Pit Blog

toothousandandeleven

2012-01-17T15:15:00.000-08:00

I remember thinking to myself, as I looked at the #5 Roots V8 Racing Chevrolet sitting expectantly on the trailer, that it was a bit rude of the world to carry on like this.

I had escaped, you see. A deal had taken place that saw me flying to the United States to drive an ARCA Stockcar at Little Rock. I lost myself in the North Carolina sunshine, fell in love with the little half mile "paper clip" style oval and the hugely over powered and under braked NASCAR has-been race car. It is all the same as Euro Late Models. As ASCAR. As Speedcar. As the now NASCAR affiliated Race Car Series. That's what we tell everyone, isn't it? That we are a kind of NASCAR in our part of the world? But it isn't the same. Not by a long long way. Not even by ARCA standards which are still a long way from NASCAR Cup. I soaked up the heat, pounded laps and talk about a type of racing that very few people outside of America truly understand. I felt like one of them, even though I didn't quite talk the same. I felt connected. Wired. Home. I knew I would be racing in Holland the following weekend, but that was as far from my mind as you could imagine. The only things I bought from my life on the other side of the Atlantic were my race gear and the image of how proud Tony would be to see me driving this car.

The rain running down the aeroplanes porthole sized window washed away the warm glow of North Carolina and reminded me that this was my real home. England. A place too wet to run stockcars how God had intended them. I didn't unpack. I gave my house mates a hazy run down of what happened, still slightly shell shocked. Then went to Belgium to collect my steed, the aforementioned expectant #5, for the coming Dutch race.

Originally I had been asked to drive the #77, but later it was decided Chris Roots would do this. News I was very pleased to hear. Tony's car should be at Venray, and it should be a Roots driving it. Chris would drive the #77 and I would drive the #5 rental car. It would be a hard weekend for all involved. Especially for Lynne and Chris. I wasn't much help to them. I got the #5 on the podium a few times, running out of rubber while everyone else was bolting on new tyres. I proved that Roots V8 Racing have good rental cars, but that was all I could do. What we needed was something else. Maybe something not found on a race track. Something to change. Something that meant Tony was still there. Sometimes I could feel him there. Sometimes he feels so close you could touch him. But I know he isn't there. I know how much it effects me and I feel guilty. It must be ten times worse for Chris, Lynne and the rest of the family. I am so ashamed of my inability to support these people that I love so much.

Back at Venray, I can't even look Chris in the face when he is seeking comfort from a bottle of beer in his race hauler. I go to bed early. I get out of bed late. I pause only to hug and kiss my house mates who have come to support me. I put my lid on and race. That is pretty much all I can tell you about the best oval track in Europe. Sorry if you wanted a review of Venray. Go back to Google and try again.

The following Late Model races I used the #77. I took an easy start position somewhere near the front to win at Warneton, feeling like I was borrowing a life that wasn't mine to borrow. I raced Tony's car before, but back then I was just keeping it warm for him. Make sure it was race ready for when he comes back. But on the final laps of that heat, I knew he wasn't coming back. That he would not race this car again. That I couldn't phone him after, and tell him how well his car had gone. Or compare set-up notes. Or talk. Or anything. Christof stood by the drivers window until I had composed myself enough to get out of the car. "The crowd are waiting and you still have a job to do." said that little voice that allows me to turn off Kelvin and turn on that guy that smiles and waves and talks to the race fans and gives the kids his trophies, chats, shakes hands, tells the jokes and puts on the show. As I got out of the car, Christof whispered "For Tony." I nodded, took his chequered flag and waved to the Belgian crowd. I took the car to the pits and when I saw Lynne again, it was all over for that smiley flag waving guy. I would have given anything for the whole world to just crumble away. I am ashamed again. Selfish. I break down in Lynnes arms instead of supporting her with her grief. We are not sharing a victory here, we are sharing a loss. This is what we race for now. Winning here will never be the same again. I don't want to do the next heat. Or the final. Or the next meeting. I'm not sure I want to race at all. I go and sit in the camper and stare at the window. I watch my friends, colleagues, fellow drivers. I should be out there with them, showing them a strong front. But my legs wont work. My mouth is too dry when I go to speak. I make sure it is too close to race time for them to engage me when I leave to get back in the race car. I am failing them.

By the time we are going to Ipswich, I have completely lost the plot. There has been an accident which means we can't use the M25 and must drive through London. I am on Tony's computer finding a route as I have done many times before. I need to take charge. To sort this minor problem out and get us under way. But it wont come. The person that won three local road rally titles in his rookie year, now seems incapable of reading a map. I stare and stare at the screen, but it is just squiggly lines, none of it makes sense any more. I now have a blinding headache. I screw my eyes shut. "Concentrate. You have done this a hundred times, just get on with it." But I couldn't. Every time I looked at the printout it looked wrong. I tried cross referencing maps and even looking at pictures of the junctions on Google Earth, but it may have well been another planet because I recognised nothing. On the road it was no better. Lynne had to guide us through the first bit, then we found our old friend/rival Jimmy, who guided us back to the motorway. I wasn't even in proper control of the hauler. Then I started telling myself I shouldn't be driving. Not the hauler and certainly not the racecar. But that would let even more people down. I needed to try to get it together.

A race at Silverstone in August with my dad's team bought back some memories of times before I became a stock car driver. It was relaxed, I drove neat and cautiously, racing is expensive here. It was a lovely weekend, I miss racing with my dad and his team, but not enough to drag me away from the ovals.

I started planning a way to get the #13 back on the grid at Warneton for 2012, and when I could see no way to make it possible, I got a Sprint Car instead. I couldn't finance the Late Model. It was too expensive and too far to travel. I needed a change.

It was all excuses. I ran away.

But it's ok because now Chris will race the #77.

Except Chris got a new car for Superstox.

Tony would have been ever so proud to see Chris and Nick racing together in Superstox. Especially when Chris goes on holiday and young Nick "Borrows" his dad's race car and knocks all the wheels off it...

But I guess that still means less time for the #77 Late Model, a car that Tony also loved.

Here we are, both skirting the issue that someone has to race that car. Someone has to shine that light in Tony's series. We can't run away. We have to go back.

I have to go back.

I have to do more for the series and for Roots V8 Racing.

I will make sure the #77 will win at Venray, on the track that Tony was so looking forward to racing on and never got the chance.

And I will build a new Late Model to race with my name over the door.

This is my 2011 confession.

So...

Does anyone have an old Ascar chassis for sale?

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

"Don't quote me on that..."

2011-09-08T03:41:00.000-07:00

On French cars:
"It doesn't annoy me that the French make such awful cars, what is annoying is that they don't keep them to themselves. They impose these shit-box contraptions on the rest of the world."

Explaining the dangers of Ralling:

"Sometimes, on the Rally Africa, the people that live in the villages try to touch the cars out on the stage and lose their fingers. Mechanics are forever picking out bits of finger from the grills of their race cars. But it's ok, because the people that live there are not, like, real people."

Post race at Ipswich:

"I had a perfectly balanced car. It had no grip at the front and no grip at the back."

On his questionable cooking prowess:

"If God wanted me to be good in the kitchen, he wouldn't have made me so damn attractive."

Post qualifying at Silverstone:

"I discovered Copse wasn't quite flat when I left the track backwards."

To the E.L.M.S fans who voted for him to win the 2011 Ipswich race:

"Thanks everyone, I love you, but the question was who do you THINK will win, not who do you WANT to win."

On his attitude:

"I'm not arrogant, I'm just really really good."

On the death of Ryan Dunn:

"I believe it was Ryan Dunn's God given right to kill himself at high speed in his car. May he rest in peace. Spare a thought for the passenger he murdered whilst you're writing your tributes though."

Asked how the team predicts the weather for car set-up @Warneton:

"You can tell it is going to rain by the cows. They will all have their umbrellas up."

On Hentai:

"I drew Melfina from Outlaw Star naked, then I felt bad when I looked in her eyes, so I drew some clothes on her."

To the parent of a child who wants to be Sebastian Vettle when they grow up:

"Sounds fair. He wants to be better than Jenson Button and he isn't black enough to be Lewis Hamilton."

On food:

"Al dente. That's Italian for not bloody cooked."

Explaining motorsport terms to a journalist:
"Understeer is when you hit the wall with the front of the car. Oversteer is when you hit the wall with the back of the car. Horsepower is how fast you hit the wall and torque is how far you take the wall with you."

On his home:

"Brighton. I am sure someone told me it was the home of diversity. Yet, it seems to me that for every bohemian you can find in this city, I can find you three intolerant assholes wandering around town looking for a fight."

Passing judgement on the TVR Griffith 500:

"Fast, flashy, high maintenance and temperamental."

Team mate:

"Yes, you are, but what did you think of the car?"

On the Brighton Argus:

"I feel sorry for the ten year old girl on the cover of the Argus who lost her dad, because everyone is going straight to the sports pages to read about how wonderful I am."

Post race at Hednesford:

"I don't think of myself as someone special, I am a normal person like you and everyone else, just that I have wicked skills and I am better looking."

On facebook:

"I don't understand why facebook gives me the option to like my statuses. Of course I like my statuses, I'm fucking hilarious."

On food:

"Another top tip. When you are choking on a piece of cheese, don't try to dislodge the blockage with more cheese. It doesn't work."

Post race at Lydden:
"I don't have a championship campaign, I just win as many races as I can."

On BMX:

"I don't do trails in the rain. I have enough trouble staying on the bike as it is."

On life:

"I have, since the age of eleven, solved most of the moral dilemmas that crop up in my day to day life by simply thinking "What would Nikki Sixx do?"

Asked by house mate if it would be better to buy a bed than a BMW:

"Don't be stupid. How can you go drifting with a bed?"

About his sick sense of humour:

"It's not a sick sense of humour, it's a test to see if I like you."

On his random singing:

"Sometimes I hear myself singing and think 'Why haven't I released an album yet?'"

On media appearances and interviews:

"I hate the sound of my own voice so much, you think I would just shut up."

On knives:

"I don't like the word 'knife'. It sounds all violent and stabby. From today, all knives will be called 'Cuddle Spanners'."

On fashion:

"I look better in John Morrison's sunglasses than John Morrison."

On the ASI Charity Kart Race:

"I'm racing Ben Collins on Thursday. Does anybody have a shirt that says 'You were the Stig'?"

On the F1 2011 game:

"The new F1 game for the PS3 is so realistic. Codemasters have really captured the essence of the sport. It's boring, tedious and makes an annoying noise that gives you a headache."

On his blog:

"Reading my blog is the new doing something worthwhile and interesting."

On the close of the racing season:

"Close season is when we use our fireproof underwear to keep heat in rather than out."

On being single:

"I have yet to learn the fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away."

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Elms_Venray.flv

2011-07-05T12:02:00.000-07:00

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

The pizza conspiracy.

2011-05-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

Now, I am not one to complain as you well know. And as far as paranoid goes, I am so far from it, I can barely see it! However, I have noticed recently that our pizzas are being sabotaged.

It all started when I ordered a Chicken Sizzler and ended up with a Mighty Meaty. Not the most horrendous of errors, I grant you, but suspicious non the less.

For those of you not familiar with the Domino's menu, I shall explain. The Chicken Sizzler consists of an Italian bread circle smothered with a tomato sauce that Domino's like to describe as secret. It is then littered with the carcass of a brutally murdered battery hen, caked in cheese (That's one of your "five a day") and topped of with chopped chillies to mask any taste the chicken might have left.

The Mighty Meaty on the other hand is more of a quiz than a meal, as you try to guess what noise each of the random chunks of animal might have made when they were alive. Was it a "Moo"? Or maybe a "Baa", perhaps even a "Woof". Domino's even try to make this task harder by turning some of the animals into sausages and then thinly slicing them before using them to garnish your pizza. Other bits look like the animal was shot with a 12 gauge and then the bloody chunks scraped off the wall and straight into the oven.

The point is, both of these pizzas are excellent in there own right. But there is a time and a place for each, you see? Sometimes you just want to kill chickens and sometimes you want to kill every fucking thing in the barnyard.

On this day I only wanted to kill chickens, however the man who misread my email was a bit overzealous with the bolt gun and I ended up with the contents of Noah's Ark splattered around my pizza.

It was nice, but I couldn't help feeling like I was eating innocently slaughtered animals, while the guilty ones were still crammed in cages, being force fed and pecking each other out of frustration.

But, I am a cool customer, so, Like Father Christmas that time when he shot Prancer's legs off for a joke just seconds before the reindeer landed on a frozen lake, I just let it slide.

Last week, worried that those battery chickens were getting it all their own way, a couple of friends and I ordered three Chicken Sizzlers. That should be enough to wipe out a fair chunk of chickens and, indeed it was. It was closer inspection of the pizza that led us (mainly me) to believe that someone at Domino's was out to get us. One of the pizzas contained a pudding. That's right, my friends, some sawn-off little shit stick had put pineapple on one of the pizzas. What sort of sick, depraved person would do such a thing? A saboteur, that's who. Some sneaky Russian ex KGB cossack bastard.

Or do you think it's the cat? Could our cat have someone working on the inside of my favorite eatery?

Or the caterpillars! They have been quiet for months, but I saw one in the workshop today. They could be phoning up, saying they are me and changing the orders!

Or my bed sheet! Could my bed sheet be in cohorts with a man that provides my food? This could be disastrous!

What if it is something to do with all the black cups that my house mate bought home the other day? Yes they have Star Wars on them, but black cups are controlled by aliens! I keep telling people this, but it is like no-one listens! You will all be sorry when the aliens take over your cup cupboard! Mark these words!

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

My bed sheet is possessed.

2011-04-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

As if life wasn't hard enough, with caterpillars in the bathroom, ghosts on the stairs, no spoons, no money and a love life that largely resembles a board game, it now appears I have a possessed bed sheet.

The bed sheet in question, isn't actually mine. It was lent to me on a permanent basis by my house mate.

I say house mate, she is actually the head of our household. She is our illustrious leader who must be obeyed.

Feeling the instigation of some kind of pecking order, my other house mates and I, all vied for the post of second in command. She reviewed our applications for the job and, after some careful deliberation, bought a cat and gave the position to him.

The cat now rules us with a rod of iron fists. he makes us open doors and windows and fetch kitty treats from the kitchen. If we don't do his bidding, he tells his master and she then makes us stand on our head in the bath until we drown. We have lost many a house mate like this.

I myself, have drowned several times since living here.

I have even tried to lead a rebellion! Several times I have left the cat around the neighbours house with a note around his neck saying "Adopt me!" but they keep sending him back.

With a note saying "No."

Last week I put a tin of Whiskers on the far side of the busy main road outside the front of our house, to coax him into the traffic. But he wouldn't cross.

Only yesterday, during his daily "sit on a box" exercise routine, I tried to push him down the stairs. My house mates stopped me, fearing the repercussions from the great one. Too many house mates have lost their lives from bath drownings lately.

Sad sad business. What was I talking about? Ah yes, this bed sheet.

It is a cunning device with elasticated corners which allow it to grip the mattress. Saves all that "tucking in" nonsense. It should be easier to make fit than an epileptic in a disco.

It, however, isn't.

Being human, or at least having a passing resemblance, I only have two hands. A mattress has four corners. Don't just take my word for it, go and look at your one now.

This means that, at best, I can only fit half the bed sheet at a time. I then have to stretch the other half over the mattress before the first half pings off like a cheap pair of C&A knickers and shoots across the room like some kind of intercontinental bed sheet missile.

Just the other day I was making my bed with the window open. My bed sheet shot out of the window, decapitated the postman, crashed into a Ryanair flight ended up in the fast lane of the M23.

When I do finally tame the bed sheet and get into bed, I generally sleep like a log. I really tired one. But it is at this point that strange things start to happen.

Despite the fact that I lie perfectly still when I am in bed, as any of my former lovers will testify, my bed sheet moves around on its own.

My bed sheet tries to kill me in my sleep.

First the corners unhook and then it wraps itself around me until I look like some kind of sausage roll. Except with me instead of a sausage. And a bed sheet instead of the roll bit. A sort of "Me bed sheet". That doesn't really make any sense, does it. What did you mention sausage rolls for, anyway? We was going fine before you said that. This isn't a bloody buffet you know.

The bed sheet wraps itself around me whilst I sleep and tries to smother me. Fortunately, I always wake up in time before it finally chokes me to death.

I only realised it was trying to kill me recently. Now it knows that I have worked out its devilish plan, I think it is going to up its game. I spot it giving me evil looks when I get dressed in the morning.

I am so scared, I might start sleeping on the sofa.

Why do all these things try to get me? My life is so difficult.

fml.

Think about that if your having a bad day.

At least your bed sheet isn't trying to kill you.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Cold, Cat and Spoon

2011-03-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

I am ill.

I have a cold.

Except it is much more serious than that.

This is the kind of cold that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Not many people know that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a cold, but they were. Trust me. I was there. Seriously, have you ever had a bad cold before? It is like having death tap dancing on your chest. Massaging your throat with his scythe...

Sometime I want to saw my own head off to make it stop, but just as I get hold of the saw, a coughing fit starts and I end up chopping chunks out of the kitchen and dismembering the cat.

This raises all sorts of important questions. Why is there a saw in the kitchen? The answer is simple. When we order a crusty loaf, we don't ponce about. Why is there a cat in the kitchen? Well, we ran out of crusty loaf.

Cats do not make very good bread though. Firstly, you need to try and get them in the bread bin. This is not a precision job, as a cat has a surprisingly large leg span when you are trying to get it in a hole that it doesn't want to go in to.

Removing the cat from the bread bin is far easier, if slightly more dangerous. A cat who has been kept captive in a bread bin for a while is liable to pounce at whoever opens the bread bin and give them a lively slap around the face with a claw. The trick here is to get a second person to open the bread bin from behind and, as the cat pounces, give it a fair old swing with a cricket bat. That usually takes the fight out of them.

Chopping your cat into slices can be very difficult if the cat is moving about, and you wouldn't want to nick your finger, now, would you? If your cat is still wriggling, give it another slap with the cricket bat. Now, when you chop your cat, the middle bits tend to run out everywhere. Some people like to freeze there cat first to stop this happening, but I find, if you go quick enough, you can get the slices to a plate without too much escaping.

If it is a cat sandwich that you are making, then the next question to arise is, what filling? For this, I like to use more cat. Think about it for a moment, the cat is already out, if you wanted anything else you would have to go to the fridge or the cupboard. Making sense now, see?

Lop yourself off another slice of cat for the filling and then top it off with a nice slice of cat!

The purrrrrfect Cat Sandwich! Or Catwich as I like to call it.

If you didn't freeze your cat, I recommend a spoon to eat it with.

Not that I would know what it is like to eat a cat with a spoon.

I bet you are you dying to know how many spoons we have in our house. Have a guess. No, you're wrong. The correct answer is eight. That is one each, if there were eight people living here. Or two each if there were four people living here. But there isn't. There are five people living here. and that means one of us must go without spoons.

Probably me.

Life is always taking away my spoons. Everyone else in the entire world has two spoons and I have none. I am the boy with no spoons.

I am exactly two spoons short of a full set of spoons.

Did I tell you about my cold?

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

What if Motorsport was Facebook?

2011-02-18T09:29:00.000-08:00

I think it might look something like this...

Your Notifications:

Dale Earnhardt Jnr joined the group: Jeff Gordon is gay!

Jean Todt iced Ron Dennis in Mafia Wars and wants you to help dispose of the body.

Max Mosley likes this.

Bernie Ecclestone is now friends with Jean Todt, Michael Shumacher and Tony Soprano.

Kelvin "Rowdy" Hassell likes: When you go into a corner so fast that the handbrake starts to look like a sensible option on Likelicious. Like this link.

Jason Plato joined the group: I can't overtake another car without hitting it.

Fabrizio Giovanardi, Yvan Muller and James Thompson like this.

Robby Gordon and Denny Hamlin joined the group: I can't overtake another car without hitting it.

Vicky Butler Henderson wrote on Danica Patrick's wall:

"Please retire! You are making women racing drivers look bad!"

Ellen Lohr, Desiré Wilson, Sarah Fisher, Katherine Legge, Susie Stoddart and Vanina Ickx like this.

David Brabham updated his profile.

David Brabham changed his place of work from ALMS to Unemployed.

Yvan Muller wrote on Alain Prost's wall

"Just think, you would still be coming second if I raced in Andros Trophy!"

Tony Stewart, Juan Pablo Montoya and Tim Harvey added Mcdonald's, Burger King and Subway to their interests.

Tony Stewart, Juan Pablo Montoya and Tim Harvey joined the goup: I train for motorsport by lifting burgers and walking to the fridge.

Max Mosley changed his relationship status to: It's complicated.

Autosport refused Stock Car Racing's friend request

Autosport refused Drifting's friend request

Joe Blogs wrote on Autosport's wall

"I race in a tiny championship that nobody has heard of, you should write more about me and less about Formula One!"

167 people like this.

MSA Marshals and 6174 friends joined the group: Autosport International is a rip-off and I refuse to go.

You have been invited to the event: Autosport International

MSA Marshals and 6174 friends are attending

Attending: Yes No Maybe

Jimmy Johnson and Sebastian Loeb changed their occupation from Racing driver to Racing God.

The BRDC mugged Bernie Ecclestone in Mafia Wars and need you to sell his watch to pay for the British Grand Prix.

Bernie Ecclestone has turned Donington Park into a field in Farmville.

Danica Patrick likes Media Attention on Likelicious. Like this link.

Motorsport News updated his status:

"The voice of British Motorsport just says "World Rally Championship" over and over again!"

Motorsport News changed his occupation from: Making a newspaper about rallying. to: Making a newspaper about rallying but pretending it isn't.

Max Mosley is in a relationship with Prostitutes dressed as Nazis

Bernie Ecclestone and Michael Schumacher like this

Dale Earnhardt Jnr, Kyle Petty, Danica Patrick, David Coulthard, Ralph Shumacher and Jeremy Clarkson were invited to join the group: I couldn't drive a greasy stick up a pigs arse!

Ben Collins updated his profile.

Ben Collins changed his occupation from: The Stig to: Unemployed

Nigel Mansell wrote on Tiff Needell's wall

"I still blame you for my accident at Donington in the Mondeo."

Tiff Needell "wtf?"

Nigel Mansell "You made me hit the bridge."

Tiff Needell "YOU WERE ALREADY CRASHING, MORON!"

78 people like this

Nigel Mansell "I would have caught it."

Write a comment...

Richard Hammond left the group: Jet Cars are safer than flying!

Colin Mcrae left the group: Flying is safer than rallying!

Ferrari left the group Michael Schumacher is a hero!

Ferrari joined the group Michael Schumacher is an unsportsmanlike cheating kraut!

Ayrton Senna, Damon Hill, David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen also joined.

Older posts. Edit options.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

The Truth About Eggplants

2011-02-02T12:15:00.000-08:00

With the Daytona 500 just around the corner and everyone talking about the new points system and the resurfaced track, I thought now would be a good time to explain Eggplants.

Firstly we should dispel the myth that the Eggplant was created in the Swiss Hadron Collider on the 19th of September 2007, during a lunch time experiment in which two scientist replaced Proton beams with an egg and a potato. Although an Eggplant was created, it is not the first evidence of the Eggplant.

Nor is it a plant of the family Nightshade, native to Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The Eggplant's story begins one cold winter in 1844 when a potato, two cucumbers and a green pepper, raped a chicken. 9 months later A curious cross between an egg and a plant popped out of the chicken's arsehole. The Eggplant was born.

The following year the Eggplant was propelled into notoriety by inventing the rubber band. However fame and fortune were not good bedfellows for this strange new creation and the Eggplant quickly fell from grace when it was found drunk in the British Museum and broke The Portland Vase.

Months later, the Eggplant had gone completely mad, burning down most of Pittsburgh and destroying a suspension bridge in Great Yarmouth that killed around 80 people. A warrant was put out for the Eggplants arrest but the Police were unable to locate it's whereabouts. Some thought that the Eggplant was killed in the bridge incident but others believe it just went into hiding.

As years went by, more experiments took place to see if any other Egg/Plant combinations were possible. The most successful came in the early 1900s when scientists working on behalf of the Nazi party in Berlin successfully took fertilized eggs of some of the best scientific minds in history and combined them with the body of the most basic vegetable. The result was a super-intelligent vegetable . The project, codenamed "Hawking" was sent to find the original Eggplant. However, Hawking suffered with a lack of communication skills, and was unable to relay it's new found information. Fortunately, the Nazis had ways of making him talk. They added a computer to Hawking, making him the first OmniCyborg. Hawking told them that the Eggplant was indeed, still at large and, furthermore, had begun to reproduce.

Hawking was sent to find the origins of the universe and nothing was heard of the original Eggplant again until 1939. The Eggplant was aggrieved on hearing about the new Hawking Eggplant and was determined to make the Nazis pay. On September 1st 1939 the Eggplant disguised itself as the entire German army and invaded Poland, starting the deadliest conflict in human history.

It is believed that the Eggplant went into hiding again for the duration of the war. Nothing is documented on Eggplants during this time. However, after the war there were multiple sightings. Too many to all be one Eggplant. It was as Hawkin had hypothosised, these were the offspring of the original Eggplant. It transpired the Eggplant had been sleeping with women all across Germany and getting them pregnant.

For years this was excepted as the way that Eggplants were made. Some right wing loonies tried to claim they grow in the ground like normal plants, but this was disproved when the internet began to show us German women copulating and giving birth to Eggplants.

Since the invention of the Internet, Sexual intercourse with a German woman has been excepted as the regular and most common way to grow an Eggplant. The World Wide Web is littered with websites that clearly depict German women giving birth to Eggplants.

It is using educational websites such as these, that has led me to research this subject. I have also learnt that College girls like to relax by having sex with each other after a strenuous pillow fight, and that a shocking amount of housewives answer the door to plumbers, in their underwear.

What is more shocking is that the plumbers turn up within minutes of being called. I have never known a plumber take less than three days to get to me after I call. Even in an emergency. I have put this down to a issue of race. My plumber is Caucasian, where as all the plumbers depicted on the websites are African American.

As Eggplants have become more widespread throughout the world, people have taken to eating them. Eggplants are fairly easy to cook and can be boiled, scrambled, fried or poached. Poaching Eggplants is not recommended as it is considered poor form on the part of the poacher. It is far more acceptable to find your own German woman and create your own Eggplants.

Now, I know what you are thinking!

You are wondering what happens if you plant an Eggplant in the ground!

Well, I shall tell you that what happens is most peculiar. An Eggplant that is planted, fed and watered regularly, will grow into a Chicken Tree. A Chicken Tree grows to a height of about 8 feet and sprouts dead chickens from it's branches. The chickens that grow on the Chicken Tree differ from the regular chickens because they contain no meat. Chicken Tree chickens are now widely available to the food industry and are used in the making of vegetarian and vegan meals.

So there you have it, the wonderful Eggplant. Bastard, inventor, murderer, sex aid, bigamist and concocter of vegan foods.

You learn something new everyday.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

One wrong slot and you end up in Birmingham.

2011-01-17T14:30:00.000-08:00

Wrong slot. Not the battle cry of a woman receiving an unexpected anal entry, but the term used in Rallying when you go the wrong way at a junction.

There were a few wrong slots when my past navigator Ray Deacon and I, stumbled blindly into the night on the Flying 12 Rally. We had prepared ourselves well for being quite unprepared, which is not like us at all. For this little country shin dig, we used our trusty Corsa. The Corsa was treated to a new set of tyres for the event and proved to be quite decent in the fine art of dodging trees and keeping out of peoples hedgerows. Despite my best efforts, the little car that I stole off my granddad stayed on the road. A feat which some other crews did not manage in the icy conditions. We managed a humble fourth for our efforts, which roughly translated to last, apart from the few who crashed.

Autosport International grabbed the racing season by the scruff of the neck and marched it promptly in to 2011, pausing only to poke the recession in the eye with a pointy stick and send it whimpering back to Parliament to ask for a tax on having fun with motor cars.

Lotus were there to unveil their new, err, Lotus. The car is black with lots of gold bits stuck to it. A bit like Kanye West.

Caterham revealed a car that shocked the world, and by world I mean me, by looking absolutely nothing at all like a Lotus 7. Not even a little bit.

Martin Brundle announced that he is going to host the F1 with David "My chin is so big, it takes me three days to shave" Coulthard.

This has caused some amusement as I am led to understand, Martin is David "My chin is so big, it arrives at parties 20 minutes before I do" Coulthard's Manager.

This means when you see them standing next to each other, bringing you the next gripping instalment of the Formula tedium World Championship, Martin Brundle will be earning his money plus about 10 percent of what David "My chin is so big, it really deserves a blog all to itself" Coulthard is earning!

Anyway, as important as all of that is, none of it is really that important. I went there to do some Karting. I haven't been Karting in a long time and I was rustier than than the ring piece of a man with a fat arse and short arms and that, let me tell you my friends, is pretty rusty. After a short practice in which to prove how slow I could go, I decided that seat time was the key. Yes indeed, the less time I spent in the seat of the Kart, the more chance we had of winning anything.

Practice turned into qualifying whilst no one was paying attention and we were changing our drivers about. Which put us well down the order. 19th out of twenty to be precise. Which, if you can forgive the motorsport technical jargon, is shit.

Nigel Moore started us off and turned our abysmal qualifying performance into second place on the road, I then whittled this down to about 5th and as our drivers swapped and changed we kinda sat between 4th and 8th. Nigel then put in one more valiant effort to get us on the podium but sadly, it wasn't to be.

Those of you who attended Autosport International will probably know I spent the rest of the show guarding the #08 RCD-UK Late Model from you smelly common folk. And when Nick Knowles called me on stage for an interview, you all went and wiped bogies on the car, didn't you?

Well, I'm not scared of your bogies.

I eat bogies for breakfast.

And anyway, it's not my car.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

The Onion Monster, Part 2

2011-01-04T16:26:00.001-08:00

When we opened the door, it hit us.

"OWWW!" said Chris. "What did you do that for?"

"You twisted my knob!" Replied the door, "How would you like it if I twisted your knob?"

Chris didn't reply although the look in his eyes suggested that he found this idea rather erotic. The door raised an eyebrow, and then slammed shut.

"What the fuck!" exclaimed Chris. "Twist my knob again." said the door with a dirty smile.

Suddenly, the was a tap on the living room window, I used it to pour myself a glass of water. I looked up and saw Steve in his stripey pyjamas looking tired, agitated and back at me through the window.

"What are you doing out there?" He enquired.

"Getting a glass of water." I replied.

"Why don't you come inside and use the kitchen?" He ask in the infuriated tone that only Steve can perfect.

"Can't open the door." I said.

"Why?" He asked, as if the idea was absurd.

"Sexual tension." Said I, gesticulating toward the scene at the threshold.

The door was rolling its eyes at Chris who looked in no mood to roll them back. In fact, he looked like he might well stamp on them with his Doc Martin clad hoof.

"Fer fuck sake!" Cried Steve before stomping across the living room and swinging open the door. Chris looked blankly at his brother for a moment before bursting out with laughter. "What's so funny?" Snapped Steve. "You!" Chris sniggered, tears streaming down his face, "You opening the door in your pyjamas!" Chris roared with laughter. "Don't be so stupid," remarked Steve, "I don't have a door in my pyjamas!"

As Chris cross will make you jump daddy mack, Chris crossed the threshold into the house. I went to follow him and then paused for a moment. I turned to the narrator and asked if this story is actually going to have anything to do with the Onion Monster or not. The narrator looked puzzled. Then he scrolled up the computer screen to read what he had just typed. Sure enough, there was no mention of any monsters of the onion variety and, furthermore, the writing on the screen was complete drivel and made no sense at all. The narrator promised to get the story back on track and said that, it doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense because, most of his target audience are on drugs. I felt better with this new information, so I turned and followed Chris into 5 Palmers Row.

"Do you smell onion?" Steve asked. We did. We all did. And then, in a moment, the smell was gone. "We ran over an onion on the road." I said and proceeded to tell Steve about the incident that had taken place earlier.

"That's great, but why would it suddenly smell in here?"

We didn't know.

That's when it dawned on me, "It's the ghost of the onion. The Onion Monster. It has come to haunt us because we killed it for no reason." Steve and Chris looked at each other. I could see in their eyes that they knew I was right. At that moment, the Onion Monster swooped down and stole the Television controller. Nobody actually saw this happen, but when we couldn't find the Tv controls for the next 10 minutes, we knew it had to be the work of the Onion Monster.

The next few days were a living hell. Every time the front door opened a distinct onioney odour would momentarily fill the air and moments later, something would go missing. Car keys, credit cards, shoes, virginity, biscuits, the cat. The Onion Monster was stealing anything it could get its hands on, and then returning it when it was no longer needed. Soon we started trying to hide things from it, but the Onion Monster always found them.

Then, one day, the smell was particularly bad and especially onioney! On this day it stole Chris's bank card and he really really needed it. We turned the house upside down trying to find where the Onion Monster had put it. We had checked everywhere twice, when we went for yet another search under the sofa.

I lifted it and Steve went in. "What the..." his voice tailed. "You got it?" I asked as he came up from under the sofa. Steve held up a beer bottle. One of those little tiny French ones. It was a brand we had never heard of and had a use by date of 1988. "How the fuck did that get there?" "The only way a bottle that old could be under your sofa," I pointed out, "is if it was here before you moved in, and as we put your sofa in here, so we know it wasn't."

"Onion Monster?" Steve asked, but he knew the reply. It was the only way that bottle could have got there.

We put the sofa back down and there, in the middle of the cushion, bold as brass, was the bank card.

"That was not there when we moved the sofa!" Said Chris.

We all knew it. We had all checked the sofa.

We sat down for a moment to consider what had just occurred.

And we all swore we would never run over a defenceless onion again.

That was the last we saw of the Onion Monster. But since the experience, we have all learnt to treat the random onions that seem to pop up out of nowhere with a little more respect.

Take heed of this warning, my friends, If you should see a random onion across your path, pick him up and treat him well. For if you don't, you could suffer as we did that fateful summer.

I pray you never have to go through what we did.

Look after your onions.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

The Merry Christmas Blog

2010-12-19T11:16:00.000-08:00

Last minute.com is not merely a website. For many people, it is a way of life.

For example, every year I try to do as much winter Rallying as I can.

As the Stockcar season comes to an end in October, I can see the local Rally championship looming up like a great big loomy thing looming out of the dark winter nights in a menacing loomy type of way.

I have had all year to prepare a car, plus I have missed the first two events because I was testing Stockcars in Holland. Yet here we are, the night before round 3. Fitting spot lights in the snow. The wheels that were obtained to hold the Mud+Snow tyres that I was supposed to purchase in the Summer, are neatly stacked outside my dad's workshop. This is the real last minute.com.

Personally, I blame the internet. Facebook and porn are responsible for more shit not getting done than any other two things in the entire history of the universe which, if you didn't know, is a fuck of a long time!

Take Christmas for example. How many statuses have you read saying: "I really must go Christmas shopping! lol!"

Yes, you must! Unfortunately, that entails getting your fat, lazy carcass out of the chair in front of your computer, and walking further than the front door!

That's what I tell myself anyway.

And a part of me excepts that this is a good enough reason not to go.

I know that some people do their shopping on-line, but frankly, that's cheating. The Devil has a place for people who do that sort of thing. And it isn't pleasant. And it isn't Birmingham either, though you probably wouldn't notice. Parts of Hell have been compared to Birmingham and found to be nicer.

You could always simply not bother. On the face of it, this sound horrendous, but, lets just think about this for a moment;

Firstly, what IS Christmas?

Well, it is a time when all the family get together. But is that really a good thing? I mean, if you all wanted to be together, you would all BE together, wouldn't you?

Parents hate their kids being at home, eating all the food, playing loud music, slamming doors, staying up all night.

It's probably taken you 18 years to get rid of the little bastards, are you really going to tell me you want them back?

I mean, imagine how your parents would feel?

Oh wait! You don't have to! Because they're coming too! Yes, the pair of toothless old codgers have dodged their respective coffins for yet another year, just so they can come and ruin your Christmas!

There you will be, standing at the front door as they creak and groan their way out of the taxi that you paid for, and start there slow zombie-esq shuffle towards your front door.

It's like a scene from Night of the Living Dead, except, when you should be taking pot shots at them with a Luger P08, you just force a smile.

You cower as they reach you, imagining that they are shouting "Brains! BRAINS!" but they are not.

You will open your arms and with a loving smile say something like "Mum, dad, welcome!"

and they will retort with, "Could have tidied the place up a bit." as they push past and proceed to complain about the temperature of your house and the taxi ride and how long until dinner? and, oh, your father's prostate is playing up again and I hope you cook the turkey properly this year. These and many other insults will be thrown at you by the incontinent, inheritance blocking walking corpses, over the festive season.

It's already enough to make a grown man cry, but wait! Don't shut that door yet! Here come the in-laws! Waddling down the street with massive hampers full of food because "they just like to help" which, roughly translated from the in-law to English dictionary, means "Your cooking is shit and we fear we may die from it. We wish you never met our daughter and we hope your dick falls off and then climbs into your mouth and chokes you to death in your sleep, you fucking asshole."

Still you greet them warmly and they gawk at you like you have just pissed over their shoes.

Then there is aunts and uncles who don't remember anything, nieces and nephews running around screaming and breaking stuff.

The olds all sit around the Telly and The Great Escape will be on because Television companies know that, at Christmas, everyone likes to be reminded of better times.

Like the war.

All of them have seen the film and know the people in it, but, they don't mind watching it again. This is quite ironic because, they wont watch it again. And neither will you, because they are going to talk through it.

What you are treated to next is nothing short of an Alzheimers showdown as Aunt Bessie says

"OH, That's so'n'so from that thing on BBC 2!"

to which Aunt Sally replies,

"No, no. Your thinking of the other one. The one that married whats'er name."

"No, I know the one you mean, he was in that other film."

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" You don't scream at the top of your lungs.

The younger ones are now bored with wrecking your house and flicking boogies at Uncle Pete, who has polished off that nice 12 year old malt you were saving for a special occasion and is now fast asleep in your favourite chair and dribbling down his shirt.

Since no-one is watching The Great Escape, you suggest they find a dvd to watch forgetting that you used the copy of Lion King you downloaded for them last year, to record your wife doing anal insertions with a variety of vegetables.

Which brings us neatly on to dinner. There are lots of things that fall into the category of Christmas food stuffs. You have your Christmas dinner, Your Christmas pudding and perhaps some Christmas cake?

There is a reason their names all start with Christmas, and that is because you only eat them at Christmas.

Following me?

So you only eat them once a year.

And there is a reason you only eat them once a year.

Because they're fucking awful.

If any of this food was nice, you would eat it all year round! People would be jumping on the band wagon. The would be a North Pole takeaway on the corner of every street. Elves on mopeds delivering turkey dinners, two for the price of one on Tuesdays!

It doesn't happen because it's crap.

So to summarise, you are going to invite a load of people you don't like into your house, give them gifts and then sit down to a meal of stuff you don't like.

Awesome.

Oh, and if you're reading this on Fueltopia and was wondering about the Rally?

It was cancelled.

Merry fucking Christmas.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

The Onion Monster

2010-12-02T02:13:00.000-08:00

If you are a regular follower of the Pit Blog, and we appear to have a few now, you will know that some of my stories are short, some are long and some are just plain tall. But none of my stories are quite so short and long and tall as the story of the Onion Monster.

The story of the Onion Monster is, in fact, a true story. Yes, I may have changed a few names to protect the innocent and also exaggerated certain points for dramatic effect. Also, where my memory is failing me slightly, certain parts of the story might not flow too well as I cannot remember exact times and locations. But despite the fact that what you read here and what actually happened might not be related at all, it is still a true story.

It all started one sunny summer Sunday morning, the moonlight glistened off the stars in the wintry night sky and an Autumn breeze whistled through the trees that lined Old Palmers Row.It was cold that Saturday afternoon and we were all huddled around the open log fire when Chris Van Leer suggested we should have a little tipple to warm us up. "A tipple sounds like a marvellous idea!" Said Steven Van Leer, the notorious town drunk and brother to the unfortunate Chris. Chris said, "It is decided then, Kelvin and I shall ride the perilous journey to town, visit ye Old Costy Cutterer Tavern and purchase some of their finest alcoholic beverage!"

We stepped out into the clear night air. The clouds hung low and the sun shone through the April shower that dampened both our summer clothes and our spirits. Chris turned to close the heavy wooden door of his humble abode. Shutting in the warmth for Steven and his wench.

Palmers Row was an old dirt track made of gravel and asphalt. Not that you could see it with three feet of snow on the ground. Fortunately there was no snow on this bright summer evening, only the leaves that come with Autumn and the thin veil of snow on the ground that was around three feet deep. Chris looked deep into my eyes and said sincerely, "We need to be wary this time of year. For it is nights like this that the Onion Monster may strike!"

I looked back at Chris. He was a handsome fellow despite his head looking like a reject Jellybean. His huge bushy beard flowed down from his clean shaven chin, and his bald head glistened in the moonlight under his mass of hair. "I see." I said, not seeing at all, "I will be most vigilant!"

We did up the buttons on our Tee shirts and trudged through the snow to the main road beyond the Old Palmers Row.

"You brought your keys, didn't you?" Said Chris. "'Course." Said I, unlocking the car and hopping into the drivers seat. Chris jumped into the passenger seat and we were off into town. When we returned, there it was.

"What's that?" I enquired as we turned in to the road from which we had collected the vehicle. "I don't know!" Said Chris, straining to see. In front of us, in what should have been the empty spot where our car was parked, was a small white object. "Should I run it over?" I asked. Chris shrugged, "Sure, why not?"There was a splat as we hit the object but the car had no ill effects. We parked and opened the doors to be hit by the stench of onions! "I think I know what we hit!" Smirked Chris. "Why would an onion be trying to cross the road?" I wondered aloud. "To get to the other side." said Chris.

We didn't know it as we skipped happily down Palmers Row to the home we never called Space Pod Five, but we had awoken the Onion Monster.

To be continued...

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

My shampoo made me think and now I need help.

2010-11-25T14:25:00.000-08:00

I was in the shower today when my shampoo got me thinking.

It is not everyday that shampoo makes me think, but this is a special shampoo. Now, when I say special shampoo, I do not mean it contains brain enhancing nano bugs that crawl in your ears and make your brain work. Nor is it medicated for stopping them little blood sucking hair bug things that you used to get in school. My shampoo is special because it is by Frizz-Ease and is supposed to make my gorgeous curly locks look healthy and be more manageable.

I shall read you the quote on the side of the bottle.

"Frizz-Ease Anti Frizz Shampoo for heat damaged hair is especially formulated to make Kelvin's gorgeous curly locks look healthy and be more manageable."

See? Told you.

So, there it is, sitting on the bath tub, parked next to my equally important Frizz-Ease super frizz busting, arse kicking, double hard bastard, show-me-some-frizz-and-I'll-punch-it's-teeth-in Conditioner.

My shower started with the usual ritual of taking my clean clothes to the bathroom and forgetting my towel, returning to my room and going on facebook because I can't remember why I returned to my room, reaching up to turn the light on and catching a whiff of my armpit, remembering that I was having a shower, getting towel and returning to bathroom.

Once in the bathroom, I take a moment to check for caterpillars, pausing only to offer an admiring glance at the enormous turds that our cat, Megatron, has deposited in his litter tray. Seriously, that cat's bum hole must be ruined! I swear, one turd was so big I felt like planting a flag at it's summit and giving it a name.

Once I am satisfied that there are no caterpillars spying on me, I then begin the tedious task of turning on the taps. This might seem a simple task to the uninitiated, but in fact, it is a task that requires a steady hand, intense concentration and surgical precision. Despite the wide arcs of movement offered by both the hot and cold taps in our shower, there is actually only two settings:- Freezing and boiling. Trying to find the fine line between this two points is a bit like trying to iron your pubic hair, both dangerous and tricky. You have to reach through the shower to turn the taps. One moment you think you're dodging molten lava, you move one tap a millimetre and the next thing you know, you're standing in an Arctic hail storm. If you do ever find the sweet spot, don't think it will be there tomorrow. The caterpillars go into the shower over night and adjust the taps so that you can't find it again the next day.

Never trust a caterpillar, they are sneaky buggers.

Anyway, I am in the shower, rubbing my new shampoo on to my hair when I thought, "Why have I bought this shampoo?" The only answer I could think of was vanity. I want my hair to look nice for me and for other people. I don't like frizz. And for that I blame God. He must be responsible because he put that Apple on that tree. He told Eve not to eat it, knowing full well that the only way to guarantee a woman will do something is to tell her not to do it. If it wasn't for God and religion we would all be running around butt naked and I wouldn't have had to buy shampoo. But then, if I didn't buy the shampoo, the poor Australian people that made it would have no money. They wouldn't be able to buy food to put on their barbecue and they would starve and that's bad. We would then have to try and find ways to feed the Australians so we would invent Genetically Modified foods and probably make one massive burger for them to cook that would feed them for, like, ever. But that would have to come from a massive cow. And cows come from other cows so we would have to make two massive cows that could do the sexy time to make the massive cow for the burger. But then they would have to come from massive cows too, so we would have to make more massive cows. Before you know it the whole world would be over run by massive cows. We would be drowning in milk. We would have to make dams out of Wheatabix to try to soak it all up. (There is a top tip there actually. You pour milk over your Wheatabix and it is gone in seconds, so next time you spill milk somewhere, just throw a couple of Wheatabix on it, will clean it up no problem.) Of course, when the burger gets to Australia, they need to cook it. The only thing big enough for that would be a forest fire. The problem with that is all the milk putting the flames out. We would need a Wheatabix wall around the forest before we set it alight. And a bun for the burger. I then started to realise that we would need a lot of wheat. This could prove tricky to grow when everywhere is covered in milk with giant cows marching about so I started making plans on ways to grow wheat on the moon.

And that's about the point when I got out of the shower. As you can see this brainstorm has raised some important issues and has led me to an critical question, to which I am hoping you will offer your insight and help me make the right choice.

Being as it's winter, should I be having baths instead of showers?

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Kelvin's Bible. Part 1

2010-11-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

It has become apparent recently that I do not see the world in quite the same way as many of you. This has made me question some of the beliefs I have and some of the things I do. After much pondering on the subject I have concluded that the only reasonable answer, is that you are all wrong. To this end, I am going to compile a guide to life that, I hope, will help many of you on your slow and tedious journey towards the grave. It should be able to help you make moral judgements and help you to understand the physical world around us. It can also be used for spiritual guidance in your times of need. I am hoping to cover every aspect of life but if you feel there is something I am missing, please let me know, and I shall be sure to cover it in future editions. It will include many quotes from me as well as other heroes of the universe, be sure you heed our words well.

Good luck with your life!

"The Devil is in the detail!" :- Satan 6A.D

When dealing with life, small things are as important as big ones. And it is the small things that you face day to day. We could of started this blog off talking about God and the universe but there is not a lot of point. You see, God and the universe is great, but in a minute you will be making a cup of tea. God and the universe will still be there when you have finished, but the tea making is imminent. It is only a small thing, but you face it every day, so it is important to sort it out. There are many small things to sort out, save the big things for later.

TEA

Since we are on the subject of tea, lets deal with it first. The most important thing to remember here is that black cups are wrong. It has been scientifically proven by me that black cups contain a secret, previously unknown molecule, that reacts with tea to make it taste funny. Black cups should be used for show and not actually drunk out of. Not much is known about this molecule but the widely excepted theory is that it was put into the cups by aliens. No one is sure at what point in the cups life this happens but we suspect it is when the cup is being created, because no one really knows how black cups are made...

Each cup of tea requires AT LEAST one teabag. To ask a teabag to make more than one cup of tea is to put that tea bag beyond the call of duty. Every time you move a teabag to a second cup, an Angel dies. You will be punished by God at the final reckoning.

Milk goes in after tea because Angels are better than cows.

Pound Land does not sell tea bags. It sells imitation tea bags that are actually made out of ground up kittens that they stole from orphaned children last Christmas time. Fact. Only use quality tea bags from a brand you can trust.

FOOD

Everybody has problems with this subject because there are so many ideas and theory's on what is right and wrong and what is good for you and what isn't. It is easier when you break it down to dealing with food over a week, rather than your daily intake.

There are four main food groups:- Breakfast, Pizza, Chocolate and Other.

Breakfast.

Breakfast is anything you eat between four in the morning and two in the afternoon. Anything before this time is either a midnight snack, or something you bought from the Kebab shop on the way home from the club to cure your impending hangover. These are called "Meat Aspirins".

Breakfast should involve at least one animal. If breakfast is to be eaten at a breakfast vendors such as a cafe or a restaurant, and there is bacon on the menu, the bacon MUST be eaten. The pig laid down its life so that you could have a nice breakfast. We do not disrespect the pig by turning it down at the breakfast table. The chicken, he just threw in a couple of eggs, but the pig showed true commitment. We must respect that.

If a fry up is not your thing, you can still get your morning animal in with cereal. Just make sure there is a liberal sprinkling of moo juice over it. Likewise, if your having toast, doctors say there is no such thing as too much butter!

Breakfast is required everyday except Tuesday.

Pizza

Although there is no bad time for pizza, many are confused on which day of our weekly diet we should eat the roundest of our four food groups. Fortunately, Dominos has helped us out by making pizza cheaper on Tuesdays making Tuesday the obvious day to enjoy pizza. Pizzas are wholesome and nutritious and are ideal for the balanced diet as they contain many items from the fourth food group, "Other". Pizza contains many vegetables such as tomato, pepper, mushroom, peperoni and cheese. This means you can get your "5 a day!" in one simple meal!

Pizza can cover a wide variety of items from the food group "other", however, there are some rules. Pineapple is a pudding. It has no place on a pizza. A pizza is a main course and not a pudding. Frozen pizzas are ok if you take them in moderation. A frozen pizza can be used as a stand-in when there is simply no way of getting a real pizza from an approved pizza provider. Pound Land do not sell frozen pizza, the sell imitation pizza that is actually made from the tears of rape victims mixed with the blood of a homeless person. Fact.

Chocolate

Chocolate is the universal food group. It comes in many guises and, despite popular opinion that this is a type of pudding, it can be eaten at any time. Chocolate is good for you because it it dissolves into your blood stream giving you lightning reflexes and super human powers, unfortunately, these only last a short amount of time. However, because chocolate dissolves completely, there is no way it can make you fat. Chocolate comes in the form of bars, cake, biscuits and drink. Only buy chocolate from an approved brand such as Cadburys. beware of cheap imitation chocolate that is made from chopped up war veterans.

Chocolate is eaten everyday except Monday. Double bubble on Sunday though.

Other

Other is food that you eat with less regularity than the previous three food groups. There is too much stuff to deal with in one blog, so, in a future episode of the Bible, I will be offering you some cooking tips on how to make quick and easy meals using items from the food group "Other". Look out for my Sandwich Lite and Pasta Surprise recipes!

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Why I don't like the Impreza.

2010-11-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

Being a race car driver can be very difficult at times. Especially when dealing with meeting people socially. You would probably think that this wasn't the case, but you would be wrong, and I will now tell you why.

The problem with being a racing driver is that everyone with a penis between their legs, no matter how small that penis might be, is also a racing driver.

"Well," I hear you say, "that simply cannot be true because their are millions of men in the world and only a few thousand are qualified to drive race cars!"

That is correct, however, if you show me a human being with a cock and a driving licence, I will show you the greatest driver ever to get behind the wheel. And when it dawns on you that I am right and that this pretentious prick actually believes that he knows anything and everything about the sport on which he is brandishing his opinion with an accompaniment of wild hand gestures, you will turn to him and say; "So, if you so good, why aren't you doing it?" And he will tell you that, even though he earns three or four times what I do and drives a brand new SubaruEvo9GTRSTIWRXSkyline with 41" wheels with 900 bhp, he can't afford to go racing. Otherwise he would have been the best in the world.

You look at both him and me with amazement and I will just nod. There are three reasons for this nod.

(1) He is right, I cannot prove that he is not the best in the world. I can't even prove he is better than I am. Because he doesn't race.

(2) You now understand what I am talking about, why I don't talk about cars much, why most of my closest friends are female.

(3) Because that was the part of the conversation that I like. Because that part of the conversation happened to you.

You see, the fat, sawn off, egotistical fuckwit hasn't finished yet. And you don't get to join in the next bit because only "real" drivers can know what he is talking about.

So I will have to listen to how his car out-handles and out- drags everything on the road, how he had a near miss with the rozzers at 110 mph, how he got the back out at Lottbridge Drove roundabout and a million other shitty anecdotes that I am supposed to be impressed with.

If I am in one of my lesser spotted "bad" moods, they will hear something like; "Buddy, you don't race because your scared. I don't know if that's scared of being beat or scared of being hurt. And I don't fucking care. If any of my friends are hurt for something you did on the road, I will hunt you down and kill you."

However, in my more common and infinitely more popular "good" moods, I will try to humour them. I can usually do this until they flat out ask me my opinion on a car that I think is shit but they have just spent £30,000 on.

You see, I then have to explain the problems I find with the handling of a car that they don't recognise. They think it is because I don't know what I am talking about but it is, in fact, because when I am testing a cars dynamics, I am driving it at a point in the cars performance envelope that they have never reached. They probably never will. And if they did, how many different cars have they driven like that to compare it to?

The fact is that I am a racing driver. I may not act it, but I am enthusiastic about cars. People find different joys in cars whether it be racing, drifting, showing, cruising and just because there enthusiasm is different to mine doesn't make it any less worthy of my time.

To this end, I am dumbing down today's blog about the Subaru Impreza.

Once upon a time there were two farmers, Mr Subaru and Mr Mitsubishi. They were farming out in Japan when they got into an argument about who had the fastest tractor. Mr Mitsubishi said "I know how to settle this! We will enter the World Rally Championship!" Mr Subaru agreed. Mr Mitsubishi went and found the best technical minds in rallying and the best computer wizz kids in Japan together to form the team that would build his ultimate tractor, the Evo! Meanwhile Mr Subaru was working hard too! He found some five year old children with crayons and made them design the outside of what would become his ultimate tractor, the Impreza! He found an engine out of an old hovercraft that some monkeys from the local zoo fitted to his new tractor design. Mr Mitsubishi used top of the range computer software to select the best roll center location and suspension geometry for his Evo, while Mr Subaru packed up all the suspension parts into a box and threw it at his Impreza, hoping some would stick in roughly the right places.

When the day of the Rally came, Mr Mitsubishi's Evo was awesome but Mr Subaru's Impreza was somewhat lacking so he gave it to Prodrive to see if they could fix it. When Mr Prodrive finally stopped laughing and picked himself up of the floor, he turned some of Mr Subaru's tractors in to pretty decent rally cars. They were given to famous rally drivers to try to win the WRC, but the rest of the shit ones got called WRX's and put in Mr Subaru's showrooms so he could sell them to poor, unsuspecting members of the public, who thought they were buying a super car but, really they were getting a tractor with a nice badge.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

My death, Time

2010-10-17T03:02:00.001-07:00

It would appear that some of you who are still unaware of your non-existence, are worried about getting old.

This is an alien concept to me.

Surely getting old is a good thing. Especially when you consider the alternative...

Before I died, I was quite looking forward to getting old. You know, REALLY OLD!

I was looking forward to a retirement of complaining about stuff and writing letters to local councils (not necessarily ones local to me!) about how the streets are unsafe to walk at night and how it wasn't like it in my day.

I was going to write to Mars and explain that the Snickers bar I got that morning didn't have enough nuts in it and then, the next day, write and tell them that another Snickers bar purchased later had too many nuts in.

I wanted to lecture kids that were bunking off school that my headmaster used to sit on the roof of the school with a sniper rifle and shoot truant kids in the back of the head and how my parents made me walk to school in bare feet. Over broken glass. And that it was up hill both on the way there, and on the way home again.

And that one day I tripped and a piece of glass went into my knee and my dad beat me when I got home because our family was poor and we could only afford one knee between the five of us. We had to pass it around.

We got two days use each, one day for the left leg then we would swap it over to the right leg for the next day then before bed we would pass it to the next person.

It wasn't even a real knee! it was made of jam and if you were not careful, Ants would come in the night and climb up your leg and try to eat it!

ANTS EATING YOUR JAM KNEE!

My dad used to put a rag soaked in petrol around my leg and set it alight before I went to sleep to keep the ants away.

He loved me.

You kids don't know how good you've got it!

What with yer Eyepods and what's those things you play on? It used to be a box? Ex- box! That's it!

Yes getting old would be fun! After a few years of annoying the locals I intended to become extremely and offensively racist for no apparent reason!

Eventually I would get arrested and my kids would have to put me in a retirement home where I could spend my final days sitting in a wheel chair with my cock out, pissing and shitting myself.

I would stare out of the window and swear at passers-by in between furious bouts of wanking in public and wiping the spunk all over the the nurses when they try to stop me!

I had even planned to keep a stash of old spunk in a used condom, just in case they rumbled me before I had finished.

I would have arranged drug swap days with the other residents and wheel chair races around the grounds!

And getting Alzheimer's! How cool would that be? Meeting new people and experiencing new stuff everyday!

Oh yes, I was going to have a wail of a time, but sadly, it wasn't to be.

The dead only know one thing for certain, that it doesn't matter how old you are, being alive is still better than being dead.

But then, death never seems to do stuff at your convenience.

Err...

What was I talking about?

Oh yes. I have heard of people crying at their own birthdays just because they are a year older than they were last year.

Now, I know it's your party, and you will cry if you want to, but let me just remind you of the facts.

And you can take this straight to the bank.

Because I'm dead, which means I know about this shit.

Firstly, Time is an illusion. Time doesn't exist. It has no start, no end and no substance. It is a creation of the powers that be and is used as a means of control, much like, but even more stupid than, money.

This thing, this man made monster, controls everything we do. Your education, your work, your eating habits, your sleeping habits, your social life, everything is controlled by the clock.

Call me stupid, (most people do) but I eat when I am hungry, I sleep when I am tired and (within reason,) I get to places when I get there.

Because the clock is a false god.

The clock is a liar.

And under no circumstance should it make you cry.

This brings us neatly to point two, do you know what my age is?

Ha ha! You're wrong!

Lets try an easier one, do you know what your age is?

Wrong again!

I'll tell you, shall I?

Your age is...

Just a number.

And it means fuck all!

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

My death, volume 3

2010-08-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

Doom is a wonderful word. It has a certain weight to it that is difficult to come by in the English language. I loved the word doom even after I realised that my own was pending. This is not the story of how I died, but it is the beginning of the story of how I died.

On the days leading up to my death, Satan used to visit me in my sleep. Or to be more accurate, I used to visit him. Satan doesn't live in Hell. He lives in a log cabin in Alaska with his cat, Beelzebub. (Bubbles for short.) He explained to me that, although Hell is vast and spans many dimensions, none of it is particularly pleasant, which is why he doesn't live there. He explained to me lots about the world we live in. Things that normal mortals are not supposed to know. He smiled when he said he didn't mind telling me these things, on account that I wouldn't be around long enough for it to matter.

It was a nice place, simple furniture, a seemingly never ending pot of tea and an unhealthy supply of biscuits and cake. (the dark lord has a bit of a sweet tooth, you know.)

I visited several time and enjoyed our little chats, until the last day I saw him. I regret my line of questioning on that day, but that's life. Or not, as the case was.

I asked him why he lives in Alaska. He said that officially he lives in Monaco, he has a house there for tax reasons but rarely stays in it. He likes Alaska because it is cold.

I asked him if it is his fault there are so many wars and so many people die. He said no.

I asked if I would go to Hell and he just laughed.

I asked what I could do to stop myself dying. He said "You have no control."

I said "Do you?" He said "Maybe."

I said "Fuck you, you big red motherfucker, you don't control shit do you?" He said "With regard to you? No. Your path has already been set, the wheels are in motion. You will die. So put a fucking happy face on and try to make it pleasant."

I left the place slightly disgruntled. I trudged out into the snow. When I turned back, the Devil was standing in his doorway, the warm glow of the fireplace lit the interior of the log cabin, casting his shadow onto the snow. He smiled and waved. I turned back towards the darkness and continued forward until there was no light at all. When there was nothing left to see, I closed my eyes and laid down in the snow, a ritual I had performed many times before. I could feel the biting cold slipping away.

When I opened my eyes again I was in bed. The spectre of Death was standing at the foot of the bed. Not a usual turn of events but, for some reason, I wasn't surprised to see him.

"Is this it?" I asked. "Do I die in my sleep?"

"Oh God no! We have a far more spectacular annihilation lined up for you, dear boy!"

"What are you doing here, then?" I asked.

"Just visiting. I heard you were a bit upset when you left Satan's and I thought you might need cheering up before your big day. Would you like to see where you will be buried?"

I could tell I was not going to go back to sleep tonight and, although you could argue that seeing your final resting place is kind of creepy, I thought it was nice of Death to try and cheer me up.

"Ok." I said, "How do we get to the cemetery though?"

"Easy! We just jump in front of a train!" Death laughed, "Sorry, I jest. Take my hand."

"Won't that kill me?"

"Normally yes but your death is pre-arranged so it won't effect you."

I took his hand and saw my bedroom melt away to reveal a beautiful moonlit sky with a smattering of bright stars puncturing the darkness. As my eyes adjusted to the level of light, I could make out tombstones surrounded by grass that grew longer the closer it got to the large, tooth like slabs. The trademark of a lazy cemetery caretaker doing a half-arsed job of mowing the lawn. I looked around but I didn't recognise the place. "Are we still in Eastbourne?" I asked. "Yep! Dead center of town!" Death roared with laughter, as he propped himself up on the nearest stone. I couldn't read the name on the stone, but I was sure that its owner, located some six feet south of said stone, didn't mind that the spectre of death was now using their last resting place marker as a leaning post. In fact, I doubted the person cared for very much at all. Dying tends to take a lot of the fight out of people. Death noticed I hadn't laughed and turned his hood to face me, "You see what I did there? Dead center of... never mind."

Death pushed himself off of the tombstone and moved towards the church. It was small by church standards yet still very elegant in a medieval sort of way. The massive wooden door filled the front wall of the church looming above us in the most unwelcoming manner for a place that is supposed to be a haven for all. A cold wind whipped around me, I hugged myself rubbing some warmth back into my arms as I followed Death toward the steps before the enormous door.

Death sat down on the steps of the Church and pulled a sandwich out of his robe. I couldn't see his face but every time he moved the sandwich towards his hooded head, it came away smaller. It was safe to assume Death was eating the sandwich. " I usually carry a 'box' lunch!" He chuckled, "Are you hungry? I can probably 'dig' something out!"

I went and sat on the step next to Death. "Do you know what is going to happen to me?"

"Yep, your going to die!"

"Do you think people will miss me?

"Nope, ain't no fucker going to miss you, Rowdy."

"Will I die alone?"

"Technically yes."

"Technically?"

"Well, I will be there. Wouldn't miss it for the world!"

"That's very comforting, Death."

"Glad I could help!"

Death laughed and pushed me off the step and I fell down back into my bed. A blinding light shone into my eyes, making the back of my brain ache. I tried to block the light with my hand as my eyes adjusted to see it was the sun blasting through the gap in my curtains.

It was morning.

It was time for me to get up.

I didn't know it then, but I had three days left to live.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

My death, Love

2010-07-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

Do you know what love is? Or how to tell when your in love? Do you really?

I do.

I can see you all sitting there now thinking "Do I? Am I really in love? Have I ever been in love? and what the hell would a promiscuous, long haired, melodramatic, (and dead!) racing driver know about it anyway?"

I will tell you what love is as I can see the unsure amongst you are dying to know and, like Satan, I do love the look on peoples faces when they think they have become smarter!

Love, my dear readers, is giving someone other than yourself the power to destroy your life, your confidence, your self-esteem and generally make you feel worse about yourself than you could ever possibly manage on your own.

They can make you feel so bad you want to die. Indeed love is responsible for more deaths in the world than anything else! It is the most destructive force on the planet. More powerful (but closely linked) to its arch nemesis; hate and even stronger than McLelland's Seriously Strong Cheddar.

And they can do it with no effort. A word. A phone call. A look. An in-action. How about that? The act of literally doing nothing can be so painful, so hurtful it could drive someone over the edge.

So you think to yourself in quite a rational way; "Well, if they don't love me as much as I love them then I cannot go on living." It's stupid when you look on it objectively. There are of course many things to live for, I mean, who would pay your tax if you weren't here?

And you do go on living. Because suicide's a bitch.
"Stop cutting your arms!" my house mate screamed, "I've just washed the floor! Can't you kill yourself in the kitchen?"

"Sorry." I say, dabbing the blood up with my sock-coated foot as I head down the stairs.

"Oh no! Your not killing yourself in here!" greets me as I enter the kitchen, "And look at this gas bill! You and you failed suicide attempts! You make a mockery of self-annihilation! Go kill yourself in the bathroom. And do it quietly!"

The door to the bathroom is ajar, so it never occurs to me there might be someone in the shower as I enter the room with my bloody knife glistening under the fluorescent light.
My third house mate screams as I interrupt their nightly teeth brushing session. I chuckle at how much like the shower scene from Halloween this must look moments before screaming like a girl as my house mate stabs me in the eye with their toothbrush.

With my good eye I can see the remains of the other, still attached to the toothbrush as it is withdrawn from my skull. Blood is dripping off it and the nerve is still attaching it to my vacated eye socket. I can feel the blood running down my face, in to my mouth and I am thinking, "This must be the worse case of suicide ever. I can't even kill myself right."

My house mate screams "You bastard! You have got eyeball all over my toothbrush!"
"S-o-r" I cough in bloody spurts, "r-e-y"
"Don't speak!" My house mate shouts, "Your coughing blood all over the bathroom!"

I turn to leave but my absent eyeball, now shriveled and leaking its juices onto the blood stained floor, is still stuck to my house mates toothbrush. The nerve stretches, breaks and whips around hitting my poor housemate in the faces with a blood soaked slap.

"ARGHHH!" They scream in disgust and ram the tooth brush through my ribcage and into the broken heart that got me into this predicament in the first place. I look down with my one good eye and watch the blood spurt around the toothbrush in time with the beating of my heart. The spurts get less as the beating slows.

"yay," I think to myself, "I'm dying."

The bathroom goes black as the pain from my injures fades. But I carry the love that caused them to Hell with me.

That's not how I died by the way, I was just making a point. And my house mates in this world are the best and they would never try to kill me. Not with a toothbrush anyway.

THE MORAL!

Remember kids, love is dangerous. It could easily be you bleeding to death in your bathroom with only one eye and a toothbrush poking out of your chest.

Stick with drugs.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

My death, volume 2

2010-06-10T02:27:00.000-07:00

It is a strongly pushed opinion that your life flashes in front of your eyes before you die. I don't believe this to be true. In actual fact, I know it is not true. I have evidence in that, I am dead and it never happened to me.

There was, however, a time when I thought I was going to die and didn't! That certainly put a lot of things into perspective. Nothing makes you appreciate life more than the fear of imminent death.

Although I can now inform you that being dead is not really as bad as you may have first anticipated.

I had just turned 16 and my birthday present was to spend a week at the Jim Russell Racing Driver School at Donington Park.
I had been Karting for a couple of years but my father was keen to move me into cars because the Super One Series (the U.Ks national Kart championship) was so damn expensive.
I too, was keen to move to cars because to me, Karting was only ever a means to get into racing. A lot of drivers make a whole career out of racing Karts and good luck to them, but I never really saw the appeal of it as a career.
Don't get me wrong, I loved racing Karts and still do on occasion. But, to me at least, it still feels like you are driving it because you want to be driving a real single seater. It is the same problem as I had with the Baby Grand.
A Baby Grand is an excellent stand-alone race car, but to me it is just a poor substitute for a V8 Late Model. Now I have probably offended loads of people but I am sorry, that's how I feel. And anyway, as I have explained before, you don't exist!

Race school was great! It was a lot better than normal school. They put us straight into the race cars to get us used to driving them. This was fairly easy for me as the only other things I had driven was a Cortina around my dad's garage, a Sierra Cosworth at Goodwood and my Kart.
The cars were Vauxhall Juniors. Van Diemen chassis with Nova engines in and a Hewland gearbox.
The first thing you notice when you get in one is that you cannot see directly in front of you. This is common in all the single seaters I have driven since. You kind of drive like a dog with its head out of the window. You can see enough to drive but if you ever wonder how Formula One drivers manage to run into the back of each other so easily, you really need to sit your ass in one of these cars.
The clutch was so stiff and had such little travel that you were never really sure if you had pushed it down or not. The gear shift was an 'H' pattern on the right of the car, you had to pull it towards you against the reverse spring to make sure it was in neutral before you started it up. It is a habit I still do today.

None of this is really important. Nor will any of this tell you how I died. In fact, nothing in this entire blog post will tell you how I died so all you morbid fuckers can turn off and tune in next time, if that is all you came to see. I am, after all, the kind of human wreckage that you love!

At the end of race school was a Vauxhall Junior race. Super Bikes were on that weekend so we had a surprisingly good crowd for a club meet, although we were basically cleaning the track for them to qualify on.

I got the pole for the first race by about 4 seconds. I led forever and then the piece of shit car broke down.

Again, that is not really important, I just slipped it in the because I like to stroke my own ego.

The JRRDS allowed me a second race by way of apology and it is here where the tale really begins...

I wasn't dead.

Or at least, I am pretty sure I wasn't. My memory of being alive is hazy at best. I was starting at the back of the grid and was in no mood to fuck about. So, when the lights went green (Yes! back in my day, lights went green instead of just out!) I started passing cars wholesale.

About mid race, I decided to do Craners flat out. If you don't know the corner, look it up on a map of Donington Park. The car, who to be fair, had pointed out on the lap previous that it might not be interested in this idea, wasn't interested in this idea, and threw me off the track.
The car spun onto the grass. I dipped the clutch and hit the brake.
I had not learnt that I must come out of the brake to stop the car spinning, so spinning I was towards the Old Hairpin. And in between myself and the Old Hairpin was the 100 yard board.

Yard boards were a new thing if I recall correctly.
They were white, square and were numbered in order of there appearance before a given corner, 150 (yards), 100 and 50.
More important than this though, they looked like concrete.
Having never seen one close up before, I had no reason to believe they were not concrete.
My weak, teenage mind also knew that a 4x4 square of concrete would tear myself and the Van Diemen to which I was strapped, clean in half.

Faced with that impending doom (god i love that word!), my mind wandered to all the things I had never done. All the people I would miss when I could never see them again. All the things that I am sorry for and the people I wanted to say sorry to before I died. I saw the life I should have lived flash before my eyes, not the one I had lived.
The 100 yard board loomed up on me like a square, white reaper of death and then exploded all over the car, revealing its true form.

Polystyrene.

As the car stopped, all the thoughts that had been buzzing through my head just seconds before stopped and my body checked the engine was still running and then drove back to the pits. The need to go home and hug everyone I had ever met didn't hit again until a couple of hours later.

Before I died properly, I tried to make sure I was the best person I could be. Unfortunately, I have a few character flaws that means that I didn't always come across as I meant. And a few others that just make me an arsehole.
I am convinced somebody else is responsible for these flaws, I just haven't worked out who yet.

Anyway, the moral of this part of the story is, life has a habit of being shorter than you think, so love each other.

Start now.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

My death, volume 1

2010-06-06T00:27:00.000-07:00

I can remember sitting in Nottingham Rock City thinking "this isn't real." I may even have said it out loud. No-one would have heard though, the D.J was playing Legs Up by Smashed Gladys, a band who, up to that point, I believed I was their only fan. There were three rooms in NRC all playing different types of rock and metal, each one was playing a different part of the sound track to my life and it felt like being my own film and that felt... well... like being dead.

It is the only part of my memory of that event that is crystal clear in my mind. I remember that Mike Johnstone drove us there. Or maybe it was me. I remember climbing out of the window on the M25 to clean the windscreen with Dr Pepper. Or maybe that was him. I remember NRC having it's own Burger bar and Taxi rank. I remember losing a pair of racing gloves although I can't remember how. I remember it was cold outside. I can't remember who went with us, where we stayed or who, if anyone, I slept with whilst being there. All I really remember is feeling dead and that you, me, Mike, Rock City... none of this really exists.

Apart from the occasional thinking back to try and remember when I died, I have taken being dead in my stride! I haven't tried to dwell on it or learn more about it like some long haired Donnie Darko. I have just accepted the fact that I am dead the same as I am perfectly certain that the house I am writing this from has a ghost that walks, nay, stomps, up and down the stairs when no-one is here and controls the caterpillars in the bathroom which it makes dress up as slugs to spy on people. I am certain that some onions have special powers and should be treated with respect and that, if you destroy an onion for no good reason, an onion monster comes along to steal your shit and royally fuck up your day. These things happen, or at least, they happen to me, so I believe them. And if you don't believe them it doesn't matter, because I am dead and you are not really here.

When you see me do something I shouldn't have done and you tackle me about it and I say "I really don't care!" you now know why! Being dead has its advantages in that, you cannot die twice (I don't think) and the result of any actions you make doesn't really matter. The same goes for you, humble reader and figment of my rotting corpse brain, you should be doing things you enjoy and not things that are good/legal/right/morally justified. Neighbours complaining about the noise? Rape and murder his dog, chop it up and then post the bloody cum soaked pieces back through his letter box, that will show him. Don't worry about the dog, it doesn't exist. And don't worry about the jail time, you don't exist either.

I expect you are now wondering how I died. I would tell you but really it is a story that needs a blog post all to itself. So I shall save that little nugget of information until next time.

Maybe.

Anyways, being dead is really not as bad as everyone makes out. It can be quite infuriating at times because a lot of what you do never comes out as you plan it. That might be because I am in hell though. I mean, I don't know that I am in hell. I am not really religious enough to make a judgement on where I am in that respect, or to even properly believe in the whole heaven/ hell idea.

In fact, now that you have made me ponder that, (bastards) if there is such places then this is probably neither. More like a sort of departures lounge or lobby. Yeah, maybe I am just kinda waiting around here to see where I go. Or, worse than that, what if this really is it? What if there is nothing beyond this? I am just destined to walk the world forever talking to imaginary people all blissfully unaware that the person they are talking to is dead and that they themselves are simply figments of my unconsciousness.

That is a bit unnerving.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Little green goblins! No, I mean Imps...

2010-05-03T02:06:00.000-07:00

"You gonna come take my Imp up the road?"

"Yeah s'pose."

"Come on then."

I was melting lead at the time. A pain staking, laborious task that is somehow addictive. The stockcar needed about 200Lbs of ballast in it and I wanted to fit it in the Chassis rails and this meant taking the large chunks of lead I had and melting them in a saucepan and then pouring them into a mould that Tom had made me.

Now none of you will now who Tom is but he now races in the 750 Motor Club Stock Hatch Championship so hopefully you soon will.

Tom Simpson, this is the Pitblog readers, Pitblog readers, this is Tom Simpson.

Anyway Chris was hopping from one foot to the other as if someone had covered the yard in hot coals as he waited to go down the road in his Imp so I quickly finished up and off we went.

Driving old cars is a good thing. If you haven't done it before, go find yourself an old car and take it for a spin. It will really make you appreciate how good modern cars are! We got to the end of the road facing the dual carriageway.

"Whoa! Where you going?"

"err, down the road?"

"But that's illegal, this isn't taxed or MoTed!"

well, I thought to myself, surely we broke that law as soon as we drove it out the yard...

"Do you wanna go down the road or not?"

"Yeah!"

So we nailed it and hoped for the best.

An Imp, for those of you who don't know, (and I must confess, I know very little so some of the information here could be wrong. Please don't sue me, I'm funny.)

Is made by Hillman, who I think moved on to making mayonnaise, which is a shame because this is actually quite a good little car!

The engine is all aluminium and picks up well despite having to draw its air and fuel through a carb that would be better suited to a chainsaw. Barreling into a round about showed that the Imp is not your ideal Drifter. The body-roll suggested that the cars rear roll center is probably high enough to talk to God and if you went fast enough, you could probably get it to turn all the way over!

Still, it's way better than a Mini.

This week I was told that "I used to find the steering feels a bit vague on those Imps, did you find that?" Yes I certainly did, but then I suspect I could road test a hundred cars from the 60's and find they have vague steering, but still thanks for your input yer lemon! I didn't say.

Then the head gasket went because, apparently, the thermostat was stuck shut.

This, it turns out, is a good thing though, because Pa and Chris can now get on with the all important task of making it go faster!

The European Late Model Series Opener was a great weekend! I had loads of grief getting the fuel system to work. The fuel pump broke, then we couldn't get fuel pressure up with the new pump, but that turned out to be the gauge and then we had fuel starvation because some total tit had fitted the fuel cell in the wrong way round! Luckily I had Chris Cook and Kim Carrington with me and they helped me fix it and then I won with it the next day.

In our hire car was Roger Green from Evo Magazine. He has done a lovely piece which is in this months Evo (issue 144 I believe) so go grab a copy and see the #13 with all its front smashed in!

I had seen Tony Roots in the #77 cut Rogers nose off several times throughout the weekend. (the nose of his car, not his actually nose!) so I told Roger that, next time he does it, he should stay on the throttle and spin Tony around! He did! And the ensuing pile up was quite spectacular! Still, grab yourself a copy of Evo and see for yourself.

I'm cold and Kim is moaning because I'm supposed to be going out. Will speak to you soon!

Love you all!

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

The Monster of Goo Goo Land

2010-03-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

It all started in the shipping lanes of the Maltese, which, interestingly, is where Malteasers and dogs come from. The huge, monstrous monster came monstering up the snowy hills of Goo Goo land swinging a bike chain attached to a 1981 Harley Davidson sing songs about anal gape and not being able to sign in to Blogger. "Rarrrr" he said, then repeated it over and over again until his liver exploded all over the little people of Goo Goo land drowning them in liver juice until their bloated dead corpses floated out to the wide open mouth of the Bunion Ocean.

I ain't seen Fozzy since racing in Baby Grand's which feels like a world away now. So, Mel and arrived at King's Lynn to see his Drift school and get a bit of a taster of what its like. What it is like is fun. We were treated to some lovely vehicles some of which were still wearing last seasons battle scars and some which were immaculate. Fozzy is an exceptional ambassador for anything he gets involved with and his Drift School and team is no exception. He took us out in his BMW to show us how it was done. Fozzy's skill behind the wheel is exceptional, and after hammering the car sideways around the King's Lynn in field, I was suitably awe struck. "You can do that can't you?" He goes, "To be honest, no I don't think I can!" I respond. " Yeah sure, it's easy!" He says. So I told him to book me in to drive one of the teams cars at the next Drift meeting. I shall see for myself how easy it is... I will of course report my experience here for you to observe in your spare time.

But not the day after the event because that is the day when my rally navigator of old, Ray Deacon and I will finally partake in some competition with the Corsa! The pair of us went out to Marshall on the last event and now he has got the bug back and the only way to feed the bug is to race. Good. It's about bloody time.

The paint has been ordered for the #13 Ready 2 Race Pontiac and that should be going together shortly. Can't wait to get the race season up and running again. Press releases should go out this week showing all what I am up to this year, sorry it's been late but keep an eye on your favorite publications and the news will be along shortly.

As the monsters liver continued to empty it's contents the monster screamed "Oh crap! My liver!" and then died a horrible liver emptying related death.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

The Smiths, Autosport and Elephants wearing trousers

2010-01-31T10:05:00.000-08:00

I have been listening to The Smiths a lot recently. This is due to the eject button not working particularly well on the C.D player in the Corsa. The Smiths album in question is part of a two-disc box set which resides in the passenger seat of the car. When I jump in the car and drive off, the C.D player starts running through the selection of my favourite Smiths songs, I then have to drive down the road, hammering on the eject button to try to get the C.D out. When the C.D player eventually gives up its grasp on the disc, I hold it aloft with a victorious yell. Like John Conner, I am once again victorious over the machines. It is about this time that I realise that all my C.Ds are strewn about the car in unreachable places, and that the only other disc I have to replace the one in my hand is the second Smiths album from the box set. So, I end up listening to more Smiths. This exchange has been going on for about a month now. I really should do something about it.

The Autosport show began as it all ways seems to, on Tuesday with an emergency panic to get our stuff together. I won’t bore you with the details. Details like being booked into the only Travelodge in the world without a car park and at the arse end of Birmingham’s stupid one-way system. Really, I have found a place with a worse one-way system than Brighton! The fun starts with a box junction that you need to turn right at, yet, for no clear reason that I can see, you're not allowed to turn right. Or left. Which kind of makes it not a junction at all. So, you have to take the next left and drive all the way around the block so that you can approach the Junction from the left to go right. Still with me? At this point, you will notice that still, for no particular reason, you still can’t turn left or right, just to make leaving more awkward when you do come to leave. So, you drive across the junction and, if you are looking carefully, you will spot the hotel down a road to your left. A road you can’t drive down unless you approach it from the other direction. So you must find your way back into the one-way system to get to the hotel where you can’t leave the car you have arrived in anyway.

Thanks to Jean, Keith and Paul for displaying their cars and to all of you that came to find us and listen to us dribbling on about the European Late Model Series with Dave Richardson on the live Stockcar stage. We (well, I) had a great time! Thanks should also go to Sam, Mel and the guys at Aurora. And also Hope who entertained us on Saturday!

In other news, the European Late Model Series is now on Twitter, the link is http://twitter.com/EuroLateModels

You can now buy E.L.M.S calendars of all your favourite Late Model drivers or, more importantly, me. So buy one.

You can also buy the European Late Model Series box set DVDs. You can get a sneak preview here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6PVhOEsUsw

It is £25 and was available on Ebay yesterday, but for some reason, today it isn’t. Hopefully it will be by the time I do the press release though, so keep an eye on the stockcar press for that.

If you came all this way looking for an Elephant wearing trousers, sorry. I just put that in to make you read this.

Bye.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Halloween, Racing and cleaning shoes.

2009-11-16T06:40:00.000-08:00

Here is a plan, as I have not been on here for like, two and a half Yonks, what say we divide this in to bite size chunks? Cool huh? Ok, what shall we talk about first…

Halloween.

I was raring to go on the Brighton Zombie March but unfortunately, about a week before, I got ill with this like cold thing. It sucks and I still got the cough now. Might add it to the list of things to ask the Doctor about when I go for my medical. Anyways, despite this, I still went. Now, it is a well known fact that I am not fond of Brighton. I don’t like the parking restrictions, the fact that every time I want to go there it is cold and that where ever you walk to seems to be up hill. In both directions. Anyway, I went and stayed my friends who I love and we got more drunk than we meant to which made us late getting ready which made us late for the march but luckily, we arrived just as it was setting off. It was huge, with zombies of every shape and size terrorizing busses full of old folk, pedestrians and cats and dogs! Some were slowed, not just by crippling leg deformities (which all zombies seem to have) but also by the need to stop at every Flat entry intercom, press the buzzer and go “MMMMRRRRRAAAAAGHHHH!!” at whoever answered. It was awesome! And mostly down hill! But that did come back to bite us on the arse when we went to leave. The walk went from the station to the broken Pier. I don’t know why that Pier is still there, it is about as much use as a one legged man in an arse kicking contest and it’s a bloody eyesore.

So after we walked up some hills and agreed we should probably have got a taxi, it was time to get ready for the fancy dress party. Conveniently, I elected to go as a zombie. This meant I had time to get a quick nap in before the do. I dreamt of Manga porn and Butterflies with big eyes on their wings and a Dolphin with pointy teeth riding a bicycle.

The party was great. It had girls in it with enormous breasts and a guy dressed as, what I thought was a tobacco tin but later found out was a robot, and another guy dressed as a baby. Unfortunately, I was too ill to enjoy it properly but still had a good time thanks to the awesome amount of effort Michelle put in to organising it and making the decorations. She is amazing!

The next day we wandered out for a massive breakfast followed by a trip to the finish line of the London to Brighton car Rally. Now, you know I will drive any old shit that gets put in front of me, but it takes a special kind of head case to drive a million pounds worth of horseless carriage from London to the coast in the freezing cold pissing rain at 5 miles per hour. A journey these cars were never designed to make and to prove it, they often don’t. Never the less, the was some beautiful equipment out there, its always interesting to see how cars have developed from those early days and how a lot of vehicle technology we think is new actually existed in some shape or form in the 1800s. Afterwards we went to play arcade games and those infuriating things were you put a 2p piece in and it falls down and is supposed to push more 2ps at you but never does. Naturally we played NASCAR and, of course, I won.

After walking up more hills we got a Milkshake and then I played Outrun 2 for hours. First time I played it and I loved it having been a big fan of the first one when I was little.

That was my Halloween.

European Late Model Series

Ummm, I shouldn’t really have to say too much here because you should all have been watching it on telly. I will say, however that if you wish to purchase any episodes on DVD give me a shout (or Motors TV or the production company, their links can be found at http://www.latemodel.eu/ ) and I will try to organise something.

Well, since my memory is sieve-like in its ability to retain information lets do the last round. Sam and the Racecar Engineering (See the webby at www.racecar-engineering.com) crew asked if I would mind modelling some race overalls for them. Being a total tart and media whore I, of course, jumped at the chance. You can see the results in December’s issue of Racecar Engineering magazine.

On race day I threw a load of changes into the car which it did not respond to at all. It all went wrong in the race when the rain came. I knew the two cars in front were going to lose it and when they did I was going to go through. What I didn’t count on was one of them coming down the track to pick me up to join his accident. Such is life.

So now the car is in the UK and I am pulling in lots of favours to get it fast for next season. You will see it first at the Autosport show in January, if all goes well, and its first race will be Easter Weekend at Warneton.

Rally

The intention to give the Corsa a good caning around the lanes this winter has ran into a few setbacks… one, the need to get the Latemodel ready for Autosport International. Two, the lack of a co-driver. Three, the fact that the Corsa appears to be disintegrating around my ears! So far it has picked up a starting and running fault on wet days, the fuel gauge will suddenly start reading full for no reason, the drivers window wont go up and down, whilst marshalling on a regularity on Saturday the exhaust broke, then the MIL light started coming on and yesterday the speedometer started working intermittently.

This may not be the best time for you to drive this car, Cole…

Muck-Off!

The other day http://www.ready2race.co.uk/ sent me out the door with a can of Muck-Off to try. Muck-Off is for cleaning fabric race stuffs like, your boots for example, or the insides of your crash helmet. I only have two types of shoes, my New Rock boots and my race boots. Currently, thanks to Ready2Race, all my race boots are Speedwell ones and, as luck would have it, I had stupidly worn a pair to a Production Car Trial that I was marshalling on for the Eastbourne and Ram Motor Club. After a morning of being stamped around a muddy field full of puddles and cow shit and Peugeots getting stuck in ditches, my Speedwells were simply crying out for a clean and this seemed like an ideal time to try the Muck-Off.

To save making a mess on a nice clean carpet, I went to a friend’s house who watches X-Factor. People that watch X-Factor don’t have time for menial task like cleaning because, if they leave the television alone for five minutes, any one of the umpteen talentless morons on the show might actually hit the note they were supposed to. So rare is this occurrence that they don’t ever leave the living room. Even to pee. Anyway, it says on the can you got to brush the excess dirt off first. No problem! Except it was because some of the mud wasn’t dry and I was impatient, still, I did the best I could.

It then said spray on to area and wait some minutes then brush that off too.

So I did. As you can see I used it sparingly. Did it make a difference? Well, the biggest thing I noticed is that they didn’t smell anymore. They definitely stunk when I started but, by the end, they didn’t smell at all. And I don’t mean that, when cleaned, they smelt of something nice like lemons or flowers or your fingers after a night in a 6th form girl’s dormitory, the shoes actually smelt of nothing. Totally odourless. If nothing had a smell, this was it. As for external appearance, to be honest I couldn’t see much difference but it might be more prominent on a newer pair of shoes. Anyway, I will post some pictures so you can see for yourself.

Give it a try, especially if you have a smelly helmet, it might just be what you need, Contact Ready2Race at the weblink above to buy a can.

When I say smelly helmet I mean your crash helmet. I don’t recommend you spray it on your bodily appendages.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Ippy, Hedney and the webby

2009-09-24T00:59:00.000-07:00

Hi,
Long time no see.

Hope your enjoying the European Late Model Series TV show as much as we are enjoying making it! We messed up with the website which is why it has not been around much but its better now. And i kinda figured there was no point blogging without the webby up and running.

So, here we are!

Biggest things that have happened are racing at Ipswich and Hednesford. This is a major breakthrough for the Euro Late Models because it means we can run on short ovals in England, so expect to see more of us over here next season.

Meantime the additional ASCARS have not been as forthcoming as i might have hoped. A credit should be shown to those who have made the effort, but on the whole the response has been poor. Fortunately, the CAMSO drivers have enough cars on their own but lets hope some more ASCAR drivers haul their ass to a race track next year.

Close season is upon us, couple of things in the pipeline, but more on those in another blog, don't wanna give it all away now do I?

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Homer, nose picking and RS Turbos

2009-05-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

It is very difficult, after a wrecking session like I have had at the beginning of the season, to convince your self to fight in traffic.

When I say “fight in traffic” I am, of course, referring to the race track rather than you jumping out of your car at the lights and beating on the cyclist who has just jumped in front of you. Seriously, WTF is that about? Do they really think they can pull away from standstill faster than a car? I think there should be a clause in the Highway Code saying that when a cyclist occupies that little section after the junction strip at traffic lights, and they cannot pull away as fast as you, you should be able to mow them down.

Anyway, I really want to pick my nose but the beautiful Amanda, or Shag Nasty as I like to call her, has ended my nasal excavating for today by painting my nails. Best you don’t ask.

What was I talking about?

Oh yes, crashing. Um, well this weekend we did brung the #13 out of retirement and, to be honest, I did feel like it changed my mental out look a bit. It still isn’t right, when you see the video you will clearly see me back off to let Jean pick a line through some back markers. But its better, and now I have no damage to fix, I can make the thing go faster.

So the races, fell down on the re-starts a bit. That nasty 12 place business was down to Ricky Bobby. I thought he would go and he bloody didn’t. He will just get pushed out of the way next time. The feature really showed some pace, I was able to lead and then back off to save some brakes, which was quite handy, I just didn’t save as much brakes as Wim which allowed him to pip me at the finish.

As well as the number modifications we also carried the addition of Homer Simpson to the passenger side of the car. He replaces the now defunct Sponge Bob Square Pants who has resided there since our first season. Homer was bought to me courtesy of my lovely Cait who lied through her teeth for weeks, saying that she couldn’t come to the race, and then turned up Friday. I love having her around at race meetings; she distracts me from all the hustle of the paddock and just makes the whole thing so much nicer!

Saturday will be the first showing of round 3. It is on Motors TV (channel 413) at 1400 hours and I won’t see it because I will be with the Roots Junior team at Arena Essex.

In the shop this week, I am sad to say that Luigi, our resident Fiat 500, has gone. I sneaked a road test out of it before it went and have to say, although it is immense fun, you wouldn’t want one as a daily driver. It also gives you a new kind of respect for the people that raced them. Anyone that can get out of a car that slow and call it a race car needs respect! Or a slap. Also on form was an RS Turbo. It is ages since I have driven one of these and they are still good cars. The old XR3 was never really fast enough (nothing is!) and the RS just give the chassis the livener it needs.

Anyways, Lydden next. Not sure how we are getting there much less how we turn the car around for Warneton the next day. But, I’m sure we will.

Over and out.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

You think your going to hide from your bad luck in someone else’s car? Well… that sounds just about dumb enough to be a race driver.

2009-05-05T04:02:00.000-07:00

I was sat in the back of the truck on the way home. We were in the Channel Tunnel and as soon as the train moved I was asleep.

The channel tunnel is an interesting business model isn’t it? 90% of the trains leaving the station or empty yet can you negotiate on a ticket? No. Let’s think about this for a moment, it was bank holiday weekend and I know the boats would have been full because they always are. Anyway, the little old CT has been losing money hand over fist since I was at school and no one has thought to say, “look, lets offer cheap last minute deals on the trains to fill the buggers up, we gotta pay for the train whether it’s full or not and getting a little money in is better than nothing.” Far too sensible.

Anyways I woke up as the train pulled in at its first stop. England Station. Apparently we all fell asleep as soon as the train moved. It was a reminder to us all how exhausting racing and its travel is. We were all, however, surprisingly chipper! And it occurred to me that there are a million and one miserable arseholes in this country, and that they are all miserable because they don’t go racing. I was astounded that fixing all the worlds problems should come so easy to me! Me! Of all the people god could have picked he chose me! A simple creature with memory of a goldfish and the morals of an ally cat. Could it be that god created me as a representation of himself? Could it be that there are so many problems in the world because god only ever thinks about pussy, Chevy and whiskey? Anyway the point is that you live a sad and worthless existence and the only thing that really makes any sense is risk death every weekend for some headlines and a plastic pot. Anyone wishing to attend the racing school can apply elsewhere on the website.

Before I went racing this weekend, I was, as usual down the Pa Hassell workshop where I was lucky enough to get a V8 Trike to play with. The thing was huge, it had a Rover *spits on the floor* V8 running through an Auto box to a Jaguar IRS rear end. Sadly it was very sick so I couldn’t open it up properly, but hopefully it will be back for fixing and when it’s done we shall see what its like.

Back at Warneton the car handled like a dog all weekend with copious amounts of push through the centre that transformed itself into a lurid over steer slide with just a millimetre of throttle movement. Fortunately though, I’m bloody good and it didn’t take me long to get the lead. Unfortunately though, Wim spun on some oil and we had a yellow. On the restart Vandermeesch got along side me and I knew I simply didn’t have the grip to hold a guy that good off. Off turn four on the last lap, I held on to the throttle as long as I dared and we crossed the line together with him just in front. It will make good telly! The T.V Schedule for this year is on the Late Model website. http://www.latemodel.eu/ by the way. The second race will also make good telly! I was on the outside of Ricky not wanting to push my position in case they all wrecked in front of me. This is bad driving. It’s a habit I have picked up because of all the damage and it is totally messing up my racing. And it didn’t work. Dave went high in the #5 and came back down the track nose first into the passenger door of the #88. The car is very sick. I don’t believe there was anyway I could have avoided what happened. Nor do I blame Dave for the crash; there was nothing he could have done either. So I got to watch the final from the pit-lane, which was nice. And I also had more time to spend with Caitlin, which was even better!

It was about 2 in the morning according to Tony when he had a moment with god much like I had on the train on the way home. He didn’t tell me at 2 in the morning which was good of him but it had kept him up all night so much that he needed to drive down the paddock to tell me about it at around 10 on Monday. He knows EXACTLY what the problem is with the car. It’s the number! He did explain how this works but, as I said, I am a simple man and his Derren Brown-esk speech about luck and judgement was totally lost on me. But I will try anything at the moment. I don’t think there is a car in the paddock I haven’t hit this year. So, next race, we are going old school. Keith Wally from the Legends Championship will drive the new #88 and the Kelvinator will be back in the #13. And if you know anything about me racing Cosworths, you know it’s the number I should be driving anyway.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Bunnys and Eggs

2009-04-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

Nobody has ever really been more critical of my driving than me. A point made again as the Easter weekend rolled its merry way through my life, tearing the crap out of my race car heat by blessed heat. Many a well wisher came over to survey the damage, offering such condolences as “It wasn’t you fault” or “You was just in the wrong place at the wrong time” The latter is in its self, an exercise in poor race craft. The crashes I was involved with this weekend all began before I arrived at the scene, yet, I still managed to get involved. As the weekend wore on, paranoia began to settle in. I caught myself Progressive Braking and then fighting a mid-corner push that I had created by braking too early and too much. Fortunately I was over it by the final on day two, unfortunately, that is like starting your championship bid 5 races down. All that aside, I’m still quite happy about the direction we is heading. Got some tricks up my sleeve still. Maybe not at the next race, maybe we will wait a bit for that. The ASCARS numbered three when they came to visit. They have huge potential but really need to think about set-ups. The drivers were given a lot of leeway regarding the white line rule so I expect to see some black crosses being handed out in May. Hopefully Mr White will be at the next event. He will be the bar as ASCARS go I think. We shall see. Meanwhile you can catch the action from round one on Motors TV some point in the near future. Channel 413 on you Sky box. Hope you all had a lovely Easter
!
Chat soon!

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

2009-03-20T06:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry the blog has been quiet but it is all to do with the new series, see? We have managed to pull together some of the cars from the ASCAR series to join ours. The rules will need a bit of fine tuning but the upshot is more UK racing and more cars.

The new championship will be called European Late Model Series, you can find the website here www.latemodel.eu . The #88 won’t be ready for the first test session but we hope to make the first race in April.

The new races will include a night race at Ipswich. There will also be coverage on Motors TV.

I hate the waiting bit. We have some Rookie training and a press day coming up next week. But it would be really nice to just get on and race. Anyway, check out the website and I will bring you some more news when I have some.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Vickers, Junior and the Daytona 500

2009-02-17T12:07:00.000-08:00

I would have gone for the gap, lets clear that up from the start. At that point Dale Earnhardt Junior was doing what everyone else was thinking. Vickers put the block on and again, a lap down and fighting for the “lucky dog” position, I probably would of done the same. So, racing incident? No, I don’t think so. Vickers was at the yellow line before Junior got on his quarter panel. If Junior had checked up he wouldn’t have caused an accident because he was already half on the Apron the first time he hit the bumper of Vickers. Even so, I would not have expected him to slow down but at least hit Vickers square so the guy has a fighting chance of keeping it on the island. I think Dale put him in deliberate and that was one of an absolute catalogue of driving errors that Junior made on Sunday which now seem to be the norm in his driving rather than the exception. When you’re the highest earning driver in our beloved sport and driving with the best team in the show, missing your pit stall once is unacceptable. To get it wrong twice is just too poor for words. Don’t get me wrong, I have seen little E do some amazing things with a race car but Sunday was just unbelievable. The guy really needs to have a think about his racing.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Dead wife and lobster

2009-02-01T15:01:00.000-08:00

This week I had the blog all worked out. Tomorrow I will have the blog all worked out again but tonight as I sit in front of the P.C I have nadda. Nothing. I have, in fact, been skirting the issue of writing the blog all evening but I know if I don’t do it now, it won’t get done. So, if this comes across as a bit of a ramble, well, it is.

This week some things happened.

I learned that you cannot make someone love you. The best you can do is stalk them and hope they give in.

I've learned that know matter how much I care, some people are just arseholes.

I've learned that it takes years to build up trust, and it only takes suspicion, not proof to destroy it.

I've learned that you should not compare yourself with others, they are usually more screwed up than you think.

It’s funny how sometimes you get these emails and just think “wow! That’s so me right now!”

Got Short Circuit yesterday and was very happy to see one of the photos attached to the season review had me leading! Must be a rare photo that! The Saxo came back from our bodywork specialist, Paul, looking perfect as usual. Dad and I checked our schedules and it looks like I will be Saxoing at Cadwell Park as it’s the first convenient round. I didn’t want to do Snetterton and no, it isn’t because of the accident, I just don’t like the place. It’s not that exciting in a fast car and as I recall it was the most boring track we went to in the Fiesta. We have in mind a test session to asses the new tyres that will be in Stockhatch this year. The test will be at Snett as it has the best balance of corners, I will probably have a blast around it then. Next week we start the assembly of the Saxo which shouldn’t take too long. Pending snow. It does look like it will be cold.

One of our racing partners, T shirt Hell, is shutting up shop. It’s very sad but it was the bosses decision and nothing to do with running out of money. This will be your last chance to get your hands on some offensive merchandise so run across to the links page and look them up.

Well, I’m tired now so I will round this off with a joke I found/stole,

A bloke's wife goes missing while swimming off the beach. He reports the event, searches fruitlessly and spends a terrible night wondering what could have happened to her. Next morning there's a knock at the door and he is confronted by a couple of policemen, the old Sarge and a younger Constable.
The Sarge says, 'I’m afraid, sir, we have some news for you.Unfortunately there's some really bad news but also some good news, and maybe some more good news'.
'Well,' says the bloke, 'I guess I'd better have the bad news first?'
The Sarge says, 'I'm really sorry, but your wife is dead. They found her body lying at about five fathoms in a little cleft in the rocks on the sea-bed. They got a line around her and pulled her up, but obviously there was nothing they could do for her '
The bloke is naturally pretty distressed to hear of this and has a bit of a turn. But after a few minutes he pulls himself together and asks what the good news is.
The Sarge says, 'Well when we got your wife up there were quite a few really good sized lobsters and a swag of nice crabs attached to her, so we've brought you your share.'
He hands the bloke a sugar bag with a couple of nice lobsters and four or five crabs in it. 'Geez thanks. They're bloody beauties. I guess it's an ill wind and all that... So what's the other possible good news?
'Well', the Sarge says, 'if you fancy a quick trip, me and young Bill here get off duty at around 2 o'clock and we're gonna shoot over there and pull her up again!’

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

O2, Springs and Croft

2009-01-21T09:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, O2 sent us a maahoosive bundle of pay-as-you-go sim cards. Each sim offers 300 free texts on a £10 top up, 500 for £15 and unlimited texts for £30 pounds or more. It looks like we have six of these, which means Melissa has stolen some. Anyway if you would like one, send me an Email titled “Does my ring hurt your finger?!” and I will send you a free O2 sim card. Easy init? Likewise, we got two Shell Oils baseball caps from the ASI show. I have no need for them but it would be a waste to throw them away. Mark you Email with “Drop your hat!” to get a free hat.

I was unable to do the Rally at the weekend due to an unforeseen problem with the Peugeot. The spring broke which happens a lot on road cars and most people don’t notice until MOT time. Not with this French sack of shit though, oh no! Like everything Peugeot do, this is designed to royally fuck up your day! The spring slid over its retaining cup and touched the tyre, which then screwed the spring down over the drive shaft and the Track Control Arm, then jammed itself against the wheel, locking the whole thing solid. I took the wheel off to see what was occurring and it was not pretty. So I did a round trip to Alan Hassell Motorsport (new website up don’tcha know! http://www.alan-hassell-motorsport.co.uk/ ) to get some tools and an angle grinder to cut the offending spring off of the car.

We also found a spring from a Volkswagen Transporter which, with a few modifications, has made a suitable replacement. At least, for the time being.

The upshot of this disastrous state of affairs is that I missed the Rally and I missed Oval Expo where young Dan Roots won his first race! Dan is into his second season of Mini Sprint now and looks to be the pace setter going into this seasons Rolling Thunder Shows.

The CAMSO V8 dates are finalised and you can find them elsewhere on this website. Many people have asked me what tyres I plan to use and the answer is simple. If we have the money, we will buy tyres, at the moment I am starting to get concerned as to whether we will make the Easter start date at all, let alone what tyres I will run when I get there. When we buy tyres however, it will be the ART ones and not the Hoosier. If they are not as good as the Hoosier, then I will have to drive faster.

http://www.ready2race.co.uk/ has had a bit of a revamp. They have culled some old stock and have made sure that what is in, they can sell to you cheaper than Demon Tweeks, so get in there and see what bargains are available.

Finally, if you are ever worried that there just isn’t enough total fuckwits in the world, I would like to draw your attention to the Watson family. The press article below is taken from the Northern Echo;

THOUSANDS of people have joined an online campaign to back a North-East race track in its dispute with residents over noise levels.

Meanwhile, the local ward councillor has leapt to the defence of villagers who took court action against motorsport bosses at Croft Circuit, near Darlington.

The Save Croft Circuit site, on Facebook, has attracted one new member every minute since it was opened on Saturday.

The page was set up following a report in The Northern Echo on the ongoing case between Croft-Promo-Sport – the organisers of race events such as the British Touring Car Championships – and neighbours Derek and Julia Watson and their daughter, Jill Wilson.
The family was awarded £150,000 in court last April when a judge ruled that they should be compensated for putting up with noise from the site, which is 300 yards from their homes at Daltonon- Tees.

Croft-Promo-Sport director Dennis Carter has warned that future events at the track could be at risk unless the Court of Appeal case against the order is successful.

The Facebook group was set up by racing fans Andy Jenkins and Kenny Atkinson.
“I have been going to Croft since I was a child – the place has such a proud history,”
said Mr Jenkins, 26, from Durham.
“To lose something like that would be ridiculous.
“We wanted to show Croft Circuit that the support is out there – and we have certainly struck a chord.”

The site has been inundated with comments and has attracted members from across the UK, as well as Italy, Australia and the US.
Councillor Jane Parlour, of Richmondshire District Council, said that the Watson family has support from residents, and challenged race organisers’ claim that the events earn the local economy as much as £3m.
“Much of the money that comes into the area goes into the circuit itself – it is not widely spread,” she said.
“I don’t think we have seen that much of a boost to the local economy.
“Nobody wants Croft Circuit to close, but people do want to work within tolerable limits of noise levels and traffic.
“How would you feel if you had racing cars revving their engines 300 yards from your house at 6.45am?” (WTF? When has any one revved a race engine ANYWHERE at 6.45 am?? -Kelvin)

Racing pundit Larry Carter, who commentates on races at Croft and looks after the circuit’s publicity, said: “How can it be that people who have only just moved into the area have the right to close down an historic facility which is so vital to the local economy as well as the tens of thousands of motorsport enthusiasts who rely on Croft for their recreation?
“Let’s hope common sense prevails otherwise the UK could become like Switzerland where motorsport is banned.”

The Court of Appeal is expected to announce its decision later in the year.

■ At the time of going to press, the Save Croft Circuit Facebook group had more than 3,600 members.

If you are on Facebook, please join the group, cheers.

TTYL

Kelvin

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

ASI

2009-01-13T03:11:00.000-08:00

Autosport started in the press office, where my ticket waited patiently in a little white envelope for me. The press office was as far away from the Stockcar hall as it could get, but I was determined to see the stockcar bit first.
Haird motorsport was there and I had expected to see an up and running version of the Z4 NHR they had threatened to bring out a year ago (or was it two? Can’t remember!) But it was nowhere in sight. Maybe the governing body deemed it too radical.

Colin Whites’ ASCAR was there although I couldn’t see the man himself.

Santa Pod had abandoned a monster truck and some dragsters in the hall along with a jet car and a jet bike. A jet bike? Who looked at the jet car and said “Well, that’s great n’all, but it’s not really fast enough or dangerous enough for me…”
Some beautiful THORA cars and the usual smattering of F1s and F2 made up the oval hall.

Moving into the main hall I ran into Roots Jnr and Roots Jnr jnr. Chris was chasing a gear kit for his F2 and Nicholas was admiring the girls. Both of these two should be in action at Arena Essex this coming weekend (16th and 17th) so get down there if you need a Stockcar fix in these cold winter months.

Met a nice chap, Mr Speed from Joe Gibbs Racing, who had attended on behalf of Anglo American Oils to promote Joe Gibbs Racing Oils. We had a long discussion about Late Models and Oils and it was all very interesting. This man alone made the show worth going to!

Not long after that there was a phone call from Chris Beeney from Ready2Race who arranged to meet at the BRSCC stand for a cup of tea. After a bag swap (which is a bit like wife swap but with bags. Although, if you watch the TV programme of the same name, you could easily get confused. Maybe Channel 4 should change the name of the program.) we sat down with a brew. I then noticed we had parked our butts next to Team Ginger! Bob Ross along with his father and his son. (Bob’s son. Not his fathers son. Bob’s fathers son is Bob.) Bob was a sparring partner in Mod Ford before taking a brief spell in the Tuscan Challenge. He is now back in Fords with a Escort Cosworth WRC and is talking about 700bhp for the coming Ford season.
We chatted about the two Ford championships and the joys of Thruxton when the phone went again. It was Mel this time, she was chaperoning Fabrizio Giovanardi around the show but had a twenty minute break if we wanted to see her.
Chris and I jumped up and made a bee line for the Autosport stage and even now I’m quite impressed we found it, despite being accosted by Sam Collins from Racecar Engineering and the TRC editor.
Mel seemed to be having her hands full with Gio. I recommended some large breasts that I had seen over in the Piston Heads show if he was stuck for something to do, but Mel had him on a tight leash. I know that feeling. We bid them farewell and headed of to find the Wealden Racing crew.
Craig Rainer and the gang had come up with Chris but had since wandered off. Suddenly we were attacked by a tiny Orc like creature. It was prodding and poking at me and I came over all Dungeons and Dragons! I said “BE GONE CREATURE!” And was just about to pull a magic Orc entrapping incantation out of my wizards sleeve when I realised it was Hope, our race engineer in training! I had been texting her all morning to find out where she was but we always seemed to be in the wrong part of the hall. Hope and her boyfriend were headed over to Piston Heads which was handy because Sam had gone to the Santa Pod stage after leaving TRC. I left Chris advising him to give my regards to the Rainers and followed Hope back to the Santa Pod stand where I recalled that there were two Santa Pod stands at opposite ends of the hall and, naturally, Sam was at the other one.

We final met up. And walked and talked for about 400miles. I made sure that, by Monday, all the ICP media staff should know about the time Sam ran over his bonnet at scrutineering. Then, at about five, I was ready to go home.
Except, I wasn’t.
Mel rang to say that she hadn’t bought her car when she arrived at the NEC on Wednesday and that I was tasked with returning her home. So, I went back to the press office to wait for the RSM people to finish their work. It was about 8 when we left. Hell, I have never stayed there that late even when I’m running a stand!

Afterwards we had dinner with Mel’s work colleagues, which consisted of a wonderful burger and a waitress on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Which, thinking about it, is a pretty typical night out really.

We got back about Midnight.

Sunday, we didn’t do anything.

Well, that was the social side of it, was there anything of note at the show? Well, of course there were several S2000 cars that looked like they were getting ready for a rally. As I am sure you are aware, the WRC is in a bit of a crisis at the moment and the FIA answer to this is to go to S2000 rules. I have to say, the cars looked good and I think we will be in for some close rallying when these rules are adopted.

Prodrive had two items on their stand, A variable compression engine where the exhaust stroke had less compression than the compression stroke, and a computer that could balance a weight by moving backwards and forwards. A bit like a computerised plate spinner! Both these things are amazing but I fail to see their practical uses. I shall think about this some more. Then I will phone them up and ask them.

Legends occupied every available nook and cranny. They seem to be making a big push to increase their numbers on the back of a credit crunch.

Silverstone was represented by lots of Brit Cars which seems odd as the flagship 24hour race will not run in 2009.

I can’t think of much else really, if anything occurs, I shall post it in the next blog. I am fed up with writing this now. I have press releases to do.

You can find more pictures on my Facebook page.

***All the crap you see writen here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Exhausting work

2009-01-06T00:13:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2009. Winter has truly hit us. I’m not saying its cold but there is a brass monkey pounding on the front door demanding I lend him a blow torch. The MR2 went to BMS Auto services to have its exhaust repaired for its mot. We decided against replacing the cat as we already had to get a front pipe for it. So top panel man and fellow racer, Paul Conboy cunningly welded the broken flange of the back box to the cat and, after several attempts and much swearing and even more cups of tea, the new system was installed.

Leaf hall Motors of Eastbourne then performed the mot. So the MR2 is now back in the hands of Melissa and shall be transporting her off to the NEC in Birmingham tomorrow so she can work the media centre of the Autosport show. Seems like ages since I have been to the Autosport show to look at stuff rather than work but It seems that this year that is exactly what I will do! I will probably go on a Saturday rather than a trade day because the oval exhibition is not open on the Thursday and Friday and, to be honest, I’m not that fussed about looking at the main hall stuff. The reason I am not part of a display there this year is because, sadly, the V8s are no closer to an English race date than they were last year, and we have to seriously question the appeal of a series that doesn’t race in England to English drivers. To those of us that have driven the cars, we know it is the best racing about, but it is very difficult to convince people that it is cheaper to race in Europe than it is to race in England.

Pa Hassell now has his own website for AHM, you can find it at http://www.alan-hassell-motorsport.co.uk/ and is filled with old pictures of his racing history as well as news of up and coming projects and races. The move of the Stock Hatch formula to a new tyre for 2009 has given Pa itchy feet and he is thinking about moving to something else. Something with a V8 in it hopefully! It appears I too have some up and coming projects. Mother has volunteered me to restore her Morris Minor and my step brother Chris has decided we are going to build Pa’s Sunbeam Alpine. It really is too cold for this kinda shit but we shall see what occurs.

After Autosport.

It has been suggested to me that I try to find a raceshop in Texas to work in so I can compete in a local Late Model series and not have to live in somewhere cold and miserable.

I am looking now!

Anyway, how about a word from one of our sponsors?

"Happy New Year! For everybody who didn't get kissed at midnight (all of you), you can start the year off right by kissing my ass. I've been wiping it with $100 bills soaked in Cristal so it should be quite a treat.As you may know, T-Shirt Hell opened a sister site called Torsopants last year, that was basically a clothing company geared towards retards and undesirables. Well, Torsopants closed its doors on Dec 23rd and most people didn't care.But there were 2 people that were upset (Beth and Steve)...and because EVERY LOSER IN THE WORLD matters to us here at T-Shirt Hell, we've decided to bring Torsopants back! That's right, each week, along with our regular new shirts, we will be adding new Torsopants as well, which will be located in their own section on the site.For now, we've brought back the 15 top selling Torsopants and have added them to the Hell page and this week we bring you 3 new shirts, along with a new baby shirt and a new pair of Torsopants. So, cash that unemployment check now and start buying some new crap!

Regards,

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You will find the link to T shirt Hell at http://www.kelvin-hassell.co.uk/ Click on "Racing Partner"

***All the crap you see writen here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Putting the bumper in

2008-12-29T14:25:00.000-08:00

Putting the bumper in is about as English a stockcar term as you can get. It refers to leaning on the lead cars rear bumper with your front bumper to help them miss their braking point and go wide through the turn allowing you to take the position on the inside. In America it’s called “bump and run” and, like in our non-contact formulas (NHR, CAMSO V8) it is outlawed. In our domestic formulas over here (F1s, F2s, British Stockcars) however, it is an accepted form of overtaking. Actually, to call it that undermines it a bit. It is an art form when performed by some of the Britain’s top Stockcar men and women. It is something I have never used in a sport where it is legal to do so but, that might change in the coming season.

None of this has anything to do with today’s Blog.

The Toyota MR2 did 120mph the other day. It wasn’t deliberate; it just kind of snuck up there. It may not have been on the Queens highway too. The car feels as if it has something odd about it. As if it is tram lining. The wheels seem to wish to follow the camber of the road and it can be a little off putting at times. It is due an MOT so we will see if that shows anything up, after that we will start with a new set of tyres and see if that changes anything. Talking of tyres, the Peugeot has some new tyres ready for its rally in January courtesy of Albert Bourne Motors.

For Christmas I was chuffed to get Disney’s Cars on DVD. Love this film. I think it is brilliantly done and shows more realism than either Days of Thunder or Talladega Nights! About time there was a Cars 2!

I have been asked to sit in for a few Baby Grand races. The British series, now called MASCAR, has added several new dates to its calendar. You can find more information about it a www.mascar.co.uk

This mini NASCAR formula is really coming into its own now with 14 cars expected for much of the coming season. I love these cars and have often sung their praises. I am really looking forward to racing one again.

I have managed to get through the whole Blog without mentioning CAMSO V8 but, it is rearing its head over the parapet and opening its sleepy eyes ready for the coming season. Shall I tell you all the news? No, I think I will wait until January.

Happy New Year,

Kel

***All the crap you see writen here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Twas the Dax before Christmas

2008-12-22T10:40:00.001-08:00

Earlier I told you we would chat about the Dax Rush, So let’s do that shall we? I have driven a few of these Cater-field things and, although I don’t mind them, I do always feel as if they are about to kill me. Indeed the last Cosworth powered example I drove was rear wheel drive and used an RS 500 lump. It had so much horse power it was bordering on pointless. The car simply spun its wheels as soon as it came on boost, regardless of what gear you were in or how fast you were going. Sounds great but I can assure you, the novelty of that soon wears off. The Dax doesn’t suffer with this, however, as it uses the drive train from the 4x4 Sapphire Cosworth. Neat idea. Fast too. The grip the car presents you with is far more than you would expect from a Cater-field type of car. Rather than making you more comfortable however, it makes you feel as if it wants to kill you even more. Maybe the one I’m driving is a bad example. Or maybe I’m just paranoid. In its (my?) defence, this particular Dax is alleged to be pushing out 400bhp however I’m not particularly convinced of that. It is fast for sure but it doesn’t feel 800bhp per ton fast. I have to say the speed sensor in my brain is slightly defective and things often feel slower to me than they actually are. When you race pretty quick stuff all the time, road stuff seems slow, regardless of how good it is. At the time of road test there was nothing in the vicinity that would have lived with the Dax, so let’s just say it was fast enough.

After wrapping up the nasty Vauxhall things, I went back to Northampton, stopping of at Old man Roots place to see the new SX. It is having some major redevelopment in the suspension department. I would show you some pictures but then I would have to kill you afterwards. By the time Tony has been at it with his new Plasma cutter, you could argue that it won’t be his original car at all. As I pointed out to him, it is the “Trigger’s broom” of the SX world! Weather it will be ready for the Oval Expo on the 17th I am afraid I cannot say. The Roots junior team will be there however, Nick in the Junior Rods and Dan in Mini Sprints. The Baby Grands or MASCAR as they like to call themselves now, will also be there. The meeting is two days as I understand it and there should be some good formula out there. Staying with the MASCAR for a moment, they now have their own group on Facebook so go and join it. And add me if you haven’t already.

Have a happy holiday wherever you are and whatever you may be doing.

Tara!

Kel

***All the crap you see writen here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

The month of Jan you ary!

2008-12-12T03:03:00.000-08:00

Well, we are running out of year so I thought I would give you the schedule for January.

The Autosport Show is running from the 8th to the 11th. Now, at the moment I am not scheduled to be displaying there in any way shape or form, however, I seem to remember saying the same thing this time last year and then, Wednesday before the event I am driving to France to get a car and taking it to Birmingham. Melissa is doing some of the organising for the show so I shall probably wander down for a couple of days just to stick my nose in even if we don’t have a display there. We decided that if there was to be no U.K rounds in CAMSO V8 next year and no joint venture between CAMSO and ASCAR or Spedeworth or whoever will be in charge next year, then it would not be worth going to Autosport. Still, we will see what happens.

On the 18th I am expecting to be rallying up and down the lanes of East Sussex again for the first time in about 10 years. I am not sure what in but I expect it will be the Peugeot 406. I will be breaking in a new navigator in Brendan Sullivan, who usually techs for me at race meetings (see last blog). Should be interesting to see if we can survive the night without an argument but I’m sure it will be great fun. I do enjoy a good Rally!

We have penned in the 28th as a test with the new Revelation formula car at Brands Hatch. This is still to be confirmed and I shall blog it once it is definite.

In other news, I spoke to Thorney Motorsport this week about their BMW Challenge (see last blog). They do indeed have six cars lined up for the series! Lets hope they get some more before the season begins.

Finally, one of my French fans has taken it upon herself to make a blog site of her own about me, but in her native tongue. I have no idea what it says but my new junior tech; Hope, reliably informs me that it’s “Sweet!” Anyway, we like people getting involved and interacting with us around here so I will give you the link and you can wander over and have a look. Mayhap you can leave a comment if you speak French. I am learning the language at the moment as I do seem to spend more time there than here during the race season. Unfortunately I’m not a good student.

The link is http://kelvinhassell.skyrock.com/

Have fun!

Kel

***All the crap you see writen here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Yule tide log

2008-12-08T05:28:00.000-08:00

Credit crunch! You got to love that name! It takes a world wide financial crisis and makes it sound like a breakfast cereal.
Autosport this week was all about the credit crunch and how teams are running out of money. The WRC is running out of manufacturer backing, touring car teams shutting up shop, and now Honda have jumped out of formula one. The rumour is that Williams will follow suit shortly.
In club racing, circuit owners are putting track hire fees up which means racing clubs have to put their fees up and the competitors are in uproar!

Turn the page though and everything is rosy! Not one but two new saloon car championships! Must be made cheap though, I hear you cry! Must be for old wanked out saloons that can’t race anywhere else! Yes! Well, nearly. Actually no, how about the E46 BMW M3 CSL and the other series is for the Mitsubishi Evo X. Are these people insane? One can only assume Thorney Motorsport, who are behind the BMW series have some drivers lined up and that Mitsu know some owners with deep pockets too.
Back in Stockcar land I am trying to push CAMSO and ASCAR ever closer to an amalgamation and getting nowhere.
Never mind.
I have also been talking to some gentlemen who are going to start a Dwarf car series in the U.K. Fantastic news although I think it will be an uphill struggle for them. A Dwarf car looks like an American Modified and the rules are fairly free (which is nice in a world of sealed component racing). Any engine up to 1400cc including bike stuff and you can make your own bits! I shall have a closer look at this formula in the New Year.
Also I am due at Brands Hatch to try out the new Revelation single seater in January. This will be racing on the 750 Motor Club Schedule and has received unprecedented interest going in to its opening year.

Hehehe. Another new series. But at least the Revelation Formula has its heart in the right place. You would be hard pushed to find a cheaper formula car straight out of the box.

Christmas is just around the corner! Let’s hope it stays there, eh?

Kelvin “Humbug” Hassell

***All the crap you see writen here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Glock revisited

2008-12-02T12:18:00.000-08:00

It was suspected that November would be the busiest month of activity on the Website and you didn’t prove us wrong. People obviously like the new format and we have had our most hits since March back when the season began. The Eastbourne and Ram bun fight was a resounding success. Congratulations to Katie and Doug Foreman who seemed to win everything between them. The pair Rally and Autotest in a Triumph Herald which doesn’t sound like fun but Katie is clearly passionate about it which makes you glad she has had so much success. It is great when someone drives because they love driving rather than because they want a trophy at the end. If you want to collect trophies, buy them! It’s cheaper than going racing. Whilst there, my occasional mechanic bought up the old argument about Timo Glock. ERMC chairman Tim Smith sided with me but to say we were outnumbered was an understatement. The argument that was thrown at us was “How many races did you see this year?” and “If Timo was paid then prove it!” Both of which are quite absurd. No I didn’t watch many F1 races this year for two reasons. 1; It could bore the tits of a concrete rhinoceros and 2; When you go racing yourself you often have your weekends tied up with more important things than watching Grand Prix. Although I only watched a handful of races last year, I have been involved in this sport for a bloody long time. I know how the sport works and I know that out of the two possibilities of either Glock slowing down because he ran out of traction or, Glock slowing down because he was paid to, the latter is more likely. If you don’t think that, then that’s fine. But to dismiss the possibility of Glock being paid as tosh and nonsense is, in itself, ludicrous and shows a complete lack of understanding of the sport at the higher levels.
I thought I bought my mechanics up better than that.

***All the crap you see written here is Kelvins opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***

Whats on the Vaux

2008-11-27T10:59:00.000-08:00

The MR2 is finally up and running. Issy drove it the long haul up to Northampton. It still needs some work. Next on the list for it is a Cat replacement pipe in the exhaust system and some competition engine mounts. A few of my drifting buddies agree that it isn’t ideally suited to drifting (which makes me want to use it more!) because of its weight distribution.

Monday was spent at Gerald Dale Motorsport with Paul Conboys’s Vauxhall Firenza. This car has been due to race in Classic Thunder for the last three years but time constraints have curtailed the continuation of its racing career. It would seem Paul spends too much time repairing cars for MWR-AHM and Chimp Tune Racing! Maybe if we all drove better…

After a few teething troubles, the old girl pulled a good 200+BHP. Pauls next job is to rebuild the rear suspension which is having a total re-design.

Next year Classic Thunder will incorporate the “Blue Oval Saloon Series”, a home for Mod Ford drivers who are disgruntled with the running and the cost of the BRSCCs current Ford championship. To be honest, I don’t blame them.

Roots V8 Racing have acquired a new Superstock. I say new, it’s actually the one old man Roots won the world final with back in the day. The car has been stripped down at their English base and should be rebuilt in time for the Arena Essex championship next year.

Ready 2 Race is now selling gift vouchers for the racer or race fan in your life. You will find them advertised about on the website. Make sure to get yours in time for xmas.

Saturday is the Eastbourne and Ram Motor Club annual bun fight if we are not seeing you there then we will see you somewhere else.

***All the crap you see writen here is Kelvins opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketting partners.***

In the still of the night...

2008-11-17T04:41:00.000-08:00

This week has been mostly spent at the AHM workshop in Eastbourne. Pa Hassell has been having some eye trouble of late and, though he is on the mend, I have gone down there to see if I can help out. At the moment there are two Vauxhalls in the workshop (that’s Opels to our European friends, Chevrolets to our American friends and Holdens to our chums in Oz.) One with a blown gearbox and the other with a blown engine. They are not difficult jobs, just awkward. Especially with the limited room available at the AHM workshop, which is more about building race engines these days than working on road cars. It did give me the opportunity to sample a Dax Rush though. A four wheel drive, Cosworth powered Caterham kind of thing. More on that in another blog.

Issy blew up her Renault Clio which was a shame; fortunately Grandpa Hassell is trading his Toyota MR2 because he is after a Mazda MX5. I am not sure how well the MR2 would lend itself to drifting so my intention is for me and Issy to perhaps take a day out to Lydd Kart track and see what’s what with the old girl. The clutch slips like a bugger in the MR2 at the moment so I shall take it back to the AHM workshop shortly and get a clutch put in it.

The advent of another car in the family brings my mind floating back to what to do with the Peugeot 406. I had an idea in September of using it for Britcar but shelved it to concentrate on CAMSO V8. Now that idea is back again. I will talk to Pa Hassell about it as I would not undertake the project unless we could get 300+ BHP from the diesel engine. The demise of class 4 from the Britcar grid is a bit of a blow really. I am surprised James Tucker of Britcar doesn’t start an endurance series for production vehicles. Anyway…

The Chimp Tune boys were testing there Porsche 935 at Brands on Friday ready for the Britcar “in to the night” race on Saturday. I received a phone call from them Friday afternoon saying not to bother going to Brands on Saturday, the Porsche is wrecked. Chimp Tune driver Zubin Randeria backed the orange car into the fence just before Clearways. Probably not his fault I might add. Anyway, with this somewhat disappointing news I started driving back to Northampton to see Issy. Her Saturday night was to be spent covering the WTCC from the comfort of her bosses’ living room. I got to Northampton and was just explaining to Hope (my race technician in training) that I probably would not be going to Brands when the phone rang again. This time the voice said “Change of plan, we are going home to get the Lotus, see you tomorrow.”

Fortunately, there is not much prep needed with the poor little Lotus. It was done properly when we built the car and, short of changing the oil every now and then, there isn’t much you can do. I am sure the Chimp Tune guys would have got on fine without Hope and me. Anyway, here we were so we did the driver change between us.

The race was good. The boys got third in class and managed to wipe the front off a Ferrari in the process which, in my book, is good going! It probably didn’t make up for the disappointment of losing the Porsche but, still a good result. The Porsche? It will repair. And it will be out again.

The support races on the day were also very good! The two guys fighting for the lead in the Elise trophy, I forget your names I'm afraid but excellent racing, and everybody in the Victor Meldrew races! No idea who won but well done to all of you! I also spotted one of the old AHM Cosworths out the still in the colours it was when Derek Holden drove it in Production Cars. It almost bought a tear to my eye!

Next weekend is Race Car Live at Brands Hatch; hope to catch up with some of you down there. Talk to you soon.

Kel

*All the crap you see writen here is Kelvins opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.*

Gun powder, treason and Rockingham Motor Speedway

2008-11-09T04:09:00.000-08:00

Isn’t it a shame that Guy Falkes never succeeded in blowing up the houses of parliament? Maybe, instead of burning effigies on the fifth of November we should all bundle down the HoP and blow shit out of it! Still, we don’t. I made the long trek down to Lewes with my life love, to march in the South Street Bonfire Society parade. We had our firework display early for reasons that I am not entirely sure about, but they were fantastic! Much better than previous years. Unfortunately rain drove the crowds away but a big thank you for all those who did turn out regardless.

On Saturday, Issy had to go to Rockingham to meet a new client racing in the Formula Renault Winter Series. I tagged along to get a look at the Ginettas. There was no G20s but the juniors and the G50s were on hand to entertain. We only stayed for the first race of each of the formula because, to be frank, it was bloody cold. The juniors were well behaved in ever-so tricky conditions. I certainly didn’t envy them driving the Rocks infield track, with its pretty appalling drainage. It leaves standing water on the apex of every corner and makes the rest of the racing surface slick as a button. All in all though, the kids put on a very good race. The G50s looked every bit as good as Ginetta describe them. One of my old Kart sparring partners, Carl Breeze was out in one and was leading at one point. I couldn’t decide if Simpson gave Breezy a tap on the way past or if Breeze just lost it in the slippery conditions, but it matters not. Christian Dick was there and on form. Mark Proctor surprised me by not making the impact on the leaders that I thought he would.

In other news, AHM/MWR have the gearbox from the #88 Chevrolet Monte-Carlo in bits and are waiting on parts from the USA to rebuild it. They are preparing three Citroen Saxos for the Demon Tweeks/ Yokohama Stock Hatch Championship next season, as well as a new transporter to move them about with.

Next week we will be at the Britcar “In to the night race” with Chimp Tune Racing, if we don’t see you there then we will see you here.

Tara

Kel

*All the crap you see writen here is Kelvins opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketting partners.*

F1, Evo and the cynic

2008-11-04T09:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was being asked questions for a press release which you will probably have already read by the time this witty piece of prose makes its way to one of the many social networking sites I use to increase my internet presence. I was told by a certain member of the RSM staff, who I taught to write press releases in the first place, that I am not very media friendly! Me of all people! Can you believe that?!

Well, since friendly isn’t my thing, you best bloody brace yourself.
When everyone else saw Lewis Hamilton drive to his first world championship glory in Formula One, I saw an over hyped amateur drive like a complete twat and win a world championship by what I hope was luck but what I strongly suspect was cheating. To start with, you would have to be naive beyond comprehension to believe that the Ferrari team qualified so low on fuel that the race was in the bag. Still that’s what Lewis believed. I am all for confident drivers but the way the English press builds up our guys is ludicrous. And eventually the drivers believe their own hype. It happened to Jenson and I think it will happen to Hamilton. There is a million and one factors that make a car win a race and the driver is simply one of them. We have already seen Hamilton try to drive on slicks when the race is wet and crash. De-laminate a tyre because he knew better than the pit crew and crash. So here he is again, with no pace in the car and it seems no hurry to try and put some pace in it despite the Ferraris galloping away in the distance. Now, lets analyse the Vettel pass. Hamilton, suddenly realises with two laps of the race to go, that he needs to put his foot down, but it is too late then. Instead of getting on the defensive he panics, out brakes himself and let Vettel through! So then, and it’s only a hypothesis, big Ron runs down to the Toyota garage and says “£2mill if you back Glock up and heed the place to Hamilton!”

Of course I could be wrong. But that’s what it looked like to me.

On Bonfire night I will be back on parade with the South Street Bonfire Society in Lewes. Do come along if you’re local. And bring some drink, the girls and I always run out.

Evo Magazine. Got a very excited text saying that I was in this months edition of Evo Magazine. Odd, I thought. I don’t usually have any dealings with them. Anyway, Melissa came in with the offending issue. In it there was an article about a Gumbert at the Brighton Speed trials. Attached was a photo of Jim Tillers Allard and I was standing next to it! I don’t think that really constitutes “being in Evo” but I suppose, in literal terms, I was. I would like to apologise to my sponsors for not wearing their branded clothing on that day. It will not happen again.

All the websites will be having a chop and change soon. And anyone who wishes to attend CAMSO V8 race school over winter should contact me post haste.

Love you lots,

And don’t take the Hamilton thing to heart, I am sure he is very good really.

Kel