Tom Keep has been around the ovals for years; the Gladiators man has competed in Ministox and 1300 Stock Cars, but it was Bangers where he made his presence felt.
Tom now resides in Canada, and recently competed in a banger style event where he won a Heat. Tom tells us a bit more about it.
‘I ran in a class called demo cross, which is basically demo derby cars, but ran in a jump race format for heats – first across the line or last car running, and then a last car running at the end of the day. The build prep was fairly similar to what Back To Basics are in the UK, but you can literally run anything from just stripped out interior and petrol tank the inside car, up to full b2b prep with welded bumpers etc, so there was a mix of first timers just doing it for a bit of fun in a scrap car, and then there’s the top boys who go travelling round the province trying to score season points.’
‘Out here most events are hosted at town fall (autumn) or spring fairs. There is 2 or 3 main promoters, who host the events on behalf of the town fairgrounds, so they don’t have designated tracks for demo derby’s like our banger tracks, but they host them at different venues week to week. It’s a weird concept, but local to me there’s a “stockcar” track almost identical to Warneton – they only run non contact there unfortunately.’
‘Car classes for the normal demo derby’s can vary a lot, from simple gut and gos, up to the pro classes where you can basically do whatever you want, weld as much as you want. The pro-classes make our Unlimiteds seem under prepped unbelievably.’
‘They do different events at different shows, based off what the individual town fair boards want, so some places it could literally be just DDs all night, other places no DDs but jump races only, others a mix of fig8 races then a number of DDs afterwards. Basically whatever the town thinks will draw the biggest car count and spectators.’
‘The show I ran at was in a town called Orono, in Ontario. The Mrs grew up nearby so she had wanted me to run it even though it’s far from where we live and I have some buddies I went through firefighter training with who work on the fire department there, so it was good to catch up and have a race with one of them.’
‘On the day, I won my heat by a few laps, just kept out of trouble and fired a few people in who were holding me up but nothing too spectacular. Winners qualified for A main, 2nd qualified for B main, but A main the winner took home 1000bucks, so it was worth a punt,’ Tom laughs. ‘I was leading the A main quite comfortably but constant flying over the jumps bent my gear selector on the gearbox, locking it in gear and when I got tangled up with someone giving them a shot over the jump, we got stuck together and I couldn’t move so unfortunately I came 4th, which was still 100bucks, so that went towards fuel! It was good fun, but nothing quite matches a good full chat head-on in a Mondeo,’ Tom giggles.
‘The next one I’m running is a minivan in an all minivan (people carrier) demo derby at our local fairground next weekend. She’s pretty crispy so I’m sure I’ll be able to make her snap pretty nicely!’
It’s great to see drivers making a go of similar style of events in other countries, and we hope to hear more from Tom as he does more of these events over in Canada.
