Team Benwell
The first ten years
Written by Bret Karnnet
November 2001
Mark began racing Radio Control Cars at the "Parkwood Radio Control Car Club" near Maidstone in March 1990, and it was here that he first met Ian. Mark started off as most people do with a Tamiya. In this case it was a four-wheel drive Thunder Shot. He had no one to guide him and the only advice he could get was from the local model shop, which usually meant spending money. After a couple of months of struggling to sort out his left from his right he decided that the only way he was ever going to be any good was to buy as much equipment as he could afford. What drew Mark's attention to Ian was his total lack of equipment. "He would invariably arrive late at the meeting, on a motorcycle with nearly everything he needed crammed into a sports bag on his back, including a twelve volt battery, and what he didn’t have he would borrow from anyone who would lend it to him. What made this even more infuriating is he would then sling his car on the track usually without any practice and beat everyone every single week, sometimes with their own equipment that he had borrowed".
By this time Ian had already been racing model cars for a number of years and so managed to hone his skills with (by today’s standards) pretty bad handling cars. As his driving ability developed so did his understanding of how to make these little cars handle better. Of course Mark didn’t know this then, all he knew was this bloke with no equipment and a lot of talent was invariably keeping him out of the A final.
Mark visited the Parkwood club every fortnight with his work mate Kevin Watson. They had both decided to buy model cars for something to do while working on the night shift at Maidstone Commercials and over the course of the year Mark gradually got better and better. He did some meetings at the old Maidstone club at West Malling airfield and his first big meeting was the 1990 wings and wheels spectacular in Essex. He thinks he finished in about 120th place, but this was a big meeting and to him he had arrived. By the end of 1990 the Parkwood club moved indoors for the winter and both Ian and Mark entered the indoor winter championship. Mark, because this was all he knew and Ian, because he wanted the practice for bigger things during the summer. Ian hadn’t really spoken to Mark much up to this point except to ask to borrow stuff, and their paths wouldn’t really cross until the final round of the championship when they both finished in joint first place on equal points. It was decided by Lynne Spice who ran the Parkwood meetings, that the only way to decide the championship was for Mark and Ian to have another race, head to head. Having only started racing that year it was like being in the final of a World championship and Mark was taking it all very seriously. Ian on the other hand would have probably preferred to toss a coin and bugger off home. The outcome of the race and ultimately the championship was immaterial, more importantly a seed had been sown and a friendship begun.
During 1990 Ian had been competing in the Mini Nats at the GEC track in Stafford with another Parkwood member, Dave Pope. Mark had been reading the race reports and seeing their photos every month in the Radio Race Car magazine and he remembers thinking how great it must be to have your picture in a magazine. The fact was they were having a terrible time. Ian was driving a scratch-built 2 wheel-drive car with an Associated Electric RC10 rear end, a Pro 10 front end, a Corvette body and Mardave sponge tyres (the only ones they knew of). Not long after the winter championship the Parkwood club held their AGM and both Ian and Mark attended. Ian told Mark that Dave wasn’t going to be racing in 1991. Mark immediately asked him if I could come in his place. Ian said yes and the rest, as they say, is history. Neither of them knew it, but this was the start of Team Benwell.
For the first few months of 1991 they met up several times at various ‘one-off’ off-road meetings. Ian came over to the Medway club a couple of times and they got together to practice fairly regularly on any piece of tarmac they could find. During this time they got to know each other fairly well and Ian would come over to Mark's house (when he should have been delivering gas for BOC), talk cars and drink tea for a couple of hours.
And so it began, the date: May 5th 1991, the place: GEC Stafford, the occasion: Round 1 of the 1991 Radio Race Car 1/10th On-road Championship. The first couple of meetings were really about two people sharing a pit table. It wasn’t until later on in the year that a sense of ‘team spirit’ was felt and Ian first coined the phrase ‘Buggy Brothers’. After several more mentions of this name Mark decided that enough was enough and if they were to become a bonefide racing team, they really needed a less ridiculous title. Several names were thought up and dismissed as equally stupid, until somebody thought up the idea of splicing their names together, this usually results in something fairly daft and sure enough Markian does, but the first time someone said ‘Benwell’ they both nodded in approval.
It was during these early times that Ian & Mark discovered they had quite a lot in common; they were born two days apart (different years). they both had the same taste in music and had similar backgrounds when it came to riding motorcycles. Ian had a long-term partner, Tracey as did Mark and they got on really well too.
By now the Stafford series was almost over but they both knew that this was just the beginning and this first year together threw up many memorable events, two spring to mind. The first happened during round four around about mid August. It was the Saturday before race day and there were about 6 or 7 drivers who had arrived the day before to practice for the Sunday race day. Both Ian and Mark had set up their pit table on the far right hand end of the track, the opposite end from everyone else, they were very unsociable in the early days. They were both just sitting making adjustments waiting for their ni-cads to charge. Mark switched on his transmitter and Ian, not wanting him to cause interference to other cars which were circulating round the track, said "Oy, you really should make sure you’re not on the same frequency as anybody else" and so not thinking and with complete contempt for anyone else Mark responded "We’ll soon find out" and with that he picked up his transmitter and pushed the throttle stick forward. Expecting one of the cars on the track to go out of control, you can imagine Mark's feeling of utter stupidity when his own car shot two feet across the pit table and landed with a crash on the ground, followed by howls of laughter from Ian.
The next incident happened towards the end of the series, it was October and just the right time of year for a barbecue… not. By now the team had acquired/stolen/borrowed a large tent, which originally belonged to Dave Pope, and was perfect to pit in. So as was usual they arrived on the Saturday, practiced, then set about firing up the barbecue. They set it up just outside the tent and then went in to drink beer and play cards. As it began to get dark so It got cold as well and because they had drunk quite a lot of beer by now, leaving the Barbecue outside the tent seemed like a waste of good heat so with their drunken reasoning they decided that it would be a really good idea to bring it inside the tent. How wrong they were. They dragged the barbeque inside and within 20 seconds the tent was filled with thick oily smoke that stung their eyes and made them choke. It was so thick they couldn’t see each other, so it got dragged outside again. They spent the next hour doing the Oki Koki dragging it in and dragging it out again just to keep warm while at the same time consuming even more alcohol. Later on that night, about 3 o’clock in the morning, Tracey and Mark were to have the first of their night time rendezvous, Mark paying his twentieth visit to the toilet and Tracey being violently ill… Ah happy days.
So Team Benwell’s first season was over with some degree of success. Stafford is a fairly unique track in that the racing line i.e. the quickest way round the track is not obvious. Ian knew this from the previous year and once he had explained to Mark (several times) the gains to be made from taking this seemingly strange racing line, his laptimes began to get quicker. It was early days but Ian’s bottomless pit of car set up knowledge was already starting to help Mark. He started the year propping up the C final and finished it by winning the B final. It must be said however that with all the help Ian gave Mark he never once tried to make him change his driving style, and that this was a big factor in Mark's development during those early years.
The winter of 1991/92 was spent developing new ideas and more importantly team image. Ian had for a long time been working on a theory about why any successful driver always had their car painted in the same colour. As Ian was to write several years later: "Having a distinctive paint scheme that every one else can recognise and sticking to it is very important, when another driver gets overtaken by you he will not necessarily remember your car the next time or the time after that, but eventually he will, and let you go past much easier. If you constantly change your cars colour scheme you will never have the advantage of this recognition"
And so to the important bit, - choosing a colour scheme. In hind sight this was made easy for them in that Ian had already been quite successful during 1991 with a car painted in what Mark considered to be an acceptable colour scheme albeit a bit boring. (See picture earlier on). It was a BMW M3 painted in a very simple design being made up of just three colours, white at the front, yellow in the middle and black at the rear. The front of the car is the most important bit as this is the bit that you would see first if the car was about to pass yours. White although very bright, was just not distinctive enough and something a bit more prominent was needed. They settled on blue, not just any blue of course, it had to be bright and they chose Pactra candy blue. This wasn’t too far removed from black and a quick sketch with Mark's daughter Alex’s felt pens revealed that it went with yellow OK too. And so they had their colours, candy blue over white at the front, white in the middle and fluorescent yellow over white at the rear. Over the years the colours have changed shade a fair bit, usually depending on how far Ian could thin the paint in his airbrush. They have had to adapt the design somewhat depending on what type of car they happen to be painting, but generally the Benwell blue, white and yellow cars became well known up and down the country.
One deviation from their new team image came in November 1991 when they took part in the Annual Model Engineering Exhibition at the Black Lion Sports Centre in Gillingham. The Parkwood club undertook every year to put on a demonstration of Radio Control Car racing and this year Mark & Ian thought they would bring some light relief. They bought a couple of Classic American Hot Rod type body shells and painted some quite stunning designs. They put stock motors in these cars and geared them as low as they would go to make a slow driving exhibition/race. This proved to be extremely successful and many people commended them.
The over riding factor which has kept the team fresh over the years is the fact that they have always tried to do something different. It was clear right from the start that 1992 was going to be a development year for Team Benwell and strangely enough the only year that they would not race on-road. Mark had bought a new car, an Associated Electric RC10 just before Christmas so development for him was just a matter of trying different set-ups (with Ian’s help) on an already established car. Ian on the other hand took a totally different approach in that he decided to design and build his own 2WD off-road car. The word ‘design’ is used in its loosest possible sense, as this was just a flat piece of GRP (glass reinforced plastic) with bits of other cars bolted to it. To be more specific it had a Schumacher Top Cat front end, a Kyosho Laser rear end and a Schumacher CAT XLS short wheel base body shell. The gearbox had to be turned back-to-front so that the motor hung out over the back of the car and in doing so meant that you had to time the motor backwards??? To say this car handled badly was an understatement. It went really well in a straight line but trying to make the car go round corners usually resulted in the car ploughing ahead in a straight line. At a 2WD regional meeting at Crawley in the wet, even with the spikiest of front tyres, the only way to get the car round some of the tighter turns was to bounce it off the track markers. This car had serious understeer. The problem was that the top cat steering design with its inboard shock absorbers didn’t work very well anyway. Together with the fact that there was so much weight over the rear wheels that on acceleration nearly all the weight transferred to the rear of the car so it would only steer when there was no power being applied, but Mark seems to remember it did terrific wheelies.
Christmas 1991 and the team acquired a video camera and so during the early part of 1992 they spent a good deal of time filming themselves. This was a very important development. They discovered that it was much easier trying to understand how these cars worked watching a video of them afterwards rather than actually driving the cars. So they would video nearly every meeting and some practice sessions at the Medway track and then spend hours replaying them trying to learn the way forward. Or it could be that they were just extremely sad.
Ian continued development with the prototype until frustration and ridicule drove him to buy a Traxxas TRX1. Mark's car had always been competitive, after all it was the current world championship winning car, but Mark wasn’t. Ian was the better driver but the car was letting him down so this was a turning point for Team Benwell, they now had a competitive driver with a competitive car. Ian first drove this car on April 18th 1992 at the Team Tanaplan Grand Prix and to be perfectly honest it didn’t handle much better than the prototype, but at least it had scope. Ian found out that the RC10 25 degree caster blocks fitted to this car gave it much more steering and it wasn’t long before it started to look really good. Ian’s R & D skills were now starting to show, skills which were to be so invaluable later on.
This meeting although not a very successful one for them (Mark finished in the G final and Ian in the F) was important for a number of reasons. Firstly they learnt that speed wasn’t everything. Jamie Booth, arguably one of the best drivers of the 1980’s, had what looked like the fastest car ever built but it handled terribly. One memorable moment was when Jamie, on his first practice lap, came thundering down the main straight and flew off the tabletop jump, which was positioned about half way down. The car flew about fifteen feet and landed perfectly on all four wheels, we gasped in amazement and thought he had got the technique sussed until the very next lap when again he flew fifteen feet and cart wheeled into a pile of bits. As Martin Brundle would say "He flew straight to the scene of the accident". The second important thing they learnt (or rather Mark learnt) was not to tangle with a car being driven by a bratty kid with an equally bratty father. I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say that the very nature of off-road racing means that by the law of averages eventually you will have a coming together with another car. This normally results in the first party saying "sorry" and the second party acknowledging the apology. On the odd occasion it will result in the first party saying "sorry" and the second party not saying much at all or saying something like "Arse hole". Very, very rarely it will result in the first party saying "sorry" and the second party’s father threatening to punch the first party’s lights out. The first party then proposing to take the second party’s father up on his offer and the second party’s father then spending the next fifteen minutes complaining to the race director about the conduct of the first party. Did I mention the second party’s name? Oops I must have forgotten that as well. So by default the third important thing they learnt was stick to on-road racing, it’s less hazardous to ones health.
The first real test for the Traxxas came at the 2WD regional meeting at Medway. The new tyre to have at this track was the Losi X pattern, whether it was the pattern or the compound I’m not sure but only the rear tyres worked well. Ian, not wanting to miss an opportunity to be different actually managed to make a set for the front of his car by cutting up a pair of rears removing the ‘X’ bit from the middle, effectively making them narrower and gluing the two halves back together. A bit crude and unheard of then but totally acceptable today, they worked really well, so well that this meeting was Ian’s first A final, quite a debut. Two weeks later they went back to Medway and everyone was appearing with front tyres made from cut up rears.
The 2WD Regional meetings were really enjoyable times for both Ian and Mark, leaving them with many stories to tell as Mark recalls. "Me and Ian were at the Crawley meeting mentioned earlier and we were both standing watching the top heat and drivers such as Kevin Moore, Wayne Darwell, Luke Burley, Brennan Ralls and Ben Sturnam who were on top form flying round this fairly small track. The main straight was in two bits, separated in the middle by a 45 degree right hand curve which the good drivers could take almost flat out. It was at the end of this section of the track, the incident happened. Wayne Darwell’s all new Schumacher Cougar II was at full speed 4/5ths of the way along the straight when suddenly it just stopped, and when I say it stopped, it just stopped dead as if it had hit an invisible brick wall. This is something you have to see in order to appreciate the violent nature of such an event. The cause later turned out to be a simple case of the rear suspension pin snagging the plastic netting which was under the grass, but at the time it was certainly a strange sight to see. Another incident happened at the same meeting. Ian and I were both at our pit table when suddenly it began to rain very hard. We quickly threw all the equipment into the boot, pushed the chairs under the table and jumped into the car and waited for the rain to stop. Luckily it stopped as quickly as it had started and we jumped back out and began to unpack the equipment again. We then got the surprise of our lives when I picked up my car and put it on the pit table, not really paying too much attention we both suddenly noticed the car starting to move slowly sideways across the table and drop to the ground. We were both in total amazement when Ian noticed a thin film of what looked like wallpaper paste covering the table. Of course, I now remembered that this paste table had once been used for just that purpose and the sudden downpour had released all the dried paste, which had soaked into the wood. For a long time after this the term ‘paste table’ meant just that".
During 1992 Mark and Ian had another activity outside radio control car racing, they both tried their hand at making home brew, and in true Benwell style managed to combine the two activities. This was a fairly simple process involving making the home brew at home, obviously, and then drinking it at a race meeting. Ian decided fairly quickly that this activity was having a detrimental effect on his ability to handle a racing car. However, it took Mark well over a year to come to the same conclusion, which is probably why he doesn't recall much of 1992.
1992 was a busy year for the team; they were competing in the regional off road meetings. Other club meetings including Eden Park, Maidstone and Medway. One-off meetings at Eastbourne and Tanaplan etc. Weekday meetings at Leybourne Grange. A summer and winter series at Parkwood and also the very enjoyable 3 hour endurance meeting at Parkwood. This turned out to be a very successful meeting attracting seven teams from all over Kent, with "Moores Performance House All Stars" taking the honours. With drivers like Richmond Rogers, Richard Bettany and Matt Benfield it was hardly surprising. Benwell had a pretty good team too, with three temporary members, Chris & Martin Reeve and Steve Ramsden. Amazingly enough Mark also found time to become Chairman of the Medway Off Road Club around this time.
The annual Model exhibition at the B
lack
Lion sports centre in November was also on their fixture list and they
were struggling to think of something to top the previous years Hot Rods.
Mark decided on a two-wheel drive truck, which he spent more than the
usual amount of time painting, it even had wood effect rear panels. Ian
on the other hand decided to do something really radical.
Presenting the Benwell prototype MK2 - A four-wheel steer PB mini mustang. Ian had an old PB mini mustang and in Ian's own words modified it in the following way. "I cut away the centre of the chassis to allow the cells to run down the middle like an RC10. It had short shocks all round a Futaba 131sh servo with a long link rod to a rear steering bell crank mounted by the motor. I can’t remember where all the extra steering bits came from but it was a normal two bell cranks and drag link affair. I ran it with Schumacher blue two row studs on the front and soft on the rear. I can't remember who I borrowed them from but I know they wanted them back after the first run. This was easily the best indoor, slippery floor car anywhere at the time. And I could have won anything with it. Basically I had to set the car up with maximum lock on the front and minimum on the rear and then run the steering rate as low as possible. Even a tiny amount of lock had the car doing tight circles. The beauty of it was that it wouldn’t spin out no matter how hard you pushed it. But like all the best motorsport innovations it got banned so it was back to the drawing board".
Other enjoyable times during 1992 were two floodlit meetings at the Eastbourne off road club. The first in August which started about 5 o’clock in the afternoon and meant a lot of hanging around waiting for it to get dark. The second was a Halloween special and it was at this meeting that Mark had his first off-road A final win. This was special to him not just for the win but because it was the first, and one of the very few times that he beat Ian fair and square. During the early years Ian became Mark's benchmark and so on the very rare occasions when he got the better of him, it lifted him and made it seem worthwhile.
It was during the 1992 summer meetings at Parkwood that they first noticed a very badly set-up RC10 being driven quite well by a young kid called Chris Tester. He looked about nine but was in fact thirteen. Ian started giving him a few tips on car set-up after picking up the car at one meeting and noticing that there wasn’t any oil in the shock absorbers! Simple things at first, like, "You really should have a wing on the car and tyres generally grip better when they actually have some spikes left on them". The encouraging thing was that Chris took all the advice and acted on it.
By the end of 1992 Mark and Ian had decided that Chris had a natural talent that neither of them had. He could drive a racing car really quickly and listened to what they told him. There was no doubt about it but he had no idea about car set-up or how good he was and the only way they could ensure his talent was exploited, I mean, encouraged was to invite Chris to join the team. Mark would go on to explain "This wasn’t the only reason; he was a really likeable lad who was dead keen to learn everything he could and this was a quality which made him a pleasure to be with. We didn’t tell him how good we thought he was though".
To show him they meant business they quickly instigated the ‘Benwell Trophy’, which they decided would, in their opinion, be awarded to the most improved driver of the year at the Parkwood club. Mark had a really nice bronze replica of an off-road buggy that his Dad had made the year before. So he got him to put a base on it together with a couple of brass plates and they presented it to Chris at the Parkwood winter series trophy presentation. He had no idea what was happening and they explained that the presentation was also an invitation to join the team. To say he was chuffed is an understatement, you would have thought they had just asked him join Ferrari to replace Michael Schumacher.
Because Chris was so young his parents were naturally suspicious of the fact that two grown men were taking an interest in their son, and Mark and Ian were summoned to meet them at Chris’s house. They were just being caring parents, after all they didn’t know them, only what Chris had told them. Mark explained (out of Chris’s earshot) that he thought he had an exceptional talent and that they were offering to take him to a higher level of competition, and with their help let him fulfil his potential. Chris's parents agreed and so it wasn’t long before they were off on the road to their first meeting.
Ian and Mark had decided towards the end of 1992 that they would be getting back onto tarmac in 1993. However, they had now just committed themselves to a year of ‘off-road’ racing with Chris this meant that it was going to be a busy year and one in which they needed to wear different hats.
The ‘close season’ was becoming a traditional time for team meetings, planning the year ahead and painting the team body shells as well as drinking copious amounts of Benwell Brew, and this year was to be no different. Mark and Ian had the off-road year with Chris pretty well mapped out but still hadn’t decided what type of on-road class they should do. Toward the end of the previous season Ian had started reading the race reports for the new Tamiya Eurocup series in Radio Race Car. This described a ‘one make, one model’ (Tamiya F1) control class type of racing. This type of racing appealed to them because, above all else, it was cheap. Once you had bought the car there was very little else to spend your money on other than tyres. This was because the rules didn’t allow you to make changes to the car. So it was decided that 1993 would be Team Benwell’s entry into the exciting world of Tamiya Eurocup.
Preparation for the Eurocup meant late night practice driving round the Homebase car park at Horsted, just to get used to how these strange little cars handled. There was only one tyre available and two different motors and since these motors were so different in power output there really was only one choice. As for car adjustment, well there wasn’t any really. There was one screw which held the rear T piece on and this could either be tight or loose. Ian would later write a complete volume on how to set up a Tamiya F1, and to this day I don’t know how he found so much to write about.
As a warm up to the Eurocup Mark and Ian entered the Model Engineers Exhibition meeting at Earls Court in London. This is where the top drivers in the country all get together for four or five days racing in different disciplines. They entered the F1 class just to see how they would fair against some stiff opposition. The track was a makeshift carpet affair, which had huge ripples all the way down the main straight so cars hopped, skipped and jumped their way down the fastest bit of the track. Of course it was the same for everyone and once they had learnt how to cope with this, they settled down to turning in some fairly respectable lap times. The result of the meeting escapes them, but they didn’t disgrace themselves and it gave them encouragement for the season ahead.
The first Eurocup meeting of the year was at Ashby in Leicestershire, which is a good three-hour drive. So Mark and Ian decided to uphold the Benwell tradition and take their tents and camp over night. Mark now takes up the story "In hindsight this was probably one of the worst mistakes we have ever made and without doubt makes for the most vivid memory of the whole ten years of Team Benwell. We arrived fairly late on Saturday but still managed to get some practice in before it got dark. If my memory is correct we sat in the pitting tent during the evening rebuilding our cars while watching a Frank Bruno fight on Ian’s mini TV and consuming a fair amount of the dreaded Benwell Brew. This was mid April and the nights were still a bit on the chilly side, but we had come prepared with a thick jumpers and good sleeping bags. Or so we thought. After a couple of pints we both retired to our tents and settled down for a good nights sleep. I was woken at about two o’clock in the morning by the usual need to have a pee, realising that the ground outside the tent had turned a bit crunchy I put my extra jumper on as I had a feeling it was going to get pretty cold. ‘Pretty cold’ has to be the understatement of the year. By four o’clock it was minus three degrees centigrade and the reason I know this is because I had my thermal ni-cad charger in the tent with me. I thought I was the only one freezing to death and it wasn’t until we both emerged from our respective tents at about seven o’clock that Ian told me how cold he was during the night. To demonstrate just how cold it was the elastic fasteners that held the windows shut on our pitting tent actually froze solid and snapped when we tried to unhook them. When the organising club members arrived we went up to the pitting hall and had some breakfast. This not only warmed me up but also gave me chronic indigestion, which lasted all day. We called into Tracey’s parents house on the way home where luckily her Mum had some extra strong mints, which did the trick".
So Team Benwell’s first experience of Tamiya Eurocup was a pretty miserable one, but they did both make the B final which wasn’t a bad result considering they still had a lot to learn.
Prior to letting Chris loose on the regional circuit (excuse the pun), Mark and Ian took him to a small indoor venue to get him used to close contact racing, and crikey this place was small. The venue was in Addington and they raced in a tiny hall with a polished wooden floor. To demonstrate how small it was they had to pit in the kitchen and stand on the stage to race. The track was about three feet wide at best and a five minute heat would see them doing somewhere in the region of 25 laps which is roughly a lap every 12 seconds! Chris took to this type of racing very well, so Ian figured he would have no problem with the rough and tumble that was to come.
So to Chris’s debut with Team Benwell. The date 7th March 1993, the venue, the most hated of all tracks, Eden Park. It wasn’t a regional meeting and the only reason they were there was because Ian felt it would be good practice for the regional meeting on the 28th March. Mark, on the other hand would have preferred to stay at home. No one remembers the outcome of this meeting or the regional that followed, but I do remember Chris’s enthusiasm, his eagerness to learn and the fact that he found it so easy to learn his way round a strange track so quickly.
During the summer Mark decided it was time to got in on the act of producing a scratch-built car. He really liked the shape of the new Schumacher Cougar 2000 bodyshell but the car itself wasn’t as good as the RC10 he was using, and since the body shell wouldn’t fit on his car he had little choice but to make his own. Enter the Benwell prototype MK 3. It was basically all the running gear from Mark's old RC10 with a chassis he made out of GRP in order to fit the Schumacher Cougar 2000 body shell. He was under no illusions that he would be hard pushed to improve the handling of an RC10, he just liked the Cougar shell. This car handled pretty badly although was quite good on bumpy tracks because the chassis had so much flex in it.
3rd July 1993 and for the first time ever there was a Team Benwell meeting without Ian. Chris and Mark had entered the Wings & Wheels Spectacular at the North Weald Aerodrome in Harlow, Essex and the Benwell prototype MK3 would get it’s first test. This meeting was memorable for three reasons. 1. They both got sunburnt. 2. Chris demonstrated that he hadn’t learnt anything from Ian and Mark when Mark noticed his rear wishbone mounts were back to front, thus giving the car huge amount of rear wheel toe-out. And 3. Mark won. Yep, he actually won the A final, and he's still got the trophy to prove it. The prototype MK3’s flexible chassis was just perfect for this mega bumpy track and in front of a packed crowd he ran away with it. Not only did he win but he beat some good drivers one of which was Steve Brace who drove for the UK team in the 1989 world off-road championships in Australia.
Mark's memories from the 1993 regional series are a bit sketchy, as he writes: "The only one that springs to mind was the Crowborough round. As usual I took a two litre lemonade bottle filled with Benwell Brew and proceed to drink the whole lot before practice. Well, the prototype MK3 wasn’t as easy to drive here as it was at the Wings & Wheels meeting, or it could be that I was just too drunk to drive it properly, so I concentrated on trying to film the other two just so that I could watch what I missed at a later date. I know that Ian had a good meeting finishing either second or third in the A final".
Meanwhile back on planet Eurocup the circus moved on to Stafford, Southampton, Tibshelf, Bournemouth and then on to Aldershot and it was at the Tibshelf meeting that Mark and Ian had another memorable event. 18th July 1993 and as was the tradition they travelled up the day before the meeting, did some practice and then ‘hit the town’. The small village of Tibshelf is basically just one long street with a few shops and lots of pubs. I think there are three pubs and one working men’s club and the street is just a short walk across a field with a cricket pitch roped off in the middle. They decided to start at one end of the street and work their way down visiting all the local hostelries along the way. The short walk across the field to the street was fairly easy sober and in daylight, however, it wasn’t so easy drunk and in pitch darkness. As Mark recalls: "We had been walking quite a while when I said to Ian "surely we must be getting near to the cricket pitch by now" and with that I fell over the rope that was marking off the wicket and fell flat on my face". I’m sure there was more to it than that but in Mark's drunken state this is all he can recall although Ian seemed to remember: "He spent a lot of time trying to get up".
The Southampton meeting was also incident packed, it was here that Mark had a disagreement with Paul Daily, a fiery Scotsman who he upset by parking his car on the main straight well off of the racing line while he adjusted the steering on his transmitter. Paul drove straight into the back of Mark's car and an argument ensued. What made it quite funny to people watching was the fact that the rostrum was fairly full and they actually put down their transmitters so that they could gesture with clenched fists. They apologised to each other afterwards once they had both calmed down and after a quiet word from Colin Spinner, and became good friends. It was also at this meeting that a young lad called Chris Barrett, who was seven years old for about five and a half years, was found to be using tyres which had been previously treated with additive. This was totally against the rules but Colin Spinner allowed him to carry on using the tyres after his dad pleaded poverty. This prompted several people to cheat by applying additive to their tyres and giving the same sob story, and it all got very silly. Mike Haswell who was pitting next to Mark and Ian was quite open about his cheating, but none the less used WD40 instead of proper additive, a known substitute, so that no one could smell it.
The Stafford meeting was memorable for Mark as it was here that he got his first A final and Ian got his first win. This was to be the first of many for Ian and in fact it would be eight years before Ian didn’t make an A final in any saloon car meeting, quite an amazing feat. Mark's A final place was really as a result of getting lucky with the weather during qualifying. To be fair though he did drive quite well and after all it is a track that both Ian and Mark know well. Mark was in one of the first heats and it was very wet during his first qualifying run. The wet weather tyre option (Tamiya Caps) was an especially grippy compound and this combined with the fact that he drove well and the track started to dry for the remainder of the round, gave him a really good qualifying time. The track was now drying, but it dried so slowly that the qualifying times just got slower and slower as the track remained in the ‘not quite wet/not quite dry’ state, damp I think the word is. So there he was, third on the grid, which at Stafford is the front row because of the three-row grid formation that is used there. The final was a bit disappointing. Mark made the fatal mistake of changing tyres from wets to drys just before the final, although he felt that it was a justifiable change, the lack of front-end grip caught him out and he went from hero to zero at the first corner. Although he managed to fight his way back up to fourth place I still think he could have won without the first corner crash. So what of Ian at this time. Well he not only notched up Team Benwell’s first ever win in Eurocup but he did it in both classes F1 and touring car. Aldershot was pretty un-memorable, Ian made the A final and that’s about all. Round three was in Scotland so Mark and Ian decided to give it a miss (strange, they wouldn’t think twice now).
These we’re incredibly exciting times for Ian and Mark. Each meeting was an adventure and each meeting they would discover something new. They would ponder for hours afterwards, usually at Mark's house over cups of tea, about an idea that Ian would have about the way ahead. They would dream up wild innovations that at the time seemed impossible to bring to fruition, but later would eventually succeed and then get banned by the BRCA, but more of that later. I seem to remember they even had plans to build a wind tunnel!!!
Meanwhile back in the dirt as a change from the regional series of races they decided to introduce Chris to the Team Tanaplan Grand Prix. This was held at a different venue from the previous year, the Chesham off road club in Buckinghamshire, and a much nicer track altogether. Sanyo 1700 SCRC cells had just been released and together with their new Reedy Mr T (13x3) motors they were really smokin', or so they thought. This meeting was starting to attract the country’s top drivers and they were so much quicker and more talented than Mark, Ian or Chris. Having said that I think Ian made the B final, Chris made the C final and Mark made D, a definite improvement on the previous year. The track was extremely long here, so stringing together a few decent laps was very difficult in fact in a five minute heat they were only doing about eight or nine laps which demonstrates how long the lap was. The only outstanding memory to come from this meeting is when Rory Cull found that he could use a large concrete jump that was just before a 90 degree corner to completely cut the corner. Mark explains: "We thought the first time he did it was just a fluke, but when he did it time and time again we began to realise that this was some of the most accurate off-road car control we had ever seen".
The Eurocup was drawing to a close with the final round taking place at the West London Racing Centre, Ian only needed an A final place to be certain of qualifying for the European Finals in France and his lowly eighth place (by his standards) secured it. So Benwell's first venture into Eurocup was over, Mark finished up round about 14th place and Ian got to the European finals on his first attempt, pretty good going. France was quite a steep learning curve for Ian and he only managed 12th place but after all it was early days. One important discovery was made during the French Eurocup finals and that was that Ian had become blue, white and yellow dependent. The British team had some matching Footwork body shells painted in a matching colour scheme of orange, yellow and something else and Ian was really struggling. He then found that he drove much better when he swapped for the familiar Team Benwell shell, so there was substance to his theory.
A new venue sprang up in Essex during 1993 held in an indoor equestrian arena, Harwood Hall on a Wednesday evening. The floor was about a foot deep in what looked like a mixture of peat and soil and was a very strange surface to race on. It was hard packed but became very loose and after a while a deep trench-like racing line developed which once you got in it you could slingshot round the corners quite fast but the minute you got out into the loose stuff you lost so much time. You needed very spiky tyres and very good cells as the nature of the racing surface just drained the life out of them. Mark and Ian visited this place several times during the winter but never really got that enthusiastic and the only notable memories of this place is that it had a great bar where you could sit and drink and watch horses jumping in another arena. I also remember one particular 2WD final when Mark beat Ellis Stafford.
The Parkwood club generally moves indoors for the winter and 93/94 was no exception. The venue for this year was Kingsnorth Power Station, which was a bit of a pain because they had the use of a large sports hall type room, in the middle of the power station, which meant lugging all the equipment up three flights of stairs. There was a lift if you could be bothered to wait for it, but it was one of those industrial open fronted lifts that looked extremely dangerous. Then there was a fair trek right into the heart of the power station. This aside, it was quite a good surface for an indoor track and it was also good to race without pressure. One thing that has become noticeable to Mark, is that as the years went on, the seriousness increased and the fun element diminished somewhat, so it was really nice for him to be back racing with the people of the Parkwood club. The hall they were using was fairly slippery but drivable if you were careful. This makes sure the fun element remains as it is very difficult to take things serious when you spend most the race sliding sideways. The most fun they had was watching other people trying to take it seriously. Ian recalled someone even racing their car with two packs of cells in it as they were convinced that the extra weight gave them better grip, Mark thought that all it did was make the crashes more spectacular and more expensive.
March 1994 and Team Benwell decided to have a ‘press day’ on the field near the old Parkwood club. This shake down involved inviting selected members of the press to the event and driving all their ‘off road’ cars in turn. Both Ian and Chris had new cars and all three of them had brand new freshly painted body shells so they took this opportunity to do an F1 style ‘new car release’. It’s a shame nobody from the press was there to see it, but then again at this time they didn’t know anyone to ask.
The winter of 93/94 also meant preparing for the 1994 Tamiya Eurocup. This was to be Chris’s first season in Eurocup and both Ian and Mark were convinced all three of them could qualify for the European finals. Ian decided to devote his attentions to just the Saloon car class, with Chris and Mark concentrating on F1. The Eurocup became their life for the summer, with every year making more friends and re-acquainting themselves with old ones. The opening round was at TEMAC in Basildon, Essex. This was a brand new track, which was expected to become the jewel in the crown for UK Radio control car racing. In reality, it was a huge disappointment and one of the worse tracks we had ever raced on. It was basically a huge banked oval with lots of track in the infield that could be configured into lots of different designs. The reality was it was too bumpy to race at speed and if it rained it didn’t drain. The Eurocup meeting was Mark's best race for quite a while. Mark and Ian had made some important discoveries with the F1 during the winter, which stretched the rules to their limit and they couldn’t be sure that they would work. Thankfully they did and both Chris and Mark made the A Final. Mark in third place and Chris in tenth. However, the most memorable meeting they had at TEMAC was a couple of months later when Chris and Mark entered the Radio Race Car Oval championship. They ran their F1 cars with virtually no modification except very sticky tyres and their LRP blue modified motors. Mark recalls: "Because of the bumps they were very difficult to drive but rewarding when you actually strung together a few good laps. I can’t remember where we came, but the main memory was Chris Granger’s PRO10 being so fast, it actually became airborne down the back straight".
So back to the Eurocup and the circus moved to Bournemouth, a strange indoor track situated in an old warehouse in the middle of an industrial estate. The track area was very long and narrow and as usual for indoor venues, made of carpet, which meant using additive. Mark didn't enjoy this place, probably because he doesn’t like using additive as it makes the car too responsive and too twitchy and you need super accurate car control, - not his style at all. Mark and Ian had raced there the year before but didn’t really learn much. So they decided to drive the 150 miles or so there and back both days, as you can imagine on an industrial estate there was no overnight camping. Sunday morning was something they'll both remember for quite a while, after all this was April and there was 3 inches of snow on the ground. Chris’s parents brought him down on the Sunday and the meeting itself was very un-eventful, in that none of them won. Mark had a reasonable result in that he won the B final, and as it was an eight car final because of the size of the track this was a good result for him. Another memory of this meeting, and in fact most of the indoor meetings that Team Benwell have attended in their ten years together, is the smell of ‘Traktite’. This is the tyre additive that was at the centre of the controversy at Southampton the previous year and has an unmistakable orangey smell. It is allowed in Eurocup indoor meetings and the smell is wonderful. On to Round three at Aldershot with Chris and Mark still looking for their first win. It was here that Mark and Ian first started to take notice of a guy called Barry Wibbley, mainly because he had a silly name but also because he managed to get the hop up front tyres to work and put in some scorching times and qualified well up in the A final. Aldershot came and went, as did Castle Coombe and Stafford. Ian was notching up win after win and looking set to go to the European finals in Holland but things weren’t looking so easy for Chris and even worse for Mark.
Team Benwell were at this time still competing in the regional off road meetings although their enthusiasm was diminishing it was sometimes a healthy distraction from the Eurocup. The most memorable meeting for Mark from this series and probably of all time was the Crawley round. The date was 1st May 1994 and there was a strange buzz around the place. Many model car racers are keen motor sport fans, and the day before saw the death of Roland Ratzenburger at Imola qualifying for the San Marino grand prix. What nobody realised; there was more to come. Mark takes up the story: "They say that most people remember where they were when John F Kennedy was assassinated, well Ian, Chris and I are too young to remember this but we will all remember where we were when Ayrton Senna died. I remember a large group of people gathered around a portable TV and when I enquired what was happening someone just said "Senna’s crashed". Well this was pretty dramatic news in it's self, but it wasn’t until I got home and saw the news on TV that the full horror unfolded. Ayrton Senna was dead. I remember phoning Ian and not really being able to say much at all. I think it was the shock of knowing that one of my heroes and arguably one of the greatest racing drivers of all time could be here one minute and gone the next".
Back to the Eurocup and Ashby, with the memory of the freezing cold night of the previous year still fresh in their minds they decided to give the camping lark a miss and just go up for the race day itself. Chris came with them for a change and for the first time ever all three of them were on the pace. Chris and Mark had finally managed to make the hop-up front tyres work and by the end of qualifying they had an all Benwell front row in F1, with Mark taking his first ever pole position and Ian on pole in touring car. At last Team Benwell had arrived, up until now they had had a few wins and a few poles but all very fragmented, so finally they had total domination. The F1 A final however, didn’t go to plan. Mark made a good start and started pulling away from the field when on lap six or seven ambition got the better of adhesion (I knew I’d get that one in somewhere). He went wide and lost front-end grip on the dust around the banked bend at the end of the straight. He ended up on the grass and in his struggle to get back onto the track he drove straight into the path of Pete Stevens. His battery connector parted company with his battery, - Race over. He was a bit disappointed (only Tracey knows how disappointed) and for the rest of the season his bad luck continued. Ian won as usual, and Chris came fourth.
Round seven and eight was Halifax and Tibshelf and the latter always tends to throw up a few surprises and this year was to be no exception. Picture the scene: six o’clock Sunday morning and there was Mark fast asleep in his tent when he was awoken by what can only describe as the sound of a jet engine powering up. He peered cautiously out the front of his tent and look up to see the basket of a hot air balloon just twenty feet above his head, luckily it was going up and not coming down!
The racing itself was fairly low key. I remember Ian winning so comfortably it was embarrassing, in fact he coasted the final couple of laps. Mark on the other hand had bad luck once again, He was flying round in the final round of qualifying desperately needing a good time, He had just secured some of the fastest laps all day and heading for at least a top 3 place when his pinion gear fell off. Ian would call it bad preparation but only when it happened to someone other than him, then it was bad luck.
By the time they got to Halifax, Ian and Mark were very surprised that Chris hadn’t had a win yet or at the very least a TQ (Top Qualifier) position, after all he was the gifted one. The fact that Mark had beaten him to the first TQ and that he was consistently out qualifying him was starting to play on his mind a bit and to Mark and Ian's relief and Chris's too no doubt, he TQ’d at this very meeting. The pressure got to him in the final however, and he only finished third but surely his first win was just around the corner.
The 2WD regional meetings were getting a bit of a trial and none more so than Eden Park. Not their favourite of tracks and this meeting although extensively filmed by them was about as boring as it gets. The next round was Parkwood (rained all day) and then on to Surbiton (rained all afternoon). They seemed to have so much better weather at the Eurocup meetings. The highlight of this meeting was Mark buying a second hand Boss Cat to convert to a 1/10th scale touring car. Toward the end of 94 he entered the Boss Cat in the Parkwood round of the 4WD regional series. This was one of the few meetings that he attended on his own since Benwell started and he qualified and finished eighth. He just wanted to remind everyone he could race off road as well. The down side to this meeting was that because he qualified for the A final which was three legged. It meant he had to use his three packs of decent cells 3 times each including practice.
The West London Racing Centre was the venue for the penultimate round of the 94 Eurocup. Mark's chances of going to Holland were long gone and so the pressure was off to enjoy the rest of the season and to try and assist Chris, as he needed every point he could get. As it turned out he didn’t need to help him, Chris managed all on his own to finally secure his first win of the Tamiya Eurocup.
So they moved to Basildon for the UK finals, Ian was already certain of going to Holland but Chris needed to be in the A final to be sure of the final qualifying place. After four rounds of qualifying, just to keep everyone on tenterhooks they had the worst possible scenario Chris had only qualified in eleventh place (pole in the B final) and therefore not able to score the required amount of points for Holland. He was very upset and as Mark had qualified in eighth place in the A final he was contemplating asking Colin Spinner if they could swap places when Ian noticed the driver who had qualified in 10th place in the A final had not competed in the required amount of rounds as per the rules. A hastily convened meeting ensued between Ian and Colin Spinner and eventually it was agreed that Chris would be allowed to line up in last place in the A final all he had to do now was get the result. It was a really good race for Mark, he made up a few places early on and settled down very quickly in third place. Mark was constantly asking Ian where Chris was as he was quite prepared to give up a place if needed but he needn’t have worried, Chris kept his cool and finished 6th thus ensuring his place in Holland.
Letter written to Mark from Chris September 1994
It was all over again for another year and Chris, like Ian had qualified for Europe in his first year of trying and in doing so proved to Mark and Ian that they were quite justified in putting their time and effort into his development. Mark was once again disappointed, He always knew that Ian and Chris were better than him, but never the less it didn’t make it any easier when they were going to Holland and he wasn’t. At the end of 1994 he made a decision to give it one more year and whatever the outcome, call it a day.
I didn’t go to Holland so obviously it would be very difficult for me to write about all the fun and games that ensued. Ian has already written his account of the weekend and there is little point in regurgitating this, all I can do is quote the article, which appeared in Radio Control Model Cars magazine. "The first formula 1 A final saw a battle between Knut Brekke and Chris Tester which was to prove conclusive in the overall result. Round two saw Chris just sixteen years old and his first Eurocup competition take on the best Tamiya Europeans and after a hectic first and second lap settle into a race winning drive. Leg three was just too much pressure and Chris struggled to ninth place. So with two races to count it all depended on Knut’s position. Race winner was the answer to the guy from Norway was European champion with Chris as runner up. The DTM finals were elevated to top of the bill and interest was high in what is considered the premier class in Europe. Leg one saw UK’s Ian Foxwell finish in fifth place and Ricardo Ferretti winning. Leg two saw Ian right on the pace and he completely dominated the pace putting in the only fourteen lapper of the whole event. Ferretti finished second which put him in a good position for the final third leg. Ian didn’t have a good run and was unable to repeat the previous performance which ensured that the Italian would be visiting Japan as the European champion. Hard Luck Ian, so near but so far"
For the record here are the results. Chris qualified sixth and finished second; Ian qualified fourth and finished second. And so as the article pointed out "so near but so far". However, Team Benwell had finally made its mark in Europe and this is what the Eurocup series organiser Colin Spinner had to say about them:
Following on from Ian Foxwell's successful appearance at the 1993 Eurocup Finals at Vichy in France, TEAM BENWELL planned their attack on the 1994 British Series in the hope of more success in this highly competitive radio controlled model car series promoted by TAMIYA, the leaders in model car technology.
1994 saw Ian and team mate Mark Bennett joined by young Chris Tester, a 14 year old who very quickly showed he had the talent to take him to the top. Meticulous preparation and testing at TEAM BENWELL brought early success in the U.K. qualifying rounds and they were the force to be reckoned with.
Both Ian and Chris qualified for the European Final, which was to be held in Apeldorn in Holland, famous for cheese and water! Yes, for four days the rain was torrential but TEAM BENWELL made the most of their expertise. With advise from previous Eurocup Finalist Graham Hill they set about conquering Europe's best TAMIYA drivers and oh so nearly came away with the top honours. Despite vociferous encouragement from Tracey normally renowned for her shyness and excellent hospitality, runner up positions in Touring Cars for Ian and in Formula 1 for Chris left them wanting more.
On their return to the U. K. plans were hatched to expand the team for 1995 and to try and lift that coveted title of European champion and the chance to compete in Japan. Watch out for their new members Barry Wibbley and Graham Hill who will be supporting and I'm sure on occasions competing with Ian, Chris and Mark throughout the coming season.
Innovative in their approach - Team Benwell introduced the two way radio system and the now obligatory Tyre Warmers to the series their only downfall in 1995 may be a guest appearance on 'Police Five' for working under cover…………
Colin Spinner
Eurocup Series Organiser
After the Eurocup had finished the guys needed something to keep their ‘thumbs in’ until they could do it all again next year, so they decided to do a bit of 1/10th scale 4WD touring car in the BRCA winter series. Mark's Dad died at this time so he took a rest from racing and spent sometime converting the Boss Cat. Ian acquired a Yokomo 4WD from John Bennett at Eltham Models. The Yoke was a really good car and Ian as always made many improvements, he ran short shock absorbers all round and a stick pack of cells up the right hand side of the car, just as everything does now – Team Benwell – ahead of the game as usual. After the series was over he gave it back to John and unknown to Ian it was copied by Richmond Rogers and all the other so called ‘works’ Yokomo drivers.
The first meeting was at WLRC and Mark and Ian both had brand new Vauxhall Calibra body shells, which they had taken more time than usual in painting and certainly looked the business. The meeting went really well for Mark qualifying in the ‘B’ final which was considered a fairly decent result given the quality of the opposition. Ian on the other hand for some reason could not get his cells to last 5 minutes and only made the ‘C’ final. The very next round was at the awful TEMAC and Mark decided to give it a miss. Ian had the TTech Predator by now and TQ'd with Ellis Stafford getting second which was a great start for the cars first meeting but then he buried himself and Ellis at the first corner and Pete Stevens won the meeting. It was a very embarrassing end to the days racing. During the winter they also did a few meetings at the Parkwood club, which this winter was outdoors on a school playground in Maidstone. Parkwood always brings their feet back down on the ground and generally are enjoyable meetings. Chris and Mark ran their 2WD buggies with old worn out green mini spike tyres and Ian ran the Predator. It was the first time that most people had seen this car and his new toy, a remotely programmable speed controller, certainly turned a few heads.
With the 1994 season over, thoughts were already turning to 1995 and a very special year for Team Benwell. This was to be the first year that they would focus their attentions on just one series. So their off-road ventures were curtailed, so much so that they would never race off-road again. A sad point in Benwell’s history.
The guys were left with Eurocup and a new discipline
for Chris and Mark, - Front Wheel Drive. The car they chose, or rather
Ian chose for them, was the Renault Clio. As Ian would put it "this
car had the aerodynamic qualities of a squared off brick", but it
was the only short wheel base model available and because they would be
running with stock motors and therefore relatively slow speeds, mechanical
grip was of the utmost importance. Ian would be competing in four-wheel
drive touring car again and was looking to improve on his win tally of
last year. Also new for this year was the addition of two new team members,
Barry Wibbley and Graham Hill. Barry had already been pitting with Mark,
Ian and Chris for several meetings during the end of 1994 so they had
to choose between telling him to bugger off or inviting him to join the
team. They decided that although it would be very difficult to ‘teach
an old dog new tricks’, doubtful whether they could help his driving in
anyway and they would almost certainly not learn anything from him, Barry
could become a valuable asset to the team in propping up the midfield
places. Graham was certainly the better
driver of the two, after all he was in the 1993 British Eurocup squad
in Germany. He showed them he was also much keener for them to impart
some of the Benwell philosophy on to him, and was Mark's choice for the
team.
The problem that the team had is that no sooner had they introduced two new members they found out that the Eurocup series was to be split in half. Graham and Barry would be off doing the F1 while Mark, Ian and Chris would be doing the touring car rounds at completely different meetings. So it was decided that Graham and Barry would also compete in front wheel drive as well making it a true five-man team.
During what has now become known as the ‘close season’ the team had time on their hands to analyse what they had learnt in the preceding season. It was during the 94/95 close season that Ian set about the task of writing a series of articles about such subjects as ‘How to race a Tamiya touring car’, ‘How to race an F1 car’ and probably the most informative, ‘Winning’ What follows is a short extract from this article which explains how Team Benwell approach their racing.
"Back in the early days of Team Benwell, when it consisted of just Mark and myself winning wasn’t even considered. It was more than we could manage to drive a five minute heat without crashing. We didn’t have the best cars or the quickest motors and our only real concern was to try and improve on our result from the last meeting.
Looking back there was no one point in history that we suddenly decided that we could win, but there was one thing that started the ball rolling. This was a series of articles written by Chris Fife Shaw from the Aldershot club, for Radio Race Car, entitled ‘Be Positive’. He wrote these three or four years ago and I think there was something like nine or ten of them covering every aspect of our racing. For example he talked about setting yourself realistic objectives, how to then approach your days racing to achieve them, preparing your car and equipment, the right way to race each heat, marshalling, the pros and cons of winning trophies etc. For us these proved to be invaluable as it gave us somewhere to start when trying to prepare for the racing and some ground rules to follow during the day.
These rules started off being those which were written in the magazine, but over the following years have developed into a set of our own which we swear by".
Ian’s articles were distributed amongst the team only, and it wasn’t until just this year when researching for this book, that I asked him if he had copies of them that I could use. He said he had lost his copy and then told me a story that underlines the impact that Team Benwell or rather Ian’s vast knowledge has had on the RC world. He was at a meeting, the date and venue of which is un-recorded, and being his usual helpful self was giving Jon Dyer some set up tips with his touring car. Jon suddenly said "Oh yes that’s right I remember reading that in your book" and with that produced Ian's "Tamiya Touring Car" book. It appeared that nearly every driver in the pits had a copy of it except Ian.
One other piece, which is worth reproducing, is Ian’s letter to the team in 1995. It was hidden in amongst his article on how to set up a Tamiya F1 car, probably because he didn’t want to be seen as getting too heavy. The team was becoming fragmented partly because of the new format of the Eurocup meetings but partly because they had all started having their own ideas on which direction the team should be going. Ian just wanted to give them a gentle reminder of what Team Benwell was all about:
"This is just a short note that I have put together to try and explain why we race as a team and the various factors involved in getting your car to the A Final.
Mark and myself invented team Benwell many moons ago for two very distinct reasons:
We find it much more enjoyable going racing with friends and making the whole day or weekend a more social event.
We both got better results with someone else to share problems and ideas with and to add a bit of encouragement or constructive criticism when it was required
In the beginning things were very simple because there was only Mark and myself, we both understood each other’s strengths and weaknesses and how each other approached his days racing. We also had the same targets, that being to finish in a better final than the last time, be that the A final or more likely in the early days the F final.
This all changed slightly when Chris joined, as we now we had a third person to consider and we were now becoming more successful at the regional off road and Eurocup meetings and so our individual targets became more focused i.e. win the ‘B’ final don’t just be happy with the result. This all worked out OK though as Mark and myself were developing as drivers at a similar rate and Chris was unaware of how good he was.
Unfortunately things have changed a little now and become more complicated with the introduction of both Barry and Graham to the team. This is not to say that it is worse, far from it, because had we not seen this benefiting all concerned we would not have invited them to race with us. It is just that as the team becomes larger and more successful each individual has a responsibility to his team mates to not only do well himself but to ensure that the rest of the team also gets a good result and that everyone has a good day if not a good race.
For example at a race meeting we should obviously all try to pit together and arrange the area so that each person can have an equal input into any discussions. Don’t shut someone out, be open about any ideas you may have on the track, weather, car set-up, competition etc. and discus this with the rest of the team. It could be the considered opinion of the others that your idea is incorrect but it may spark another idea from someone else and so, rather than one person make the right or wrong choice on any given problem the whole team could move forward. I say forward because even if no one is sure what the right answer is you have more chance of finding it with three, four, or five heads thinking about it than just one.
You should be supportive of your team even if they are not having a good day. Find time during each other’s heats to help them by switching them on at the start and off at the end. If possible watch their race and offer some constructive criticism if it is needed or just support if they have done a good job. When doing this tell the truth. Although no one likes to offend it doesn’t do anyone any good saying ‘well done’ if they drove like a plonker or chose the wrong tyres for example. If you’re not sure, say you’re not sure, but don’t make anything up just to sound knowledgeable, because that may lead the person in the wrong direction. E.g. I tend to offer more ideas to Mark on the handling of his car, than he does to me. This is not because he is being unhelpful but because he fully admits to not understanding certain aspects of car set-up. However, he is very observant of changes to say the weather or other people’s cars and attitudes and so proves invaluable in another area.
Look after the team’s interests. Don’t go giving away any set-up tips or ideas that the team has i.e. if the damp has just started coming out of the track and it is the considered opinion of the team that the Hop-up front tyres wont work anymore, then keep it to yourselves and don’t tell your competition, and you should always be positive in front of the opposition. One thing that shone out in the FWD class last weekend was the impact that the blue, white and yellow Benwell cars had on the opposition. Now when they go to Stafford three quarters of the field will know that they are better cars and drivers and let them past (even if on the day they aren’t) If we had spent all day telling people we had been lucky and that we never normally go this well do you think that it would be so easy then?
And last but not least during the heats and the final keep out of each other’s way. Talk to each other on the rostrum and decide between yourselves who is the quicker, and drive accordingly. This is not meant as a dig at any one person as we have all done it at some time and regretted it.
Other than this have a good days racing, enjoy yourselves and Mark and myself maybe over Sunday afternoon to cheer you on."
On to 1995 and as an indication of how serious Team Benwell was becoming here are Ian’s golden rules from 1994
Don’t Crash
Enjoy yourself
If all else fails see rules 1 and 2
And Ian’s Golden rules from 1995
Don’t Crash
Enjoy yourself
Get a banker in Round One
Continually monitor your cars performance
Only push beyond the limit when it is safe to do so
Be honest with your team mates and yourself
Be aware of the track conditions throughout the day
Be ready for the final
Never be disappointed
If all else fails see rules 1 and 2 (an old joke, but still relevant)
Yes you’re right Ian, it is an old joke.
During the latter part of 1994 Mark decided that due to other commitments he would be retiring from RC car racing and consequently leaving Team Benwell at the end of 1995. Another factor was probably that he wasn’t enjoying his racing anymore, sure he was enjoying the success, who wouldn’t? Although he still hadn’t had a win, but he is sometimes accused of living in the past and he was missing the fun that the team used to have. He would often remind himself and the rest of the team of Ian’s golden rule number two: ‘Enjoy yourself’ and Mark wasn’t. He was determined to succeed this year where he had failed in previous years, he desperately wanted to qualify for Europe, but he also wanted to enjoy it too. As you can see he was in a catch 22 situation, and so once again it would seem that enjoyment would have to take a back seat. However, he was to become pleasantly surprised.
Round one was at the horrible TEMAC track again and for Mark it felt like going to work, i.e. you didn’t particularly want to go, but it was OK when you got there. This is the only analogy I can use to describe this first meeting. Team Benwell had scaled things up again for this year, they had their two new members and their pit area now resembled a F1 hospitality suite, complete with sponsors area, a picnic table and their newly acquired Tamiya umbrella. This year they were taking things very seriously? John Bennett of Eltham Models had increased their sponsorship budget and it was during the Saturday practice that the first memorable moment of the year happened. Mark was giving the Clio its shakedown when his mobile phone rang. He parked the car in the pits straight, answered the call (from John Bennett), had a brief discussion about money and then carried on driving. What you have to remember is that mobile phones were not as popular as they are today and you can imagine the ribbing he got from the other drivers. However, he thought it was pretty cool negotiating a deal with their sponsor during the first meeting of the year. He was known as ‘Yuppie Mark’ until the novelty wore off. The second memorable moment from this meeting was the impact the team had. They won both classes. Ian of course won the Saloon and Chris won the front wheel drive, this together with Mark's fourth place and Barry’s fifth place meant an overwhelming presence of blue, white and yellow. What a perfect start to the season.
The next meeting was at their ‘home track’ Stafford and so they were looking for another good result, in fact, someone dared to suggest they could win both classes again. Nobody would have bet against Ian winning here and everyone's money was on Chris winning the FWD class again, but Mark had a sneaking suspicion that his knowledge of this technical track would stand him in good stead. Sure enough it did, after three years of competing in Eurocup it finally happened, - Mark won his first meeting. This was probably their most successful meeting of the year. Ian qualified first and won, Mark qualified first and won, Chris qualified second and came second, with Barry fourth and Graham tenth which meant 40% of the FWD grid was blue, white and yellow. 1995 was starting to look good for Team Benwell with maximum points in both classes. It was at this meeting that Tracey did the first of her famous pits walkabouts with the video camera, and got some excellent footage of Colin Spinner interviewing Mark in what he called ‘the Benwell hostility tent’. However, for most people the highlight of the Stafford meeting was the start of the FWD A final. With mounting tension the automatic countdown started and on the signal to go, ten cars shot off the line, nine forwards and one backwards. Yes we have all done it at some point in our lives, wire the motor up the wrong way round, but I can’t remember anyone doing it at such an important moment. And the culprit for this silly mistake? None other than Team Benwell’s very own Graham Hill, and it was the source of much entertainment for months to come.
Round three is something the team would like to forget about. It was at a makeshift track at the Decca Racal works club in Kingston, Surrey which didn’t really lend itself to a high priority meeting such as this. To be fair the meeting was originally scheduled for Bournemouth, who pulled out and so the switch was made at the last minute. And what of this meeting? Well, Chris won but it was probably the teams least successful meeting, with Ian only finishing third and Mark got disqualified for not having the driver figure in his car! Mark was not the only driver to be disqualified from this meeting, Lee Broadhurst was booted out for blatantly cheating. The rules state that you will not use a pinion gear greater than 26 teeth and to be perfectly honest the Kingston track was so tight and twisty that there would be no advantage in fitting a bigger one any way. But, Lee got caught with a 27 tooth pinion gear and was deemed to be driving outside of the rules and therefore disqualified. Mark was a little upset at this decision because his misdemeanour seemed trivial compared with Lee’s and yet they had been given the same punishment, so Mark decided to lodge an appeal to Colin Spinner. To Colin's credit he had a hard decision because the racing was over and he couldn’t very well change the result. He decided that any infringement of the rules no matter how trivial would result in disqualification. Mark had no choice but to accept his decision and for the rest of the year decided to call him Bernie (Ecclestone). Lee on the other hand decided to withdraw from the series and no body saw him again.
So to round four and the long drive up to one of the teams favourite tracks, Halifax. It is usually Chris or Ian that blasts everyone into the weeds. However, with the help of a beautifully prepared car and a motor that you would have given your back teeth for, Halifax was to be a good meeting for Mark. The old Halifax track was quite large. Originally an eighth scale track it made the comparatively slow FWD cars seem fairly pedestrian. Mark on the other hand was flying. In hindsight I don’t think he drove as well as he did at Stafford, it was just that the car was so damn quick, he didn’t have to. It happens every now and again that for no apparent reason a motor exists that spins so much quicker than all the others. To give you some idea, the motors Benwell were using usually spin between 11,000 and 13,000 rpm so as you can see there is already quite a variation. The motor that Mark had been nurturing since Stafford was spinning at 15,500 rpm and getting faster. He was so much faster than anyone else and because the car was handling so well it was all just so easy. He TQ’d by a huge margin after every round and because of this he was hauled into the scrutineering bay three times in a row. His car would be completely dismantled looking for a bigger pinion gear or a smaller spur gear or an illegal motor or anything that could be deemed as slightly outside the rules. But, as ever Mark was as clean as a whistle. Needless to say he got his second pole of the year and in the final after three or four laps he was nearly the length of the straight in front. It was starting to get a bit embarrassing so he started taking really wide lines around the bigger corners and backing off slightly along the straight just to let the other cars catch up a bit. So he won his second meeting and with Ian winning the 4WD in an amazing race of catch-up. Team Benwell were really beginning to dominate Eurocup. The social side of model car racing is something Team Benwell really enjoy and the people at Halifax always show great hospitality. The Bowling Green pub has been the venue for the Saturday night bash for several years and the team always get together with the other drivers and swap urban legends and also try to dispel the myth that Team Benwell were cheating in any way. It was also the venue for Mark's famous thrashing of Ian Diboll at pool in 1994.
The circus moved south again for round 5 and another makeshift track. This time at the Brands Hatch racing circuit in Kent. This was the years showcase round, held on the Sunday of the British touring car championship round in the large undercover area shaped like an air raid shelter. It was their chance to show the general public what model car racing is all about and of course Colin Spinner’s chance for some valuable PR. The meeting was fairly predictable Ian won so did Chris and Mark came fourth, which was a pretty good result for Mark as he has an inherent dislike of makeshift indoor tracks, particularly slippery ones. The organisers of the meeting (WLRC) had managed to schedule a gap in between the qualifying rounds and the finals so they could all go and watch the real size touring car race. The rain was absolutely torrential and for the first time this year the team was actually glad they were racing under cover.
On to Ashby. The meeting itself was nothing spectacular for Mark in fact he ended up qualifying in a pretty miserable sixth and then only finished eighth so the least said the better. He wasn’t to disappointed as he was now looking at dropping points so he was still in with a chance of qualifying for Europe. Ian and Chris both won again and were almost certainly going to Belgium. During the concourse event or as Chris called it the concorde event, Ian and Chris took the opportunity to have a play with their solar powered cars that they had won for their second place’s in Holland the year before. These were so slow but fun none the less and Colin Theobald took great delight in making a sun shade and thus slowing the cars to almost a stand still.
Round seven was their first visit of the year to WLRC. The reason there was to be two meetings at this venue was because the final round which was due to be held back at the flagship track, TEMAC at Basildon, had a fire earlier in the year and in putting out the blazing race control, the fire engines had dug up the truck. Best thing that could have happened to it really. So they found ourselves at West London, another of Mark's favourite tracks and one of Ian’s least favourites. One memorable moment from this meeting was the torrential downpour at the start of the FWD A final. The ironic thing is that Mark was the one that noticed the huge black cloud coming their way and yet Chris was the only one who bothered to attempt some kind of waterproofing to his electrics. The upshot of this was after four minutes of the final Chris was driving round by himself dodging the puddles and eventually won. Mark's main rival, Brian Sharp, waterlogged his electrics on lap six so Mark decided to do one more lap and then park his car and wait for the last lap signal, unfortunately this was one lap too far and his car spluttered to a halt under the drivers rostrum. It was still good enough for his customary fourth place though and things were looking good for Belgium. But without doubt the highlight of the meeting and the year was the 4WD A final. I have this race on video and have watched it over and over again and I can honestly say you will never see a better display of car control. The drivers were Ian and Richard Isherwood, who for five minutes gave a display of the highest quality racing. The lead of the race swapped about seven or eight times, cars hardly ever touching, with Ian ending up the winner. For me though the result was not important. They showed everyone just how exciting and precise radio control car racing can be and how bad Colin Theobald’s commentating can be.
By the time they got to the penultimate round at Thruxton, dark clouds were forming. Rumours were rife that Team Benwell were cheating. Of course they weren’t. However, unbeknown to Mark or Chris, because some of the other drivers couldn’t beat them and were convinced they were cheating, they took it upon themselves to bend the rules in their favour. This was something Mark only found out about after the series had finished. Ian knew about it, but took the decision not to tell Chris or Mark for two very valid reasons and although Mark was annoyed at the time, he now fully understands his thinking. Reason number one, Ian knows Mark better than most people and he knew what his reaction would be, after all Ian wanted to remain friends with the culprits. The second reason was slightly lamer but none the less still valid. Ian had worked out that it was unlikely that the people cheating would have an effect on the outcome of the championship and decided to say nothing, unless of course they did. So was it Mark's imagination or did the opposition seem quicker? Well let’s just say this was the first meeting that the front wheel drive class wasn’t won by a Benwell car. Ian however, did win again making it the longest unbeaten run in the history of the entire universe or something. Anyway it was getting predictable but he didn’t have to work quite as hard for this one as he did at West London. So there it was, Mark's sixth place was enough to qualify for the European finals in Belgium, and after three years of trying he had finally made it, or so he thought.....
You will notice by now that there are less and less funny bits. This is probably because Team Benwell were now so focused on the championship that there were very few. With hindsight it becomes obvious that things were being suggested behind the scenes about the way Benwell were dominating, and Thruxton saw the first attempts at controlling the FWD class. Because some people were obviously much faster than others it was decided that the A final would run using hand out motors. These are ten motors owned by race control, which have been run on a dynamometer and found to give all roughly the same output and then given out randomly. This was OK with Team Benwell because they knew that their domination (apart from Mark's win at Halifax) was nothing to do with horsepower anyway and took this last minute rule change in good nature. The problem arose when they were not allowed to put oil on the bearings of their hand out motors and there was a nasty moment when Eddie Diboll tried to physically stop Barry from oiling his motor. At this point I have to take you back a few pages to the part where I said that it wasn’t much fun anymore, and you’ll understand what I meant. This was absolutely ridiculous that it should come to two grown men (and Mark even joined in the verbal assault), acting like children over model cars, sound familiar? Anyway the upshot of this was that Eddie backed down and eventually came round to Benwell's way of thinking and allowed them to oil the bearings, giving Barry his best result of the year.
Just after the Thruxton meeting Colin Spinner came up with another one of his annoying last minute rule changes that meant Mark's celebrations were short lived. The old ruling stated that after the nine rounds of the series you counted your best seven towards the championship. He now decided that the final round to be held at WLRC would have to count as one of the seven so for many people, including Mark, it all rested on this final round. The drivers received this rule change through the post about a week before the finals so as you can imagine Mark was less than impressed and the pressure was on. He had worked out that he needed to finish no more than five places behind Brian Sharp in order to go to Belgium and it’s at times like these when all the little mistakes that cost him one or two places during the year all came back to haunt his weekend.
So the guys found themselves back at WLRC for the UK finals. This was to be another one of those proper two day meetings, with all four of the Tamiya disciplines competing which meant the F1’s and the Mini’s would be racing here as well. Qualifying was all day Saturday and Sunday morning, which meant the chances of different weather conditions was a possibility. However, qualifying went pretty much as the rest of the year with Ian and Chris on top and Mark in the top half of the A final. During the break between the heats and the finals there was an exciting feature of the Corrally Grand Prix with the four A and B finals competing in ten minute races for the title. Yes twenty cars on the track at once!!! Benwell had at least one driver in three of the four classes and with all of them making the A finals they had a good chance of picking up an award. Their domination continued, they won all three, Ian won the 4WD, Chris won the FWD and Barry, with a slick battery change from Chris and Mark won the F1. Quite a result. So to the final finals of the year. Chris and Ian only had to finish really to confirm their place as UK champions. Mark on the other hand needed to finish at least eighth and no more than five places behind Brian Sharpe. No problem, he took his customary fourth place, which meant he missed out on the champagne spraying, but he did get to stand on the podium for third place in the championship. Which in a nutshell meant that for the first time Ian, Chris and Mark had all qualified for Europe, and with two British Champions.
Team Benwell were not just a successful racing team but they were very good at getting new innovations written into the BRCA rule book. Not because they were good ideas but because the BRCA considered them to give an advantage that was not befitting radio control car racing. The first Benwell development that got banned was under body aerodynamic aids, then tyre warmers and lastly two-way radio communication. Figure 1 shows rulings taking directly from the 2001 BRCA handbook.
To demonstrate just how successful Benwell were during 1995, in the touring car class there were 9 meetings, which meant a possible 18 wins in the two classes, and this is how they fared.
4WD 2WD
Round 1 WIN WIN
Round 2 WIN WIN
Round 3 NO WIN WIN
Round 4 WIN WIN
Round 5 WIN WIN
Round 6 WIN WIN
Round 7 WIN WIN
Round 8 WIN NO WIN
Round 9 WIN WIN
The facts: 16 wins out of a possible 18 equates to almost a 90% success rate. Although the 4WD/2WD success rate is the same it has to be remembered that in the 4WD Ian did it all by himself. Also of the two meetings where they had NO WIN they had a second place and a third place, which meant they scored 1597 points out of a possible 1600. The team’s objective at the beginning of the year was to get all their drivers into Europe, what they actually achieved was almost total domination. And what of Barry and Graham, well they made up the numbers during 1995, made Benwell look like a proper team rather than just a bunch of mates going racing and had several A final Places, but generally this was the only contribution they made.
1995 Eurocup finals in Belgium, and to coin another one of Martin Brundle’s phrases "Just when he needed it he ran out of talent". Mark had finally made it, after three years of trying. The front wheel drive series was invented just for him and to be honest if he couldn’t do it in this class of racing then he would never do it at all.
17th September 1995 and the Benwell entourage including friends and family, left Ramsgate on their way to Ostende into what was to be the most intense weekend of their lives. The European finals in Belgium have been very well documented by Ian and there is little point in re-writing the same story. After all, Mark has spent the last 6 years trying to forget about it. Here Mark takes up the story: "My memory of the whole weekend is a bit hazy. Please don’t get me wrong, it had it’s good bits, but for those of you who are unfamiliar with the story it goes something like this: I drove better than I had ever driven before, qualified on pole, won the practice final, won the first leg of the main final, was leading the third leg of the main final needing only second place to be the European Champion, crashed on the last lap, finished fourth and walked away with nothing. Enough said?
I was always an ‘also ran’ and yet I had come closer than any other brit had done before to actually lifting the title, but I still failed. If I’d have had a crap meeting and qualified well down the field this would have been better, par for the course in fact. But instead I qualified on pole, was arguably the best driver of the weekend, came within twelve seconds of taking the title and all I got to show for it was another tacky trophy to add to my growing collection of tacky trophies. No words can explain how I felt I was totally gutted, you can see it in my face in the picture on the left, in fact six years on and I still think to myself ‘what if’. I have re-run that final lap over and over again in my mind and to this day I can’t understand why I could drive over two hundred perfect laps over the course of the weekend and then to fail on the final one, - the one that really mattered. I wanted to win this title so badly, mainly to justify my place in Belgium and also to show everyone that I wasn’t just an ‘also ran’, and at the end of the day I ended up just that".
The mood on the boat coming home was pretty sombre. Ian was also down, he had finished second for the second time and in a way came closer than Mark did. Chris seemed quite pleased with his second place especially as he had only qualified in eighth. Ian and Tracey consoled themselves by going to the cinema on the boat to watch Batman while Chris and Mark got drunk on duty free Stella. They docked at Ramsgate and all went their separate ways, Mark knew that it was over for him, even though he had decided at the beginning of the year he would not compete in 1996, the events in Belgium had removed the last remaining enthusiasm he had for the sport. Chris, Ian and Mark didn’t really speak to each other for a while, I guess Belgium had taken its toll on Team Benwell in one way or another.
Three months later and with the memories of Belgium starting to fade Mark decided to do one final meeting, January 3rd 1996. The Model Engineer Exhibition – Earls Court, London and a fitting venue for the teams swan song. They were back to a three man team and the domination was complete with Ian winning the 4WD and Chris winning 2WD and Mark taking his customary 4th place in 2WD.
As Mark had already decided to leave the team at the end of 95, Barry, Graham and Chris all decided that without him life just wasn’t worth living and entered into a suicide pact. Seriously though, I don’t know the real reasons but in 1996 the rest of the guys drifted apart and Ian was on his own. He went on to have what was probably his most successful year ever. He won the British Eurocup again and represented the UK in Switzerland. He lifted the BRCA scale saloon championship by winning every round and also won the Schumacher Cup again by winning every round. It’s worth pointing out at this point that to add insult to Mark's injury in Belgium, a British driver became European champion in the Eurocup in Switzerland. And who was that man? None other than Ian Diboll.
Ian was winning the Schumacher Cup series so easily in the UK that many people were convinced he was cheating and not for the first time the people that wanted to see Team Benwell knocked down a peg were made to eat humble pie. They were convinced that Ian must have been doing something to his tyres and the race organiser, Tim Walden, asked Ian to change his tyres to brand new ones. Ian did this and on realising that brand new tyres were much better than the worn ones, to everyone’s frustration he started setting even faster times.
February 22nd 1997, and for the first time in just over a year Mark picked up a transmitter again. The place was Stafford. He did three laps, decided it was a bad idea and spent the rest of the weekend hung over in a hotel bedroom. Ian was competing in the odd scale saloon meeting but becoming increasingly disillusioned. Tamiya Eurocup was now just too expensive and with Richard Isherwood retired, Ian needed a new discipline. He found it very briefly with 5th scale and got a factory deal with FG. He came close to winning the British Grand Prix but got water in the throttle servo with ten minutes to go. Ian finally got fed up with FG’s inability to go racing properly and decided he had also had enough of model car racing and took up hang gliding.
There was to be a gap of almost 2 years before Ian and Mark would race together again. Although they both new that it wouldn’t be a permanent arrangement, they still managed a couple of meetings in 1999 back where it all started at the Parkwood club. The club were now racing on a small piece of tarmac inside Moat Park in Maidstone. Mark and Ian paid a visit one Sunday and there seemed to be some fairly decent drivers in attendance. Ian had two old predator scale saloons which he managed to put back into some kind of racing order and in the two meetings they attended they came first and second twice.
Another lengthy gap of nearly a year and Ian competed in two rounds of the Tamiya super touring class with a car made out of Jon Dyer’s box of bits. He made both A finals but was never likely to win. His theory that Eurocup had become too expensive was born out and he decided to retire from Eurocup once and for all. Richard Weatherley had sold the Tenth Technology company and started a new one called Centrepoint, and Ian managed to get a couple of sample cars from him. One was a Kawada and the other an Atlas. He did a couple of meetings at Barham and New Ash green with them. They were both really good cars but would have cost too much to import, so neither was.
2001, and Ian again was messing about doing the odd meeting at Barham when, against his better judgement, Gavin Clinch and Jon Dyer talked him into entering a round of the Tamiya Eurocup at WLRC. The meeting itself didn’t go as Ian would have liked and he only finished in 6th place. On the strength of this result he decided to do another round at Stafford, which resu