hand engraved on the can) cos he said I drove really well.
I was super stoked and, by then the relationship with Radio Active had grown to me cleaning their cars and shop windows and helping out in the shop. The suggested I contact George about sponsorship (in hindsight, I suspect this had probably been discussed between them both beforehand) but I nervously phoned him and he discussed that he was interested in sponsoring young ans upcoming drivers and so I became a Parma (Helger) / Radio Active team driver in te late summer of 1987 after the Romsey Worlds.
Coming up Volume II - the Sponsored early years...
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