Mike Manning last raced a powerboat as a teenager, in Class A 50-horsepower boats around 1976 and 1977. He was eighteen when he swapped to cars, and stayed there for the best part of five decades.
This weekend at the Stewartby British Masters, he was back on the water.
Chris Davies caught up with him in the pits.
I’ve been watching Mark Williams for a couple of years and I’ve been humming and hawing, looking for another hobby really, and it looks good fun. I used to do it years ago and I thought, well, you’re in here once. So I told Mark, you know, in a year or so I’d be interested in doing a deal, and he packed up, I bought everything off him. And I absolutely bloody love it.
Williams is one of the most decorated names British circuit powerboat racing has produced, with the best part of three decades of T850 titles behind him. Manning stepping into his boat and rig is not a small changing of the guard.
Thirty Years in Cars
In between his two spells on the water, Manning built a long career in cars. Hot rod racing, oval racing, autograss and rallycross filled the best part of thirty years. The high point came in 2003, when he won the Irish National Rallycross Championship in a Ford Escort 4×4 Turbo, a title that puts him on the same official roll of honour as multiple-time champion Dermot Carnegie.
He still races on four wheels today. Four years ago he bought a Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth, the turbocharged Group A saloon that dominated the British Touring Car Championship in the late 1980s, and campaigns it in historic touring car racing, including the Touring Car Legends grid run under the MRL banner and the Tony Dron Memorial Trophy at the Silverstone Classic. He races it as car 35.
This weekend I should have been at Brands Hatch, but the engine wasn’t rebuilt in time.
Straight Into a Title Fight
At Stewartby, he’s racing T850, lining up against Nigel Edwards, the club’s own Commodore and the class’s reigning British champion.
At the moment Nigel’s had a first and I’ve had a first, so it all comes down to the next series of heats. I’m not very good at qualifying, but I like racing. I always do better at racing than qualifying, that’s a hard task. But I love it, absolutely love it. It’s just for fun, and it’s come at the right time of life. Just living the dream.
More British Masters Coverage
Catch up on the full entry list and format for Round 2 at Stewartby.
Read the Round 2 Preview
If it happened in powerboat racing during the last forty years the chances are that Chris Davies was there either photographing it or writing about it.
During that time, he has travelled the globe covering both offshore and circuit racing for series promotors, race teams, PR companies, and a whole raft of publications.
