Gettin' Crabby wid it

Extract from my recent NZ Petrolhead column - at the moment there's a post-lockdown 'carpe diem' theme emerging. 

This one profiles a bloke who has had a huge influence on the future of  New Zealand offroad racing: Richard Crabb

Living the racer dream: Arron, Richard and Fergus Crabb. And yes, that’s a McLaren behind them. Richard bought it when he ‘retired’ from his day job. Apparently it goes quite well.

Origin story: I met Richard Crabb last century. He was running his old class 3 car, a serious contender for podiums and class wins; he was as quick in short course as in the big enduro races. This fella worked hard, played hard. Scored a few good results, and even when things went wrong his love of motorsport shone through, obvious and infectious.

He did give us a fright one year when he flipped out of the Taupo 1000, smacking a pine tree about ten feet up its trunk in the process. That one scored him a trip to the Big White Building in a helicopter.

Richard found more pace by going single-seater and then into class one, then later built an all-new class three with a 4AGE tucked in the middle. One of only a few locally-built mid-engined class three cars, it was also the birth of the Crabb racing logo and a signature flame-on-black colour scheme he’s used on every Crabb race car since.

He’s got both feet on the ground, this guy. He saw the sport getting progressively older, and few new drivers rising into the ranks. As the class one and three fields got more wrinkly, that was a real worry – how to revitalise the racing.

Single-handedly, Richard came up with the answer while many just talked about was to address the issue. Starting with tiny Asian kid-cars, Richard created the Kiwitruck category and watched it take off. We’d been importing full-sized race cars and trucks from the US for years, with a surge every time the exchange rate went our way. Now we imported a whole youth racing category, and it took off.

A group of excited parents gathered around and helped make things happen. We even had local race car constructors building the things.

Driver tuition events, barbecue meet and greets for the families, and photo sessions all built a sense that the racing was becoming something great. Grids swelled. A whole group of families took the new Kiwitrucks south to demonstrate them in front of southern families at West Melton. Racers were working out how to fit Kiwitrucks alongside their own race ambitions.

The best I saw was 24 of these little race trucks at a Kiwitruck event at Richard’s property up at Waitoki.

This has become multi-generational now. There are a whole heap of young racers out there now who have graduated to the bigger classes. They all have 100 octane petrol coursing in their veins: Harry Hodgson, Dyson Delahunty, Richard’s older son Fergus, the Storer girls. The new crop coming up through the Kiwitrucks includes Holly Russell (Shaun’s daughter, now transitioning into the bouncy-jouncy joys of class 7) Kayden Thomason (Andrew Thomason’s son), Reeve Giddy (Joel’s son), Tanner Willetts (Clive Thornton’s grandson) and more.

Richard’s younger son Arron was one of the hot talents in the J-class at the stadium championship events at Manukau.