HOW DID I GET HERE
In the past few columns, we’ve covered our journey from junior dragsters through the funny cars to the doorslammer and the comp altered. It was after the season in the altered we finally decided: right, that’s it. Next year we need to have a year off. We decided we would spend the summer crewing for Team Pirtek and figuring out what normal people our age do with the rest of their weekends.
Well, come about September I think it was, I got a phone call from long-time sponsor and friend Stu Stanners. At a conference for Century batteries, Stu had got talking to New Zealand drag racing champion and Aeroflow brand manager Glen Collett about the nitro funny cars, and suggested that we should get involved. Glen was a multitime New Zealand Top Alcohol champion, driving his dad’s dragster, and was now spearheading the Aeroflow Performance products brand. A few back and forths with both Glen and Stu, and before I knew it I had received a message from Glen saying Graeme Cowin was going to ring me in five minutes. I’m not going to lie, I absolutely sh%t myself. I didn’t know what to think. I basically stared at my phone for the next five minutes thinking of what I would say; it honestly felt like about two hours before the phone rang, although it was actually only five minutes.
Luckily enough, for some reason Graeme and I just got on and had a good chat about the cars and the series, etc. He mentioned they had a test day booked at Sydney Dragway in a couple of weeks’ time, and I thought, right, we’d better get over there. I rang the Pirtek boys for their thoughts and I remember Jeff’s reply: “why haven’t you booked yet?” and “we’re coming, too!” So, once again, we smashed open the piggy bank and booked flights to the test session.
Jeff, Adam, and I made the first trip over. The plan was to fly over and meet the guys, watch them test the next day, and fly home the day after that. It was just a “let’s see how it goes and if we can make it work”. When we got to the workshop, Graeme met us out the front, gave us a tour of the workshop, and introduced us to the team. I pretty much walked round holding my jaw up as I had never seen anything like it — funny cars, trailers, spare parts, and just about everything you could ever dream of. I was used to racing with a total spares package that could fit into a 20L container; this incredible workshop had cars and spare parts I could never have imagined.
The next day we went out to the track to watch and learn while the crews ran the cars. What we didn’t realize was that we were to be one of the crews. We got chucked right in the deep end — it was sink or swim time. Long story short, we had an epic day working on these nitro beasts and learning everything we could. I’ll always remember that first pass standing on the start line watching, and thinking to myself there was no way I could do that. Just to work on a nitro car was a bit of a dream, but to think we could possibly end up running one was something I never thought would happen. The following day we spent in the workshop, tearing the cars apart, before boarding a plane back to New Zealand.
We spent the next few weeks working out how we could make this nitro dream a reality. I’ll never forget the phone call from Graeme in which he asked me, “Do you have -20 gloves (nitro-rated gloves)? If you don’t, you’d better get some because we are going testing and you’re driving”. So, a few weeks later, we’re back on the plane on the way to try and license in one of these cars. To add to the pressure, I wasn’t driving just any car; Graeme had come up with the name One Bad Kiwi and a car had been completed and wrapped with a massive One Bad Kiwi logo on the side of it! I look back at it now and wonder if he was crazy — he didn’t even know if I could drive one of these things. Gosh, I didn’t even know if I could drive one of these things, but damn I was going to give it a go.
In its previous guise, the car had had a reputation for being a bit of a handful, so I figured I had a task ahead of me. I hadn’t driven a funny car in over two years, so it’s fair to say I was rather nervous. Turning up to Sydney Dragway in the morning and rolling the funny car out of the transporter with my name on it was just surreal. The test/licensing went well, with both the car and myself setting a PB on the first pass and running into the fives on the second pass.
Everything snowballed from there. Three weeks later, we raced at our first meeting at Sydney, which went well, and a month after that we were racing at the Perth Motorplex. It was an absolutely insane three months. What was even cooler was getting to do it all with my wife, my mates, and my parents. As for moving to Sydney — that’s a story for another day.