158 Shane Davies – Looking Back at an Amazing Career

Interview conducted with Rob Woollhouse in 2019

(Photos from archive footage, let us know if you were the other side of the camera so we can make sure we credit accordingly!)

As in most cases, it was a family trait that a innocent young lad became involved in oval racing, a lad that had a panic attack and never made it to the track in his first junior meeting, to taking the World Championship some years later at the Unlimited National Championship of the World at Wimbledon’s Plough Lane, this is how the story of the iconic #158 Shane Davies unfolded Shane opens up the interview by expanding on his introduction to the sport. “My dad had raced stock cars and bangers full time since the 70s, so I was brought up with racing every weekend. Dad started off in 1975 at Crayford in bangers when he was 16 years old. He got into racing through going to watch with one of his friends and their parents. When he started to compete himself he was just given the number 574, which he kept until he started saloon stock cars where they gave him 57, then the following year 77, which he continued to have throughout his 44-year racing career.
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My number 158 came about because Andrew started off in juniors under my dads 57 number, so I started with 58 and then when I went to adults, that number was already taken so I went with 158 which has been retained since.

​In 1990 my dad took the condoms to Dover raceway for a Masters Championship meeting. It was there that he noticed they had a junior banger formula, which my brother started the season after in 1991. I was old enough to start the end of the following season in 1992 but my first meeting didn’t go to plan, it was another masters championship day that my dad and the condoms had travelled down to. At this point I was only 12 years old and I was meant to be racing my dads car in the juniors but when I got harnessed in and crash helmet on, I had a panic attack and didn’t make the track! I`m not even sure if I started the car up. The panic started as soon as I put my crash helmet on, I just felt so claustrophobic. I recall my dad tried to calm me down but in the end I remember being in first aid with my mum, breathing into a brown paper bag! 

My dad was never pushy about it and must of just given me the right support for me to have attempted it again at another meeting. Something he said must of worked as since then I have never really been over nervous about racing any car in any condition, against anyone / teams really.
It just goes to show if you can overcome your fears, you can achieve anything. Especially if you’ve got the right support around you.

That same year there was 1 more junior meeting left that season, this time I was really up for it, in another one of my dads cars. However, just before start time the engine in Andrews car started to knock so we had to swap cars because Andrew was leading the points at the time so he obviously had to take out the more reliable motor. The engine blew up for me just as I got onto the track. So another meeting I didn’t get to race! Having to swap cars with Andrew – I remember feeling real gutted as I had overcome the fear and actually made it to the track this time. The problem is as I drove on to the track, through the pit gate, I drove over the pit gate wires which got tangled around my back wheels! By trying to free myself it caused the engine to blow up! This was the last meeting of the season so I then had to wait 6 months for the first meeting of the next season to start! But in this time I used it to help build my own car. I felt disheartened but I always had in the back of mind that I was going to race.

​So the first time I actually raced was the first meeting of the 1993 junior season which was 11th April. In my own car with all my own gear, the mk 5 Cortina pictured below.
I was a lot more settled, I got 2 5th places, really enjoyed it and never looked back after that.
I carried on racing bangers full time up until the end of 2012, I then switched to National Saloon stock cars until the end of 2017, where I stopped full time racing to buy a house.”

We asked #158 if he had any idea on the numbers of cars he has race dover the years, in addition to which are the preferred builds, and which he may just never dream of again, “Haha, I wouldn’t have a clue on the amount of cars I raced but when I come to sort all my stuff out to sell, it must have been a hell of a lot of cars!
The one thing I regret from racing is I never took a before and after photo of every car I raced, which given todays social media platforms and the number of photographers, the modern day drivers get all these images.
I never really paid over the odds for cars, we never had to back then. I would always try getting a car built in a week of evenings, some of the odd cars took a bit longer. We found Granada’s the easiest to build as we had a good set up for them and was racing them so regular. The worse cars to build were some of the odd stuff I raced, such as a 4 litre R, Humber Hawk, finding water tanks and other bits to fit these were a nightmare.
I use to hate, with a passion, stripping and building jags as well. Then when I started racing the Lexus 400’s, they were even worse to strip and build.

My First Granada (mk 1 estate) was number 3 because I competed in a series called NAMP bangers. Which was a junior formula racing at a few other tracks. I raced at Arena Essex, Mildenhall and Northampton, racing against others such as The Korpiela brothers, Mark Welland etc. I can remember Mark following me in hard at a Northampton meeting, I would have been about 13 then! It took me 10 years before I got my own back on Mark, at the Wimbledon 2003 World final, when I took him out on oppo while he was leading the world final.

In the NAMPS you would be given a different number each meeting. The number coincided with the order you booked in, so I must have been 3rd to book in that meeting.

I cant remember how I got on at that meeting at Arena but I’m sure I wouldn’t of set the world on fire because I’ve never been that great at getting around arena!!

​The snapped jag (pictured below) Was at Eastbourne in about 2007 – 2008 ish. It was my first (what I class as a proper jag) 4.2 manual. We had had jags before with a v6 in which we never had much luck with. It was a Belgium driver who was lined up behind me, picked me up on the rolling lap before the green flag and followed me straight into the pit gate! Then team black battered me right round the bend and up the other straight throughout the race.

For the 25 years I raced full time I roughly raced, on average 40 + meetings a year, covering off a massive number of tracks across the globe, lets hope I haven’t miss any!
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Dover, Arena Essex, Mildenhall, Swindon, Swaffham, Kings Lynn, Skegness, Northampton, Birmingham, Hednesford, Sheffield, Belle Vue, Stoke, Taunton, St Day, Ipswich, Yarmouth, Wimbledon, Bovingdon, Aldershot, Eastbourne, Cowdenbeath, Grimley, Bristol, Ringwood, Buxton, Coventry, Stansted, Lydden Hill, Ballymena, Tipperary, Nutts Corner, Emmen, Warton, Warneton, M.E.C.C Maastricht, An indoor track in Holland, New Zealand tracks – Robertson Holden Speedway Palmerston north, Ocean view Speedway Wanganui, Waikaraka Park Speedway Auckland.”

Having seen a few photos recently on social media, we asked Davies to expand on his memories of the meeting at Maastricht, which was an indoor track in Holland.
Davies explained “Gert ran the meeting and had probably told us about it via phone, Me and Billy King went over on my lorry with John Harris but he had broken his ribs 2 weeks before at the civil war. So he was literally no help to us at all! We went over by boat and got totally lost trying to find the track, as we did with most tracks in all fairness!
We arrived there on the Saturday for practice and we were all parked in an underground carpark which we though was fine, it wasn’t until practice ended that the organisers told us that our lorries had to stay there and were locked in for the weekend! Our hotel was about 45 mins away from the track! The Korpiela’s arrived late and missed practice so there lorry was our only transport. In the end there was about 10 of us all sat either in the cab or in their 2 bangers on the back of the lorry! We had to pull over in the end and we had to pay a taxi to follow so we could find our hotel, then we had to do the same to get back to the track in the morning! This was just typical for one of our weekends away, but fond memories. I remember that the track was tiny and really slippery. It was meant to be more of a demonstration with limited contact but it turned out that the European’s had other ideas and caused us a lot of damage for a small track!

We continued to talk overseas racing, moving on to New Zealand, #158 explains “Bob Dunn organised the New Zealand events, he had been out there previously with a group, my brother Andrew being one of them. So I jumped at the chance when he mentioned it to me. We went out there for the world of destruction team championship or something along those lines. 

​The UK team had Bob Dunn, myself, Lee Clelland, Buster Godden, Woka and Webby in it. Some other drivers come over and we ended up with 22 of us in total. All our cars were supplied by Bevan Johnson and we also built them at his home / yard to. Johnson has done a lot for banger racing in New Zealand it seems and he is a great guy.
Our first meeting we done was a couple of days into the 3 weeks we was over there for. It was at Palmerston North, which was a massive clay track in a rugby / football stadium. We was against team New Zealand, We won this, we were all in Ford Falcons. I managed to cross the line on 3 wheels in first place with a lot of help from the rest of the team! This got us was in the local paper out there for this victory.

The second meeting was at Wanganui. This time we were allowed any cars from Bevans yard. I chose a 1300 Avenger! We were up against the European team this time, which the other drivers out there with us decided to put together for this meeting. Their team was Boxer Jack, Matt Fuller, Jimmy Randall, James Ellis, Shaun Dyer and one other. We wiped the floor with these! I don’t think they could handle the strength of the avenger! I can remember following Matt Fuller’s Australian Granada in, to everyone’s surprise!
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The top 2 teams from this meeting qualified for the final at Auckland which was on the final weekend of our holiday. The UK team being one of them.

For the last meeting at Auckland. We were back against the New Zealand Team. 6 on 6 again. I had repaired my Ford Falcon again to take into battle, but unfortunately we lost this one though. We just didn’t seem to get ourselves together, probably because we were all suffering hang overs or drunk again, as we had to wait about 6 hours for the race to start, due to a monsoon just before the race was due to start so they had to postpone it! I remember kids were actually swimming on the track, the water was that deep, as a result of this I found racing on the wet clay very challenging!!
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It was one of my best experiences of my life and if anyone ever gets the opportunity to do it, I would highly recommend it. I would love to do this again some time.

​Back to home soil, we go deeper into the team wars, I asked which has been the most exciting war throughout Davies` banger career, “Its got to be the war we had with the Suicide Squad. I grew up watching my dad war with them and I couldn’t wait to get involved. They always had plenty of drivers, there wasn’t a dirty hit that I can remember and before we had a lorry with a crane Kev and Barry Wilshire would always be the first to help straighten our cars or offer to load them up after the meeting for us which was more than fair. I also brought quite a few of my cars off of Chris Whiteman and a few other of the squad drivers so there seemed to be a mutual respect from both sides.
There wasn’t really much of a Condoms team towards the end of the 90’s, so in 1998 I got a team back together to start doing the arena team rounds where the Squad, Cream Team and Team Elite were ruling the roost. It started back off with me, Andrew, my dad, Billy King, Mark Ruskin and Kev McNess. We was always well outnumbered but we slowly started getting the upper hand and by the end of 2004 The Squad were almost non existent at Arena. A few other teams did turn on the squad towards the end which did make our war a bit easier but this is roughly the time Jack Overy got Team Black together. So our heavy warring started all over again.

​Despite Shanes father being Captain Condom himself, it wasn’t as straight forward as you may think for Shane to be able to race in the Condom team colours. Davies elaborates “My first adult banger meeting was at Mildenhall when I was 15, in the 1996 winter series. When we first started racing in the juniors, we was in full condom colours. That’s were we learnt to team race and war, There was me, Andrew, the 2 Ruskin brothers and Dean Bateman against the Hughes brothers, John Reeves and a few others they had around them. I believe this taught us all a hell of a lot about team racing and warring. But moving into the Adults, in order to be able to paint the cars in Condoms colours my dad wanted us to be able to build a tidy reliable car and be able to look after ourselves and not have to rely on others. Also a big must for my dad was for drivers to be clean and not do silly dirty shots. It didn’t take long for me to be in pink, just a season and a half in adults roughly. Believe it or not, my colours actually use to be black!
My first meeting in pink was an all jag meeting at Arena Essex, where I managed one corner before I turned around and had it with the squad until my car no longer moved! My dad wouldn’t have just anyone painting in the colours and always like to keep his team around 8 drivers. Which was something I liked and carried on when I took over the team. Both Andrew and I were in pink by 1997. I tried carrying on with these views when I took over the team, my moto was always if you wasn’t good enough to look after yourself on a non team meeting day, you wasn’t good enough to be in the team. As much as I like to have a race around every now and again, a meeting never quite gave me the buzz if there wasn’t someone out there I was warring with.
All wars excited me, but whenever it was against a yellow car it excelled them all. I think this was because The Squad was a top, top team when I was growing up so to be warring with them and holding our own at a young age was just great. But still to this day I would avoid any other crash to hit a squad car on track.

On to Team Black, Davies explains “This was the most intense war due to the atmosphere. It wasn’t always like the fun war I enjoyed with the squad. The one with team black was a lot more intense mainly because you could more or less guarantee verbal abuse from a certain couple of their drivers and some of the mechanics at most meetings. Chris Murfin, Jack Foster jnr’s dad and Chick Overy were always guaranteed for a bit of verbal abuse, amongst a few others. This never went any further than verbal but I use to thrive on it never the less and it use to keep me so buzzing to carry on the war.
I can remember one time me and Dave Palmer went to Kings Lynn for a championship meeting and before the meeting had even started Alge came over and said to me that I wouldn’t be leaving in one piece, or something along those lines. During one of the races that night Alge was chasing me and Palmer was coming the wrong way down the straight, he swerved me and got Alge with a cracking head on. I can remember thinking to myself, oh no Dave what have you done now!! But we managed to get loaded and home in one piece!

​Other meetings that stand out for me against team black were the champions of champions each year.
For some reason both teams always turned out a good few drivers for these. We had some real good wars at these meetings. I had some blinding champions of champions meetings myself but also had some proper wrecks from the meetings to! The last one being in 2011, where Jack followed me in full chat on the first bend, with Andrew coming along to write jack off. Meaning me and Jack only done a quarter of a lap each that meeting!

My war with Overy came about because he was in the Cream Team (The Squads B team at the time) when I started adult bangers. I turned around on my first meeting and we a head on with each other in the final.
We carried on meeting like this at every Mildenhall meeting. Then at a meeting half way through the season, both our cars were wrecked and we was talking on the centre. He mentioned that we was wasting our time writing each other off first race every meeting. So we agreed to just spin each other in the heats and save the crashing for the final / DDs. I would of stuck to my word because that is what I am like but the very next day we was at an inter team race at Northampton. I had 2 people come up to me and tell me that Jack was saying I called the war off with him last night. This really annoyed me and I said to myself that I would never ever call a truce with him again.
Jack probably still doesn’t know this is what I was told but having got to know Jack a bit more in recent years I’m thinking to myself maybe he never said this and the 2 people were just stirring. Whether this was said or not, it always stuck in my head and gave me the push I needed to never back down, outnumbered or not.
So from then on the war continued. But I would like to add I think I would of been exactly the same with any of the other squad drivers had they continued racing like Jack did.

​I always felt like I had a bit of the upper hand in title races against Jack because I always felt I wasn’t good enough to win big races so I was never interested in winning them or any races for that matter. So my whole attitude to a race would be to just stop Jack as soon as I could because I knew he always had a big chance of winning races like that. If I was successful in getting him then I would concentrate on others in his team.
I think there wasn’t too many title races he won whilst I was out there with him, but the ones he did win would really grate on me at the time!
 
2003 world final was just another normal title race that I would of wanted to stop any of my enemies winning if I could. The trouble with Spedeworth tracks was, you wasn’t normally allowed to just turn around so I would always struggle to get Jack at these meetings because most of the time he was quicker than me!
I was doing well in the race and got myself up to about 6th place, which was the highest position I had been in at a Spedeworth world final. About half way through I see Jacks number in first place on the score board. So instantly I turned my car round, knowing I had to do something about this! Deane Wood was just taking over Spedeworth at the time so racing rules were slightly changing too, so in my head I thought Deane wouldn’t mind and these would be the rules going forward! I was quite shocked to receive a black flag!!
It took me a couple of laps to get in the position I needed to be in. When I was ready I got Jack in a cracking shot over the back wheel. In my head that was job done, usually you would only need to be held up / taken out once in a Wimbledon world final to lose any chance of winning it.
So, I then noticed this put Mark Welland in the lead. The follow in he done on me in the juniors 10 year previous quickly come back to me, so I stayed turned round and got Mark with the same sort of shot. Jack was so quick that night, me taking Mark out put Jack back in the lead!! It took me another 2 shots on Jack to stop him.
The Crowd seemed to love it, Jack wasn’t obviously very happy and he proved this at the champions of champions at Birmingham a couple of weeks later where he absolutely obliterated me! And he didn’t seem like he was ever going to stop driving through me until, to me relief, James Dillon stopped him with a head on!

Moving the topics a bit closer to home, how does a Condoms yard/unit look on a day to day basis, #158 tells us “I’ve always built my bangers where I work so a typical day for me would be to get to the workshop for about 6am, do a couple of hours on my bangers before work started at 8. Then as soon as half 5 come or the work was done for the day I would crack straight on with my bangers again until about 11pm.

Luckily throughout my time racing I’ve had some good help with building my cars. My dad helped out engine wise but build wise help were mainly my mates like Parker, Chips, Pullen and Neil. They would do anything from drive the lorry, find me cars, strip them out and help build them and was great help at the track to. I would limit them on what I would let them do on my car builds because I’m so anal about doing things in a certain way, it use to really restrict us getting them done quicker.
Paul Whiteman also helped me out for a couple of years before he was old enough to race bangers himself. I’m sure he learnt a thing or 2 from me!!!!
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As we grew up my mechanics moved into relationships, had kids etc. so stopped helping with the builds and slowed down in terms of coming to the meetings. One mechanic who has been there from the start, even before I raced is Stump. He’s helped my dad, Andrew and a lot of the other condom drivers throughout the years, as well as me.  He’s the one mechanic I would trust do anything on my car and he’s stuck with me all through my banger career and right through the Saloon stock cars as well. He’s been mechanicing for the condoms for over 30 years now. Without all of these and all the others who helped me with my bangers it would have been a lot harder to race as much as I did.

​Cowdenbeath world cups were always one of my favourite meetings/weekends. I raced at this meeting 14 years in a row. We always used to make a long weekend of it, leaving Thursday night and returning home mostly on the Monday, except for the few times we travelled back to race at Arena on the Sunday. We would try to take as many mechanics and supporters with us as we could, to make the most of the weekend.
We use to love getting dressed up for the grand parades and goading the Scottish fans. Andrew and I had a lot of success at these meetings, winning the world cup 5 times between us and lots of other races during the years we went up there. I’ve actually won more races at Cowdenbeath than at my local track Arena Essex over the years!!
The 1999 World Cup is where we first met The Stinkbridge. We spent the Saturday night drinking with them at their hotel. Which is where we realised how mad they were! They wasn’t allowed back to that hotel again!! (as confirmed in a recent Caged! Interview with Stinkbridge driver #166 Lee Lawson
A couple of years after we all started staying at the Gladyer Inn hotel each year. The Stinkbridge only lasted a few years at this hotel but in this time they nicked the steering wheels off our cars, let our lorry tyres down, used their lorry to unload my car off our lorry and place it upside down in the hotel flower bed!! They was always trying to break into our rooms, most of this was revenge from things we had done to them! I remember one time we got the key to Psycho 09`s room, when we opened the door he had his head down the toilet being sick, we threw 2 smoke bombs in and jammed the door closed, we thought we had nearly killed him when we opened the door, this was all part of our pan so we could bring Psycho`s wife, Nicola home with us!!!

I feel that the Stinkbridge taught me that the social side is just as, if not more important than the racing itself.

Sheffield Battle of Britain 2010 The Steel City Scrap!

We had always heard about this meeting but had never entered a team before 2010. Stinkbridge rang us up and suggested doing the meeting to us. They were warring with team black at the time and most of the other teams that were also booked in so we decided to get a couple of teams together to go up and ease the pressure on them a bit.
We went up for the weekend and whilst out drinking with the Stinkbridge lads the night before the meeting we found out their war with team black had been called off.
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We had never agreed to team up with any other team before and after this weekend, we realised what an error that one time was. It meant that having already arrived at the meeting we was slightly under prepared and very out numbered. Team black had turned up with 4 strong teams.

The atmosphere at this meeting was horrible, made worse by Andrew having a blinding first race, wrecking loads of team black. But for the rest of the day, we took a pasting, although most of the shots we took were illegal. Chris Murfin proper blew his fuse this meeting, venting it all to my partner in the pits whilst she was looking after Andrews 2 young kids. This just goes to show he had as much bottle off the track as he did on the track!Condoms v Suicide squad – 2013 Arena Essex, All Granada Meeting

Recognised as one of if not thee, best meeting since the turn of the century, the all granada meeting at Arena Essex for the Olly Moran and Maya Ford memorial meeting for Meningitis Research Foundation, Shane reflects on how many of the old timers came to the track for one last battle, with an attempt to settle the scores against the Suicide Squad.

Davies explains “The first I heard about the meeting was when Paul Whiteman gave me a call about it when it was just in the planning stages. Probably about 6 months before the meeting date.
He told me the format and that a few of the older /original squad drivers were planning on doing it and did I feel some of the older condom drivers would want to do it to. Obviously once I heard the mention of the squad doing the meeting it made me so eager to do it myself and within a week I had rang all the drivers that I wanted / thought would be interested. 90% of them confirmed with a yes as soon as they heard the squad mentioned. The only 2 drivers I would of liked out there with us were Mark Ruskin,  Rob Burbridge, he is just totally out of the banger scene now and Billy King, who chose to race with the runners that day (melt!).
I don’t know what it is with the condoms v the squad because we are all mates but I just think it’s a rivalry that would never end. I think if a meeting like this ever happened again I could just as easy get a team out there against them. Once I had sorted my team out driver wise, most of them cracked on with their cars themselves at their yards. I supplied a lot of banger kit to ones that needed it and 5 of my granadas was used for the meeting. 7 cars were built from our yard, including Tony Macs car who was racing for the squad that day!
Whilst we were building the cars for this we also had a film crew at our yard filming my dad and a couple of others for the fast and furious programme.
I got my car built with about a month spare, I spent the rest of the time helping others and sorting lots of spares out ready for the day.
On the day of the meeting we all tried meeting up together in the service station so we all drove in / got parked together.
It was a great feeling turning up and seeing all the yellow cars in the pits. The Squad did outnumber us, everyone knew what our main aim was for the day and I would like to think we was quite successful in this. I do think we came out on top on the day but the squad did have a lot of other people getting stuck into them as well as us.
If this is the last time we meet with the squad it was a good one, memories that I will cherish forever.”

Having had the opportunity to race alongside my brother, It was always great racing alongside Andrew when we was both out full time for all those years but you had to have your wits about you on the track because it’s a known fact that he has spun out or buried more of his teams mates than he has the opposition!! And he used the same excuses every time, either he didn’t see you or he didn’t know it was you! And lots of the time he would just totally deny he done it!
The years we raced together were my favourite, building cars, travelling around together. Even though he would always make us late for a meeting and get us lost going there!! He always seemed to have something to finish, to do on his car just before we was meant to leave the yard!
I can remember one weekend we was going to Scotland, he was driving the first part of the journey, 2 hours in, he pulled into a service station which was in Ipswich further away from Scotland than where we started off!
It wasn’t until Andrew started slowing down racing, that I started to concentrate on trying to win races myself as before then I would always get more joy out of Andrew winning whilst I was crashing.
Andrew would always be faster because he’s just a natural driver whereas I have to really concentrate and put my mind to it to get round. My mind use to wander far to easy! I often found myself waving to the crowd rather than turning for the bend!!
We are both not shy of a crash, Andrew generally would be more patient and race around waiting for the hit he wanted, whereas I would rather turn around and create the hit that I wanted!
We would both repair anything and take it back out but I would always make sure I done extra work at the yard so I had all the spares I needed, whereas Andrew would try and rely on not getting his cars in the state I use to!
If Andrew was still racing now, I would definitely still be in bangers fulltime. He moved away and doesn’t have the facilities to carry on like I could.

Shane’s appearances on an oval track in the banger formula have reduced in recent years, as is often the case, family takes over.

158 tells us “Before I won the world final for the second time in 2011, I had already been thinking about a change of formula. When I won, I then decided to race the 2012 season as champion before having a break from bangers. The condoms were racing mainly at Spedeworth throughout 2011 and Team black mainly RDC so knowing this was potentially my last year I decided to try and race more at Mildenhall. This brought on a lot more hard hitting meetings between the teams.
Me and Jack met again at 2012 world final, where I managed to take him out when he was in a high position with a few laps to go. I thought this would be the last time we would clash as I was changing formula but then when the supposed last meeting at Wimbledon was planned I just had to do it. I had sold most of my banger gear by this point, which is why I had to take a horrid Previa! The Previa turned out to be a good car for me, I had a good meeting in it and it was probably one of the only times I can remember stopping one of Jacks jags, which were always well hard and I found near on impossible to stop! He caused me so much damage with his jags over the years! I use to cringe when I see him roll into the pits with a jag on the back!

Once I left the bangers and started the stock cars, the rivalry between me and Jack just fizzled out. He started speaking to me and now we stop and chat when we see each other round the race tracks. This was helped a lot by my young daughter taking a shine to Lauren, Jacks daughter.

I’m not currently racing any formula right now, I gave up totally a couple of years ago, selling all my stock car and banger gear so we could buy a house. Jessica has always wanted to race and was old enough to start this year and has a Micro F2, however Jessica suffers with bad anxiety, so we hadn’t actually made a meeting, only practice at Skegness, which with a lot of encouragement and perseverance she managed to complete the written and driving test. We was getting closer to managing a meeting but then lockdown happened.
With Jessica being a bit nervous to race, I think this is the perfect excuse for me to start racing again a bit myself, get her use to it all and familiarise her with the tracks etc. again as we have been out the racing scene for the last few years.

In terms of the future, I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit recently and it was either back to national saloons or back to bangers.
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Bangers is where my heart is so that’s what I’m going to do, probably only do about 10 – 12 meetings a year sticking to Unlimiteds. I am planning on picking and choosing the meetings I think I would personally enjoy. Nasher wants to do a few more bangers next year as well, so it will be great racing with him again as he is one of the most loyal and best team mates I’ve ever had.

I’m not planning to get involved in any wars as if I did this would mean I would have to be back full time and with Jessica’s plans on racing I just wouldn’t have the time to commit to a war, but we will see how things go on that one!!

One final thing, I couldn’t have raced as much over the years if it wasn’t for my sponsors. I’ve had some good sponsors over the years, such as Brian from BJ Plastering, KEM tipper services, GMR Kent Ltd, Excel skip hire, chase car spares, Andy Bailey, WW Electrical, along with many others.