10th February 2010 - Bennett Racing

Thank You All: Wednesday 10th February

Firstly I would just like to say a massive thank you too every single person who voted for me to win the APIRA Iris Page Memorial Trophy. I was very honoured indeed...

Winning any trophy is obviously nice but to be awarded it for what I did is really great and means alot.

Building a race car from the ground up is hard enough but building it while spewing your insides up in a bucket is even harder believe me, I have never really gone into this side of cancer and chemotherapy at great length as I don't want people to break out the violins, but its absolute agony. The only thing that got me through it other than my family (who are the best in the world) was rebuilding the Topolino, it kept my mind busy, it kept me right in the head, gave me a goal to aim to and kept me busy. Also a huge huge help was the fact that my old man quit his job to look after me, this meant alot and he knows how much, and again it kept me right, if I started to moan he would tell me to shut up and get on with it, which sounds harsh but one thing I always kept first in my mind was that there were kids going through cancer and chemo, if they can do it then I can.

While building the car we must have had about 345545 arguments, mostly due to me being a little bit moody, but five minutes later we would be back to normal, and I don't like to be big headed but I am VERY proud of what we build and what we achieved. We didn't just slap a new body on the car, we replaced/changed/improved every single component on the car. It was not a rebuild it was a new car. Then we got nominated for best appearing car, which I new we wouldn't win but I was over the moon to just be in the mix. Not bad considering the garage size and circumstances we built the car in.

Then the cars debue, think it was at the Open Sport Nationals, everyone commented on how good the car looked and more importantly they asked how I was (thanks all). One thing I didn't let on was I had only had the chemo a few days before the event, I was dead on my feet, so so tired after only 1 day, but the desire I had to get the car on the track completely took over, and another thing which I am very proud to have done was a sub 1 second 60 foot (0.991) on our first launch with the new combo, I was chuffed.

Then on the next run a lifter bar broke (credit to my old man for hearing it and getting out of it) but we then went home, in all honesty we could of pulled the cam and de burred it and replaced the lifter but due to it being the first event and we new we couldn't win we went home and I was glad, I could barely walk without tripping over, quite funny now but I was tired and glad to get home.

Anyway back on point, thanks for the trophy, I have again just had the all clear so very happy and got the news about the trophy 2 days later so it was icing on the cake really.

Thanks all and thanks for reading.