An Interview with Reliant Robin racer 122 Lee Waddington
(interview published December 23 2015 in the lead up to the opening round of the 2016 points championship)

Age: 25
Home Town: Colne
Occupation: Welder
Family: Girlfriend Jess and one-year-old daughter Gracie-Lou
Racing career: Started in Junior Bangers at Barrow aged 13

Of all of the RDC registered drivers in 2015 you are among those who lives the furthest away from any of our venues, in this case Mildenhall, how far is it for you to get to Mildenhall and what is the attraction of the raceway?
Mildenhall is 219 miles each way for us. An average journey takes about four and a half hours but recently we’ve had a couple of good runs and managed to get there in about four hours but we also had a trip this year which was a complete nightmare and took nearly six hours because an accident closed the motorway and we were stuck. It’s strange but I guess I do it just because I almost know no different. My dad (Alex) used to race in the Reliants and that was how I got into the formula and when I was younger he would travel down with Sam (Bagley) and Oily (Graham Hall) and for a really long time now I’ve been making the trip to Mildenhall and back to race, first to watch my dad and now to race myself. But I think Mildenhall is an excellent track for the Robins, it’s really well suited to them and that’s why we keep making the trips down. I did every meeting in 2015 and had a great season and I’m hoping I might be able to do even better in 2016, we’ll have to see how it goes.

What makes Mildenhall so well suited to Reliant Robin racing?
Firstly it’s shale. I don’t bother with tarmac racing because I just don’t enjoy and to be honest I don’t think Reliants really work on tarmac, you need a dirt type track and the ability to drift and slide the cars a bit to get the best kind of racing from them. The big thing Mildenhall has going for it is the size of the track which also helps make the racing so good. Again being a small track is well suited to the cars because they aren’t the biggest or the fastest cars either. So a field of 20 or so Robins doesn’t get lost around the track and it keeps the field a bit more bunched up which makes for better racing and also being smaller it means someone with a faster car doesn’t get so much of an advantage. I really like the track being a smaller one because it means if you get taken out in a race you still have a chance to get back into the mix, especially if someone else has a bit of trouble, and again with the cars being much more bunched together that is more likely to happen. On a larger track one mistake can mean you are completely out of contention with no chance of getting back into (contention) and as I seem to make a lot of mistakes, that helps (laughs)!

What is the appeal of Reliant Robin racing to you?
The costs is a big part of it. It’s a pretty cheap motorsport to be honest compared to most. There isn’t much you can do to the cars and areas where you can spend a lot of money and even if you don’t you can still be on the case, especially at somewhere like Mildenhall because the track produces a pretty even playing field for everyone. The cars usually last a few meetings, you just need to touch the bodywork up a bit after a meeting and it’s good to race again, you don’t normally need to build a car for every meeting which is ideal, especially as the cars aren’t the easiest to come across these days. I’m lucky because I get so much help from Sam (Begley) who has managed to build a bit of a stockpile of cars and he always helps me with one if I need one but the cars are still out there if you look hard enough but you don’t need loads to do a whole season so that’s good. Another thing I really like about the formula is that there isn’t too much racing for them, it’s about six or seven meetings at Mildenhall and that is ideal for me. Not only because Mildenhall is so far from home for me so it would be hard to do many more than that but also I have some other hobbies. I like to go mountain biking and enjoy clay pigeon shooting so only having a few meetings a year means I can do my other interests without having to make a choice between them. I did consider getting a (Startrax) Hot Rod recently but decided against it and one of the reasons was because I thought it would mean having to choose between that and my other hobbies which I didn’t want to do. There were other factors as well, again the cost was one. While the formula itself is quite a cheap one I would have needed to have bought a truck really which would have cost money so I decided to stick at what I was doing.

You are currently third in the World Qualifying points, is trying to get a strong qualifying position a target for you in 2016?
I don’t know really. I don’t think it is something I have actively gone for but I’ve been doing all the meetings and it’s been going well and I’ve just wound up where I am and I would like to try and stay there now but I don’t know if it will help come the World Final. The two years I’ve been in the World I’ve started near the back and I think that has helped a bit because usually there is some action at the front and people get taken out and it allows you to pick your way through but I think if you want to be in with a chance of winning a race like the World you probably need to be up near the front at the start because there are some excellent drivers in the race who start at the front and it’s hard to catch them from the back unless they all get taken out. Hopefully if I do qualify well, the crash at the start will be behind me. I don’t have the best of luck in starting at the front. At the British Championship I did really well in my heat so I decided to try and start the championship nearer the front which I don’t usually do and I got into the lead straight away but then span myself out on the next bend so it didn’t end well (laughs).

You finished sixth in 2015 World Final. Was that a result you were pleased with and is it a target to try and top it in 2016?
I was really chuffed to finish that well but it was a little disappointing at the same time because when the race got stopped I had a plug lead come off so I did the last part of the race on three cylinders. To be fair the car still went well but I just didn’t have the power to get through like I had done so had that not happened I might have had an even better finish. I did learn something though as I check my plug leads before every race now (laughs)! It was a good result though and it would be great to do even better this time.

You also had an excellent season in the points, finishing fourth at Mildenhall and fifth in the RDC standings, again was this something you were pleased with and are you aiming to do even better in 2016?
Yeah I was chuffed to bits to do so well in 2015, it was by far my best season yet and it’s always great to do well in the points because it shows you’ve done well over the course of the season. I think your target as a driver is to always try and get better so of course this year I’ll be hoping for even better results but it’s not going to be easy because when you get that high in the points you are racing against some really good drivers so it’s definitely not going to be easy but I’ll give it a go. You could see how hard it will be at the last meeting in 2015 when I had a chance to improve my position and you could see Roy (Gedge) knew there were people trying to beat him in the points and he was just brilliant that day and had a fantastic meeting to make sure no-one who was behind him passed him and it’s tough trying to beat people like that but I’ll have a go (laughs).

The season for Reliant Robins starts on January 2, the Winter Series meeting often sees track and weather conditions as a feature at this time of year, is this one you are looking forward to?
(laughs) No, not really because I really struggle in the wet. But it is, what it is and it’s the same for everyone so you just have to get on with it the best you can. Any meeting can be a wet one, not just in the winter so you have to just do your best. It’s a bit weird for us because we live so far away so there have been times when it’s been chucking it down with rain and home but we’ve got to Mildenhall and it’s completely dry and the track is perfect so we’ve always had to just get on with it and see what it’s like when we get to the track and go from there.

Have you any plans to race elsewhere?
To be honest there isn’t many other places now that interest me. A lot of the northern tracks don’t run Robins anymore or at least don’t run them regularly but the few meetings there are we’ll probably do. My best meeting ever was at Sheffield where I won all three races so on one hand I’d like to race there again but on the other if I did it probably wouldn’t be as good (laughs). So that only leave Mildenhall and King’s Lynn really and for whatever reason the meetings at Lynn never seem to fit well with my plans so I’ve concentrated more at Mildenhall but it would be nice to do an odd meeting at Lynn if it fits in with everything else.

Is there anyone else you would like to thank or mention?
Sam especially for everything he does for me, Carlos who helps a lot as well, Sam’s dad James, Charlie Long and Jess for her support. She doesn’t actually come with me racing because of the distance to Mildenhall. I used to do a bit of Autograss and she came with me to see that but found it boring and when I went into Robins I did a meeting at King’s Lynn which she came to. She really enjoyed it which was part of the reason why I stuck at them but when I said about going to Mildenhall and it was an hour further than Lynn she said it was too far for her and she’s still not come to Mildenhall to watch me yet, maybe this year (laughs).