AEROFLOW RACE DIARY
Lots of people ask me how I got to be in the fortunate position that I am in now, whereby I get to drive nitro funny cars and nitro hot rods. Well, this could be a long one spread out over a few columns, but we will give it a go. My earliest memories of drag racing were going to the Whangarei street drags with my dad. I must have been about four or five years old. Dad was a scrutineer, and would race his bright pink T-bucket. Now that I am a bit older, I have to question Dad’s choice of colour, but, man, I loved it when I was young. My job was to walk the timeslips from the printer to the caravan where the racers collected their slips.
Dad also crewed on Warren Pattinson’s Fiat Topolino econo. altered, which was fluorescent orange — yeah, must have been something in the colours. This led me to Meremere Dragway as a five-year-old, and I’ll never forget seeing the junior dragsters for the first time. I wanted one so bad, so, of course, the four-hour drive back home was all about me pestering Dad to try to get one. When that didn’t work, I started pestering Mum. That didn’t work, either. However, I can only guess that the pestering must have had an effect, as, eventually Mum and Dad came to me with a deal: “You miss the next three birthdays, and we will start building you a junior.”
Looking back on it, I’m not sure if it was a ploy to get me to give up on the idea or not, but, either way, I was happy with the deal, so, on my sixth birthday, wrapped up in the lounge, was a junior dragster chassis that Dad had started building in the shed. True to their word, by the time I was eight, we had finished building the car, and we were going racing. Now, this wasn’t like today’s juniors, with expensive engines and computers, etc.; it was a motor out of a crashed motorcycle in a car that Dad built in the shed at home.
The first meeting was at Tokoroa dragstrip. Because we had the only junior dragster there, we ran as Exhibition at the same time as the Comp cars. So, there I was, lined up behind the wild bunch of cars belonging to Chris Tynan, Mark Thomas, and Trevor Tynan. I’ll tell ya what: I thought I had absolutely made the big time. I even won $50 as part of the Exhibition class! It was very cool when you consider the influence that those three had on my racing career in the years to come — more on that later.
Anyway, it didn’t take me long to grow out of that car, and Dad was forced to build another two — one for my sister and one for me. For the next four years, we went racing everywhere. We took the car to the South Island on top of the ‘Teacher’s Pet’ dragster trailer — at the time, there was only one junior dragster in Christchurch. We raced as far north as Whangarei and pretty much everywhere in between. After a pile of fundraising raffles and after-school jobs, I was even lucky enough to compete in Australia — twice!
It was an awesome time — yes, we had some success, but it wasn’t about that back then. It was about having fun, waiting for all your mates down the far end of the Masterton dragstrip, and doing burnouts on the grass on the way back from a run. It was about learning how to race — race hard but fair. Dad always said that we race for fun, and if we win anything it’s a bonus.
I finished junior racing when I was 14. I could have carried on for a year or two, but it was my time to move on. By this stage, Dad was crewing on Mark Thomas’s Holden ute doorslammer, so, naturally, I followed him and joined the crew. There are so many stories from that team that I think I could fill this magazine, but it was all good fun. I grew up with these guys. I started on that car as a pesky 15-year-old, polishing rims, being the butt of all jokes and the team gopher. I finished up on that car as an 18-year-old, polishing rims, being the butt of all jokes and still the team gopher — when you have mates like Ryan Sheldon and Mark and Matt Thomas, what can you expect?
To me, that time was invaluable. I was working on a doorslammer and racing, with some awesome people, against some of the legends of the sport, all in a fun environment. It kept the passion alive; it kept me involved with the sport, and allowed me to learn the basics. It also got me involved with many people, who opened so many doors for me. I would spend as much time as I could learning from different people, helping out mates whenever I could during the week, and helping anyone who would let me help them at the track.
It was when I was 19 that things really started happening. The timing fell that, when Mark Thomas sold the ute, we acquired the first funny car, a 1982 Mustang called ‘The Hillbilly’ — in need of some work, but we were going racing. Anyway, more on that one next time.