Biography The Story so far. . . . Many of you know about FB Racing through our competing in the Custom Car Street Eliminator series but our history goes back a long way and has featured several different cars. Read on and learn a little of our roots. Until 1984 my only involvement in drag racing was as a spectator but in that year some fool persuaded me to attend a Run Wot You Brung. My wallet has never been full since! The track in question was Long Marston Raceway ( Shakespeare County for you young ‘uns) and the car was a Rover V8 powered 1955 Vauxhall Wyvern street sleeper. As a lot of you will know, drag racing is almost as addictive as crack cocaine and, after 3 or 4 passes (a best of 16.31), I was hooked. I wandered the pits and chatted to a few racers who then, as now, were very helpful and supportive. They explained to me the workings of dial-in bracket racing and I left the track knowing that I’d be racing in the NDRC Street Class in 1985. Whilst the Wyvern was fun I wanted something with more potential so it was sold on (to one of the Bristol Doorslammers) and off I went in search of some Yank iron. After a lot of searching and a hefty bank loan I found the number 2 car of my dreams (any guesses at No 1?), a 1970, 351 Cleveland powered, Mach 1 Mustang. This was to become my first “race” car. Over the winter I fitted headers, a four-barrel Holley and moved the battery to the boot and then waited impatiently for the start of the season. My first ever race meeting provided mixed emotions. I was upset as the car only ran 17.1 but over the moon with an appearance in the final (losing to long time racer, Zane Llewelyn). Over the year I did get quicker and, started to win. The end result was a tied first place in the championship with that famous old fart, Brian Huxley (even he had hair back then!). Although I lost out to Brian on countback I did walk away with Rookie of the Year (and a best ET of 15.57). The following year was better still as I won the NDRC and Shadow Racing championships and lowered my PB to 14.51. But the urge to go faster was really starting to take hold and a new car was on my shopping list. To finance it the Mustang had to go. It’s replacement was an unfinished tube framed Manta originally destined for Super Gas (the chassis having been built by Andy Robinson under the guise of Street Elite Racing). However, the phrase “unfinished” is perhaps a little generous, “just about started” would probably have been better as the car was no more than a shell and a chassis. However, I set about sourcing parts – a 9” here, a 460 there, a few wheels and so on and even bought a Cavalier Sportshatch (same shape) as a matching tow-car. Ironically this became my next racecar as a lack of cash, a cheap Rover V8 and the amount of work needed on the Manta conspired to lead me astray, the Rover ending up in the Cavalier along with a Ford 4-speed. So, after a year’s hiatus I returned to the track in 1988 but this time I wasn’t alone. I now had Martin “The Brain” Kerr and Andy “Spud” Cunningham as crew. Fellow car club member Trevor Jones (now driving the ex-Magnum Willys) was also now competing in his high riding SBC powered PA Cresta along with Vic Fisher (now crewing for Pro-ET racer Andy Williams) and it was in that year the phrase “FB (Fat Bloke) Racing” was coined, first appearing on the bootlid of the Cresta. Back then I think it was derived more from our eating habits than our sizes but that would change! The Cavalier, despite being a stick-shift car, proved reliable and consistent and won me my second Championship (although a 14.08 PB wasn’t enough to cover Trev’s 13.27 in the PA.). Both FB Racing and myself then disappeared for a while. Occasionally the real world gets in the way of drag racing and, self-employment, the arrival of children and getting tempted into building a Mk1 Cortina panel van (I still love Mk 1s) meant that we were away from the track until 1993. That’s when I took the aforementioned ‘Tina to the Hot Rod Drags (a brilliant event) and the sport dug it’s claws into me once more   . Whilst building the ‘Tina I was offered THE car of my dreams, a ’34 Ford 3-window coupe (forget “Graffiti” it’s the “Kid” for me). The car was an unfinished street rod with a SBF, 4-speed and a Jag live rear. The deal was done and the car brought home (the Manta being sold to help finance it). Now, hand on heart, my original intention (and I explained this to the wife) was to build it up “as was”, drive & enjoy it for a while, and then sell it and at least get my money back. No, honestly it’s true. But the sight of the 460 (originally bought to go in the Manta) sat in the corner of my garage was too much to bear and before you could say “Whoops, there goes the mortgage” it was sat between the 34 Corner chassis rails. And there it stayed! What was originally intended to be a street rod became a bit of a street monster. Big Mickey T’s and a 9” replaced the truck radials and Jag live and a C6 dropped in where there was a 4-speed. For now we stuck with the I-beam front end but did, at least, put a cage in. FB Racing returned to Avon Park (yes, I know it’s now Shakey!) in September 1994 for the Hot Rod Drags. Ironically the first ever pass of the FB coupe suffered a similar problem to the last ever pass – a trans fluid leak. We’d forgotten to plug the speedo drive hole and laid a trail of oil all the way up the freshly prepped strip. Luckily the consequences weren’t as drastic as they would be 7 years later as no fluid got onto the tyres at all. Mind you, if Bruno had got hold of me I might have suffered some drastic injuries. Needless to say marshals and track crew were not queuing up to buy us a drink that evening! With the leak plugged and a borrowed Holley 600 bolted on (the Ford carb peed fuel and kept sticking open) we spun the ‘concrete’ ordinary Mickey Ts half way up the strip to a best of 13.9. In 1995 we returned to Championship racing. Avon Park had scaled down their class structure and ran just two – Car & Bike, both dial-in bracket classes. Deciding not to cut the ’34 in half we entered the Car class. We were still running the normal Mickey Ts and wheelspin to the eighth was the order of the day. Gradual improvements to the engine and chassis saw the times coming down until we got to 12.5. At that point the tired old 460 had had enough, a bearing let go in the burnout and we bent a rod. Fortunately crew member Spud came to the rescue with the offer of a 429 short motor that was sat in his garage. We freshened it up with bearings and rings and were back out for the next event. That engine (Spuds) would stay in the car for the next 5 years without a full rebuild. (We were still using it in 2002 when it went quick enough to get us a coveted 8-second jacket). 1995, which we intended as a “test” year, proved successful beyond our dreams and we walked away with the APIRA championship with a meeting to go. Whilst the car remained street-legal (and MoT’d) in ’96 I had shelled out some pennies over the close season. The car now had a tunnel ram, a hot hydraulic cam, a trans brake and some slicks so we were looking for some big improvements. And we got them. On slicks we ran the car down to a best of 10.72 and again took the APIRA championship (my fifth, and to date, last, class win). However, we didn’t spend the whole year on slicks. Street Eliminator came to Avon Park in August and it was the sort of series I’d dreamed about. The old rock-hard Mickey Ts were flung back on the car and we were entered into our first Street Eliminator event. It was bl**dy excellent. I enjoyed the heads up racing, the Cruise was way cool and the other competitors were very welcoming. We even won a race beating “The Car” - several tons of matt black Yank iron with a 460 and gas. The previous evening, whilst on the Cruise it was, unbeknown to me, right behind us. We stopped at some lights and The Brain, who was riding shotgun, said “look in the mirror”. As I did he added “Be afraid, be very afraid”. Well. It works if you’ve seen the film! Well, obviously that was it for us. We had to go “Street Racing” and by the time the ’97 Thunderball rolled around we’d added a nitrous system some stickier street tyres and had even painted the car. At that first meeting we were running low tens and by mid season had broken into the nines (4 th car to do it I think), allowing us to beat Colin Lazenby for our first CCSE event win. It was a thrilling season and we went into the last round in second place but with 4 other drivers having a chance at the title. It wasn’t to be us though as the C6 had had enough and fried its clutches during qualifying. The title went to John Tebenham in his turbocharged 4-cylinder 105E Anglia. With no trans and no money we sat out 1998, the year off giving me the chance to source the parts for a ‘Glide conversion. We went back to bracket racing in ’99 but it was terrible. The car didn’t want to slow down and neither did the crew. Add to this the frustration of watching the Cruise depart when the CCSE boys were in town and I guess it was no surprise to see us back in the Street Eliminator fold in 2000. We came back with a little more investment in the car thanks to new sponsors The Everest and A & E Fire Equipment. These were joined in 2000 by the first of the FB Associates and all have stuck with us ever since. This was to be our best year yet in CCSE . If my memory serves me right I believe we made it to every semi-final – unfortunately I definitely remember that we didn’t get to any finals at all! However, our performance and consistency was enough to allow us to finish third overall. The following year we had high hopes. A new engine, new cylinder heads, new carbs and new torque converter had meant a heavy investment and we thought we’d be able to mix it with the best. We also had some additional sponsorship when Shakespeare County Raceway came aboard. The year started well but at the Summer Nationals??? At Santa Pod disaster struck. A broken transmission line put oil under one of the coupe’s rear wheels at over 140 mph The decision now had to be made as to our next move. We considered building a late model car but decided that the ’34 was definitely us – besides it’s fun trying to get something with all the aerodynamics of a wardrobe to run quick & fast. So we went for a rebuild on the old girl. This rebuild was more than just new underpinnings. I learnt how to make fibreglass panels and all four wings, the running boards, the tub and the bonnet were remanufactured with subtle changes (or not so subtle in the case of the front wings which were dropped much lower at the front to reduce lift). Of course, all this bodywork was of little use without a chassis to mount it on. With the ’34 rails now resembling a parallelogram we decided to go for a full tube chassis. The shape of a hot rod meant that a ladder style design would provide us with the best packaging options so that’s the way we went. We acquired a couple of RSJs and these were bolted to the floor and levelled and became our chassis jig. The build was much like any other for a drag race chassis apart from the fact that we had to ensure sufficient room for a big radiator, silencers and a full exhaust system.   Just to make life interesting we also put together a new 477 cubic inch engine. Despite all this work the new car went for it’s MOT just over a year after the crash and within a month had made it’s debut on the track. Despite looking great and running nines at this, it’s first meeting, we’d made a mistake in the engine build and the big Ford soon started throwing out a LOT of smoke. The damage proved to be terminal and we had to pull the 477 and put the old 429 back in for the last meeting. We had been desperate to join the ICE Automotive ‘8-second Club’ which was open to the first eight street legal cars to run and back up an 8-second pass. Unfortunately our eight before the crash was never backed up. With the 477 now lying dead in my garage there was no chance that I would get one of the coveted 8-second jackets this year – or was there…….. We’d got to the semi-final and were up against Jeff Meads who was running considerably quicker than us. Down to a single nitrous system and with nothing to lose Martin decided to dump the whole system in off the line (we’d been delaying it up until that point). And boy, did it work. When I picked up my timing ticket it said 8.98. I drove back to the pits and the crew were going wild. But we needed to back that time up and I was fairly sure Jeff had passed me. Another look at the timing ticket and it said ‘Winner’ under my name but there was no time & speed for Jeff. I knew something was up then and it turned out there was a fault in the timing system. The race would have to be re-run – this was our chance. We didn’t touch a thing and ran another 8.98! Jeff had beaten me but I didn’t care – we’d done it – we were the 6th member of the Eight Second club with our last pass of the year! When the membership was complete were also the only ones to join with Ford power, the only ones with a stock bottom end and we also did it with the smallest displacement engine.   As well as joining the Eight Second club my reaction times over the two meetings attended were good enough to capture the ‘Perfect Light’ award for the best average RT. And of course the 8.98 was also a new personal best.   2003 and 2004 were quite difficult years. In 2003 we had simply loads of engine problems – and none of them from pushing too hard. A backfire, a missed shift (due to tyre shake), an ignition timing error and a failed regulator combined to crush and melt pistons like they were going out of fashion   Despite all this we still managed to finish fourth in the championship, I won the Perfect Light award for the second year in succession and we ran a NPB ET of 8.79 The engine was very well behaved on 2004 – but the new TSR transmission kept breaking input shafts – even the Pro Mod one lent to us by Steve Pateman (“If you break that you can have it” – Thanks Steve!). Despite stronger and stronger shafts, modifications to the clutches, changed rear end ratios and a host of other changes we never got to the bottom of the problem. We were also beginning to be plagued with tyre shake – shake so bad that it twice popped doors open, both times causing bodywork damage and losing us races. But, as in 2003, I feel that we did well despite these problems – we finished fifth in the championship (but did win one round), improved the ET to 8.67 and I won the Perfect Light award yet again! Towards the end of the 2004 season Andy Frost approached us to gauge our interest in going to the USA to race the Yanks and Canadians.  Despite the potential costs involved it didn’t take us long to make up our minds – this was the chance of a lifetime and something that had never been done before. Before long I found myself heavily involved with Andy in organising and promoting the World Street Race as it was now known. I even found myself on TV, blasting the car up & down a deserted Shakespeare County track in front of the Central TV cameras for an evening news slot. 2005 was going to be a year we’ll never forget, a year in which we’d become an international team, run quicker and faster than ever before and pick up a champions trophy. It all started, appropriately, in January 2005 when we took our new 545 cubic inch engine for our first ever dyno run. The 545 was our biggest engine yet (9 litres) and we hoped for 800 bhp without gas. We got it all together and, very early on a cold and frosty morning in January we set off for Kenny Coleman’s EDA company in deepest Yorkshire. We were well chuffed when the new engine made 830 horsepower – on pump gas and without nitrous! That left us just a few short weeks to get all the tools and spares packed and the engine back in the car and on the 7th February all the kit and the car (along with those of Jeff Meads, Andy Frost and Steve Pateman) were packed into containers to make the long journey to Belle Rose, Louisiana where the race would take place. Nearly 6 weeks later myself and the crew flew into New Orleans at the beginning of our American adventure. We’d hired a large motor home but even that was a little cramped with 9 Fat Blokes on board. In qualifying we once again suffered a broken input shaft but one big advantage of being in the USA was parts availability and we had a replacement in a little over a day. We also took the opportunity to get a local trans guy to look at our box and, as a consequence, we ended up with a new valve body too. I can’t say that the race itself was a roaring success for FB Racing. We had taken a chance in switching to radials for this event but ended up switching back to Mickey Ts due to handling problems. A ladder imposed by the track meant that we faced fellow UK team member Jeff Meads in the first round and Jeff put us back in the container (as opposed to ‘on the trailer’) despite us running our quickest time of the trip. Regardless of this we still had a great time and we know that we contributed to the UK team’s overall win. And we also welcomed a new member to the team, albeit, a temporary one. Marty Van Heule (who used to crew on the Roofer’s Toy Pro Mod) and lives just outside New Orleans helped us out a lot whilst we were there – showing us the sights, organising parts supply and even arranging a camping spot for us right outside his local bar! A cool dude indeed!   We finished our trip with a couple of days in the state capitol of New Orleans with, of course, a couple of nights spent wandering Bourbon Street. We also had a day out with WSR Champion, Steve Pateman, and his team on an airboat. Then it was back to Blighty for FB Racing and, 6 weeks later, on a damp and grey Wednesday morning, the teams met again to collect the cars from Tilbury docks. Quite a difference to the hot weather and sunny days we were enjoying the last time we saw the cars! Before our first race on home soil in 2005 we were invited to display the car at Brands Hatch where it created a lot of interest – rivalling that shown in Andy Carter’s championship winning Top Fuel car which we shared a marquee with. Access to a VIP suite to watch some classic saloon car racing made the weekend even better. The week after we went to Santa Pod for the Main Event where we ran a new best ET of 8.57 at over 170mph. And that was despite severe tyre shake from about 100 feet out! Our first Street Eliminator race of the year saw us suffering again with tyre shake but an 8.87 with a BIG holeshot saw off an 8.63 from the twin turbo Cougar of Steve Nash. Next up was our second international event of the year – The King of Europe street car race in Chimay, Belgium. We took on 94 other cars from 11 different countries from all corners of Europe. This must have been one of the hottest weekends of the year and the race day schedule of 8 passes in just 41/2 hours pushed us to melting point! But it was well worth it. We made the final of the RWD class where a .001 red light handed the win to fellow Street Eliminator racer John Sleath. But that was just an appetiser for the King of Europe final. Having got through the early rounds with a best of 9.11 (the track was part of a circuit course but a public road when the circuit was not in use!) we faced Swede Stefan Gustaffson and his twin-turbo Pontiac in the final. I took it really easy on the lights and the Scandinavian car pulled out a healthy lead. ‘Babying’ the car away from the lights I waited for the tyres to get some grip before punching the button. Stefan looked a long way in front but the ’34 gobbled up the gap and I passed him for the win just after the eighth, blowing BOTH head gaskets in the process! I managed to get the car back to the start line where I was greeted with a huge round of applause, airhorns an cheers. The side of the car was covered with ‘mayonnaise’ but I didn’t care. I was officially the first ‘King of Europe’. A massive trophy and a bunch of Euros made the drive home a lot easier than the drive there (when we’d managed to get lost! Oh, and we gained a pretty good looking ‘mascot’ too! Street Eliminator was quite frustrating after the KoE, especially as we simply could not find a way to stop the car shaking. We had thought about changing the nitrous system and the winnings from our European victory allowed us to invest in a Highpower Systems unit to replace one of the two NOS systems we’d been using. We got to use it at the penultimate meeting of the season and it paid off big time. Easing ourselves into it by slowly upping the power we went progressively quicker, finishing with a new personal best of 8.36 but losing out to Andy Frost in what was the quickest Street Eliminator race ever. Unfortunately we didn’t get to explore it any further as a broken lifter put us out of competition at the final round. But, like I said at the beginning – 2005 was a hell of a year. I raced and drove my car on the street in the USA, Europe & the UK, I won the first pan-European street-legal drag meeting and we went quicker and faster than ever before. On top of that we finished fourth in the Street Eliminator championship and I won the ‘Perfect Light’ trophy for the fourth year running (do I get to keep a Christmas tree??). But what will 2006 bring? Keep coming back to find out or, better still, join the news alert service by click here.