An Interview with BriSCA F2 Stockcar racer 623 Rob Dobie
(interview published August 16 2016 ahead of his dedication meeting in hour of '25 years of getting in your way' on September 11)

Age: 49
Home Town: Milton Keynes
Occupation: Partsman in a DAF garage
Family: Wife Ann, a daughter and two grandchildren
Racing career: First meeting was to be at Skegness 25 years ago but failed to race so first meeting was at Northampton shortly after

The start of your racing career has a rather unusual story as you actually failed to race at what should have been your first meeting, can you tell us more about that?
(laughs) I didn’t have much of a clue back then. Not that I have much now, but I had even less then and basically what I did was I bought a car the previous year and just brought it to the first meeting of the following season believing it would be perfectly ok to race. And it was, except for one thing which was that over the winter a rule had changed with the seat belts and they had to be five point belts rather than the three point ones from before. I didn’t have a clue about it until the scrutineer came over and told me what I had was wrong and that I couldn’t race with them, it was pretty embarrassing really! While I was able to get a set of the correct seat belts at the meeting, being so new to it all I really didn’t know what to do to fit them and I didn’t even really know anyone to ask for help so in the end I decided the best thing to do was to simply go home and take some time and get everything sorted properly and I eventually raced shortly after that at Northampton which was my local track for a long time.

How did the first meeting go?
The first meeting went about as well as the reds of the meetings did for maybe the first year to 18 months, I think it was about 18 months before I actually managed to finish a race (laughs). But I got the bug straight away, even though I wasn’t really very good at all and when I did finish my first race that was a really big deal and I was so pleased.

How did you first get involved in the sport?
I suppose my first introduction to it all was through a neighbour. His name was Ernie Townsend and he lived a couple of doors down from us and raced bangers but for whatever reason I never took much notice of him and the cars he was building and racing. I was just aware of them and I knew what they were and because I knew about him and his cars I guess I knew that the sport existed. The first time I went though was to an Autograss track which was in Milton Keynes, in fact it was just behind the (Milton Keynes) Bowl. I was out with my mate on our push bikes and we heard what we thought was scramble so we went to see what it was and it turned out to be Autograss racing and that was the first time I had seen any kind of oval racing myself. I was probably about 14-years-old at this point and I took an immediate interest to it all. As well as the neighbour who raced bangers, I then discovered there were a couple of drivers who raced at the Autograss track who kept and worked on their cars at these garages not far from where I lived so I started to become friendly with them and would pop down when they were working on their cars and tried to help where I could and my interest continued to grow from there. At the time the Autograss track was really short on marshals and at some point it was suggested that as I was there almost all the time maybe I would be interested in helping out and I was, because it meant I could go racing and I didn’t have to pay to get in (laughs). Again I was only a kid at the time so getting in for the meetings for free was a really big deal at the time and I suppose because they were so short of marshals at the track they weren’t too worried about my age (laughs). At some point I did go to Northampton as well when I was young but most of my racing at this point was at the Autograss track because I wasn’t old enough to drive and so it was only when I could that I started to spread my wings a little bit. A big turning point for me was in the late 1980s where through a series of things going wrong I wound up at Northampton instead of somewhere else. Because I’d been pretty much limited to watching the Autograss racing and nothing else I would always watch oval racing whenever it was on the television. Back then there was quite a lot of stockcar racing on the television, especially through World of Sports which always covered the slightly different sports which is why I liked the programme so much. National Hot Rods were on the show a fair bit including the World Final and so when I was finally able to drive, I’d say I was maybe 20-years-old, I decided I was going to go to Ipswich to watch it. I had a friend who’s teenage son was also interest so I was going to take him but the weekend of the meeting the exhaust fell of my car and by the time I’d fixed it there wasn’t enough time for me to get to Ipswich. I was disappointed but the lad I was meant to take was even more so and I didn’t want to let him down so I suggested going to Northampton which I knew was on that day as well. It was obviously much closer and because I had been a couple of times I thought I knew the way. It wasn’t what we were meant to do but it would be something and the lad was well up for it and as it turned out it was a bit of a game changer for me. I’m not even sure if I knew BriSCA F1 Stockcars were on before I got there but that is what was racing that day and I remember getting to the track in time for practise and I was stood on the back straight, where the pit gate is now, by the fence and the second the first car went past me, I still remember it was Ray Tydsley, I was completely hooked.

What was it about the BriSCA F1 Stockcars that hooked you?
The formula completely took me by the throat the first time I saw them and to be honest I still love the formula now, it’s just my circumstances mean I don’t get to see them very often at all now but I do try and see them when I can and I still get that same buzz that I got from the first time I saw them at Northampton. I think it was probably the noise more than anything else. The noise from the F1s is so unique in the sport, there really isn’t anything else like them and it gives you such an amazing buzz and when you throw in everything else, the speed, the contact and action you have a complete package but I think the noise is a big reason why they are so special and makes them stand out from the rest of the formulas in our sport. As I was now driving, I started to travel around and follow the formula and was soon going to tracks that at that stage I’d never even heard of, places like Coventry, Hednesford, Long Eaton and Crewe and I really got into it and was spending pretty much everything I had to go and watch the meetings I could. I started to slow down a bit when the formula started to self-destruct a little when things got very political within the formula but I think it’s a lot better now and the racing is still excellent and again I still try and catch them when I wanted to.

You started to race BriSCA F2 Stockcars, was there always an ambition to race yourself?
I guess there was but it was never something I ever thought would be possible. I’ve never had vast sums of money and what I did have I usually spent just going to the meetings to watch so while I guess deep down I probably always did fancy a go at racing myself it was never something I entertained that much because I just never thought I would be able to, so why waste time thinking about it (laughs). One day I was at Northampton and there was a couple of BriSCA F2 Stockcars up for sale, one was a Simon Chalkley car and it was £1,000 and it got me thinking because I thought that was something I might be able to afford. I guess, because I’d dismissed the idea of racing myself it was never something I really looked into that much and then suddenly my eyes were open that maybe it wasn’t quite as expense as possible and perhaps something I could do. I looked at the car and sat in it and that was it, I had to have it and the rest is history (laughs). At the time I really thought that racing F2s was something I was more than capable of but me buying this car seemed to nicely coincide with an explosion in popularity in the formula, especially at Northampton. When I bought the car, the Northampton meetings I was going to would have between 20 and 30 cars and the racing was very decent but at the same time it was nowhere near how competitive it is now, it seemed a really good formula for people to go into who weren’t able to do F1s which included me. I swear I bought the car and I came back to race it the next season and every meeting had at least 60, if not more, F2s in the pits at Northampton and then all of a sudden everything seemed to get a lot more serious (laughs). I’ve never raced far and wide but at the time I used to do the majority of meetings at Northampton, because it was local and to be honest that was always the idea of getting the car, just to do a bit of racing, once, maybe twice a month at my local track but I did do a few meetings at Birmingham and Arena Esex as that wasn’t too far for me so I fitted in a couple of meetings there when I had a chance but those were the only tracks I raced at back then.

Having starting your racing career on tarmac, you now stick to shale, primarily at Mildenhall, what brought about the switch?
It was a few things which all came together at once really. Truth be told, towards the end of my time racing on tarmac I had started to become pretty disillusioned with it all. It was so competitive now and you needed to spend money to be competitive and I was increasingly feeling that every time I raced I was simply wasting my time and when you start feeling like that, the fun soon starts to go from the sport and when it’s no fun, well there’s no point really. At the same kind of time I became friends with Tony Smith. We actually started talking because of our cars because like me, at the time he didn’t run a big wing on his car. I’ve never run one, I think a lot of it goes back to the Chalkie White accident where he rolled over and the car caught fire and he couldn’t get out of the car because of the wing which had been damaged in the crash so I think that always put me off having one. I’m sure there is an advantage to having one, otherwise so many people wouldn’t have them and I guess having never used one I don’t really know any different, to me it’s just a big advertising board and as I’ve never had sponsors I’ve never had a need (laughs). Anyway, I started to call us the Wingless Warriors and he was racing a bit more than I was and so I started to go with him to help when I wasn’t racing. He was doing a bit on shale and I started to realise that on shale it wasn’t so essential to spend lots of money on your car to be competitive, it was good enough to have a reasonable car and then you just needed a bit of luck on your side. So I started to show a little interest in racing on shale and then it was announced there was going to be a BriSCA F2 Stockcar meeting at Coventry which was of great interest to me because it was the track where I had watched so many of my heroes in F1s for so many years. There had certainly never been a F2 meeting there since I had been racing and to the best of my knowledge there hadn’t been one there since I had been going to watch at the track so it was a really big deal. I knew I was totally unprepared but I just saw it as a chance to race at a track where I’d watched so many drivers I had looked up to and I just wanted to race on the track which I considered to be the mecca for stockcar racing. I was on pole position for the first heat and had no idea what was in front of me, we went into the first bend and the track just disappeared where I got completely covered in shale (laughs).Tony was in one of the later heats and he wrecked his axle which ended his meeting and as I was lining up for the consolation he came over and gave me his crash helmet which had googles and was much better for racing on shale so that race was a great deal better for me and I loved it and was converted to the dark side and I’ve never raced on shale again. That was about 10 years ago.

Having been involved in BriSCA F2 Stockcars for so long, what have been the biggest changes in the formula?
For me it how’s much harder the formula has and how much stronger and tougher the cars are now. It makes me laugh when people comment that the formula isn’t a hard hitting one or there isn’t much action. If they think that, they should have seen it when I first started watching. It would be wrong to call the cars back them flimsy but I guess compared to how the cars are built now, they really were, they just weren’t built anywhere near as strong as they are now. It was quite regular back then to see a driver smash a car to bits one weekend and then have a new car which they had built themselves the following weekend. That was because the cars could be destroyed in one big crash and they were easy enough to build that you could build one in a week. Other things have evolved but the biggest thing for me is the strength of the cars which is because the racing is so much harder and tougher now.

You are set to race at the World Final meeting, is this something you are looking forward to?
I am and it will only be the second time I have raced in a World Final meeting. The first and last one was at Northampton and it was actually quite a special day for me because it was when I raced the car I have now for the first time. It actually caused a bit of a stir because I think it was the last F2 built that had a 1300cc Crossflow engine rather than a 2litre Pinto and I remember a lot of the Dutch people there being really confused because the exhausts where on the other side of the car (laughs). I think they only used Pintos over there so they’d probably never seen one and the looks on their faces was really funny. When I was building the car I didn’t have the money to build the car and buy a Pinto engine so the car was specially designed to fit both a Crossflow and a Pinto engine and the idea was that the following year I would have saved enough money to buy a Pinto and it would go straight in the car and it wasn’t soon after that only the Pinto engine was allowed so I would imagine I was one of the last drivers in the formula to use a Crossflow. It will be good to be a part of the World Final meeting again, it’s always a special occasion and hopefully there will be a big turnout for it so it’s always a special buzz racing in front of a big crowd like that. I must admit though I only plan on doing the support heat for the weekend because I’ve already agreed that Adam Walding will be racing my car on the Sunday. His dad is racing as well for the first time at Mildenhall and he is a really good friend and he wanted to do the meeting as we’re good friends and to have his boy out there as well will be really special, much more special than me racing myself so protecting the car so he can race it Sunday is the priority.

By your own admission you have never been the most successful driver in the formula, what has been the attraction for the last 25 years?
The biggest thing for me has been the comradely between the drivers and the mechanics and that is something I absolutely love. I’ve made some really brilliant friends over the years who you only see when you go racing and so that for me is a big reason why I continue to fix the car and take it racing, just so I can see my mates (laughs). It’s also why I enjoy going to meetings when I’m not racing as much as the ones when I’m not, sometimes more so, especially when I’m helping someone out. I love the experiences you have when you are trying to repair a car for a next race and I also love helping others out and playing a part in them getting out for the next race, at the last meeting at Mildenhall I turned up and straight away had people returning stuff to me that I’d leant them at the meeting before and that’s always a nice feeling.

What have been the highlights of your racing career?
Honestly for me it was at last year’s White and Yellow Grade Series Final at Mildenhall. That race is always a highlight to me, I’ve always referred to it as my World Final but it’s always a great thing to be a part of, with the parade and the qualifiers trophies, it’s presented the same as any other big race which I think is brilliant as it’s only for the lower graded drivers but last year I managed to finish in the top 10. It was the first points I’d scored all year, the first trophy I won and the first time I qualified for the final so it was just a brilliant night. The best bit was at the very end when I was sitting with a few mates and Mark Dorrill came back from collecting his prize money for the night and he said there was money for me as well and it turned out I’d won £15 (laughs)! I couldn’t believe it and while I’m sure it got spent on fish and chips it was a brilliant thing for me to win that.

As a long serving fan of the sport as well as a racer, who have been your heroes over the years?
There have been so many, I guess John Lund was a big one and it helps because he is such a nice guy. I remember one night his team were pushing his car through the pits and they went past me so instinctively I joined in and started pushing as well and when we got the car back to his bus, John turned round to me and asked how I’d been getting on with my F2 and it just blew my mind. He didn’t know my name but he’d obviously seen me about, knew my face and knew I raced and to have him show an interest was the ultimate compliment. I’ve also been a big Rob Speak fan over the years but I also really enjoy seeing the under dogs do well and having been around the sport so long I really enjoy seeing the kids I saw in Ministox now doing well, drivers like Mick Sworder and Billy Tom O’Connor, I watched them when they were youngsters and to see them doing so well now is really cool.

Have you any picks for this year’s F2 World Final?
I really don’t know, I think anyone in the race could potentially win it but I admit I would like to see Rob Speak win it just to become the first driver to hold the F1 and F2 World Championships at the same time. It’s never been done and I think his is probably not only the best chance of it happening but maybe the only chance of it happening and, as a fan, it’s something I would love to see.

Is there anyone else you would like to thank or mention?
Tony Smith who for so long has been my mentor, my main man really, my misses for putting up with me not being around for so long during the summer and every single person whose ever helped me out during the years, there has been a lot of them (laughs).