An interest in karts was spawned as early as ten after a chance visit to the Go-kart track at Aviemore showed that James Hunt finally had a rival. But there weren't many kart tracks in Aberdeen at the time and searching for alternatives showed it was easier to thrash round in a nearby field in a £25 Mini rather than a kart with less clearance than a gnats undercarriage. Hence my early days were focussed mainly on cars and road rallies/sprints/ hill climbs. About fifteen years ago, after competing in cars became too expensive for a computer programmer's salary, I tried indoor karting and was immediately hooked on kart racing - it was just the outright speed that was missing.

Brief discussions with a couple of friends soon saw a 100 National kart (at last performance more akin to cars than lawn mowers) purchased and raced with a modicum of success (well none actually - but we blamed lack of investment, and I suppose at £500 we shouldn't have expected too much!!), but eventually the team dispersed due to overseas postings and the arrival of babies.

At this time Club 100 was just starting up and it seemed like an ideal opportunity to race on a level playing field in 100s - so I raced in the Lightweights (ok, I lied a bit - Heavyweights) for about 3 years normally getting into the "A" finals, but never quite on the podium (story of my life, always the bridesmaid). However I eventually tired of this as it became too popular and the days became long drawn-out affairs for very little race time.

I then had a sabbatical of 2-3 years spending my time contemplating whether or not I should compete in Hillclimbs again. Bought a car (Chevette HSR - don't laugh), modified it, tuned the engine to 180bhp, bought a roll cage, the helmet, the race license and...swapped the car for a motorbike...which I couldn't ride!!

More years of indecision followed, my racing confined to the occasional Pro Kart event with Race Pro and the odd Club 100 event but nothing regular. I sought solace in changing my road-cars as often as my underwear....

Then, and I don't think either of us can remember what happened exactly, but beer was involved, I bought a 100cc kart with Toby. We never actually raced it competitively but soon tired of constant problems and rebuilds and so decided to try a couple of Club 100 endurance events. On finding that we were both pretty
even performance wise (well, I'm slightly quicker!!) and consistent we decided to 'go for it' and buy a Max (in 'kit' form)...and we haven't looked back, actually, there's no point as everyone is in front of us…

The Max was an instant revelation being both faster than a 100 and much more reliable and pretty much maintenance free. Soon we were joined by Luke who became a regular "hanger-on" and was similarly quick and consistent (although he has a penchant for mud) so we decided to form a threesome (!!?? always wanted to be part of one, but this wasn't what I had in mind - the other two were supposed to be girls!) and to enable us to get even more track-time we have just bought a second Max kart to race in 2002.

We now have just one small problem to overcome - no car sensible enough to act as a tow car for two karts and no-one to share the second kart !!