HOW DID I GET HERE
Well over a year ago, I started describing how I ended up here at Aeroflow Outlaw Nitro Funny Cars full time. With this forced break in racing, I thought I’d better continue the story. We covered the years through Junior Dragsters and then into the ‘Blast From The Past’ funny car with my dad. I talked about purchasing the ex–Tim Watkins ‘Spiderman’ chassis — yes, the car he crashed in Christchurch — and I purchased a $1K funny car body out of the States. Ryan Sheldon and I had teamed up to have a crack at the six-second zone. For me, running a six was a life goal — don’t get me wrong, I wanted to run fours, but for me a realistic goal was to get into the six-second club one day, and here I was at 23 years old with a combination that had the potential to do it.
As I mentioned in that column, we had so much help from so many people in the drag racing fraternity to even complete the car. Ryan and I put everything into getting that car going. It had Ryan’s 532ci big block Chev with a three-speed Lenco and a pedal clutch. With a pile of luck, we made the final in Top Alcohol at our first meeting, and on our first trip to Christchurch we broke that elusive six-second barrier, running a 6.8 at 196mph. It was such a cool moment. Knowing how much we had put into getting that car on the track and having to run to a strict budget, it was cool to knock the milestone off at our third event in the car. We ended up finishing our first season third in the Top Alcohol championship, which was a pretty massive achievement for us.
I think probably one of the coolest things was an article in this magazine written by Trevor Tynan; it basically said we were two guys running a Top Alcohol car on a Super Sedan budget and doing a good job of it. We were literally two mates living the dream racing funny cars.
Over the two years we ran that combo, we went to pretty much every track in the country. We had to borrow an open trailer off my dad just to get anywhere. Hotels didn’t exist for us — that was money we could spend on the car. I always remember going to race in Christchurch; we all jumped in the van that we’d borrowed, with our race car on the open trailer we’d borrowed, and set out on the 950km journey on Friday night after work. We got to the Wellington ferry terminal at about 1am and decided what better than a game of cricket on the wharf? You know you must be a little strange when the students walking home after a night out on the town are looking at you as if you are weird.
After a few hours of cricket, we thought we’d better get some sleep, so the crew all piled back in the van to find a spot to sleep; one of the boys was even sleeping on top of the toolbox in the back. Problem was, everyone piled in and there was no room left for me. So there I was, sleeping outside underneath the front of the trailer — it’s not like I could kick out the boys and girls who had taken time out of their lives to come racing. Did it worry us? Not at all — cause, as I said, we were going racing, living the funny car dream, and making some awesome friends.
With that combination, we ran as quick as 6.66 at 211mph — on a yearly budget that most teams would spend in a single weekend — with a great bunch of people and learning, sometimes the hard way, but I wouldn’t change it for anything! After the second year with the Chev in the funny car, the bug to go faster was really biting. But unless we undertook major upgrades, we had realized the potential of the old Chev, so we decided to go looking for a new engine. It was at this point that Ryan and I decided to end our partnership in the funny car, as he had cars of his own to finish and my racing goals had changed; it was all very amicable. Ryan sold his engine out of the car, and he set up one awesome payment plan that allowed me to buy the transmission and clutch off him. We remain best of mates to this day; without his input and his allowing me the opportunity that he did, I would never have had the opportunities I have now. He has even been over here a few times to get a taste of nitro.
The search was now on for some funding and a Hemi — to me, the ultimate in drag racing was to own a Hemi. Thanks to a chance meeting, we managed to team up with Geri Irwin and the LG Motorsports team. They joined my long-term sponsor, Teng Tools, on the side of the funny car. After a winter full of hard yards, plenty of meetings, and events, we managed to buy the TFX Hemi out of Chris Tynan’s ’55 Chev doorslammer, as he planned on upgrading.
Chris is another one of those guys to who I owe so much. I don’t know how many nights I spent listening to Chris, trying to soak up as much knowledge as I could on blown alcohol engines. I’m sure he got sick of my phone calls with all sorts of stupid questions. Growing up, if I didn’t understand something that was being talked about, I would text myself whatever it was, then, when I got home, I would scroll through the internet trying to completely understand all the details so that next time I had a better understanding of the subject. In hindsight, I probably just should have asked Chris to explain it to me.
Anyway, there we were: we owned an alcohol funny car with a TFX Hemi. Suddenly, the goals had changed from trying to run high sixes to, hey we could run low sixes or high fives in this thing. More on that next month.