CEO Comment

I'll raise you another 10 grand

I’m about to leave the office to watch my daughter play in her first rounders match and then I’m going home to play poker. I host the Wednesday night game once a month and play with 10 of my oldest friends. The stakes are limited but the stella and the language are not.

Its a wonderful diversion, a good reason to see my friends and I think I make money! However that is not the point.

I used to be involved in another game in the late eighties and early nineties and this game moved around various people’s houses and business premises. One summer night in 1995 the game was at my place in Barnes, South West London.

I should set the scene by telling you that my ex, who I was living with at the time, had asked me the previous evening “how come you never lose any money when you play poker, whenever you come home you have always won. Somebody must lose at this game.” She then went on to ask me what stakes were played for. I assured her that the stakes were minimal, “pennies!”

She seemed happy enough with this and went off to work the next morning.

That evening the boys arrived and Harry Blain the art dealer arrived carrying a satchel full of cash. He explained that he was going to Paris in the morning and needed fifty grand in cash to pay for some art he had agreed to buy.

At about ten pm I heard the front door open and Rachel come in to the house. In a fit of humour I grabbed Harry’s bag, upended it spilling the entire  50k onto the table and then said in a reasonably loud voice “there’s your ten grand and I’ll raise you ten grand”. She stormed into the room, took one look at the pile of money on the table and stormed back out again, slamming the front door as she left.

My recollection isn’t great but I think it was a day or two before I saw her again and had an opportunity to explain!

 

Trust SportTrust Sport

The Daytona Group has many revenue streams, businesses within a business effectively. Apart from the obvious ones such as the venues we have hospitality, Dmax, Championships, merchandise and education. We have recently fallen into another business which is having quite interesting consequences for me and others in the company.

We have very seasonal cash flow and money can run a bit thin as we go into February -March each year. Late last year, the Technical Director Richard Brunning approached me with an idea that we should go racing. The project required some funding and involved some risk but I gave the project the green light and our BARC Formula Renault team was born. Formula Palmer Audi is no more, along with Formula BMW and if you want to race in the most important and competitive junior Formula, then Renault is where it's at. Carbon fibre tub, sequential gearbox, slicks and wings - it's a junior formula 1 car and with 22 cars on the grid it's where you need to be if you are serious about a career in racing.

TOCA Renault - the next step up, which runs with touring cars has 11 cars on the grid and there are some question marks over the cars as they can be unreliable and difficult to work on. The teams love BARC and, at half the budget, so do the drivers. Don't get me wrong, it's still very expensive; you could buy a house for a seasons racing in BARC, your new home would probably be in Warrington or Livingstone but I hope you get the point.

We had been developing a young Russian driver who came to us a little over a year ago, with no experience, via the Lydd circuit. Ivan Taranov started with some arrive and drive and progressed to Dmax and had expressed a desire to go car racing. We signed up to run Ivan in the Renault series and went to work. We had some kit left over from my racing days and acquired the rest of the gear needed.

Pretty much all of this happened with no involvement from me, which I see as a good thing, the ultimate in autonomy perhaps. The idea germinated in someone else's brain and he (Richard Brunning) made it happen. To date I have had a limited involvement so last weekend I spent the weekend in the garage at Donington for the first round. I have to say thet Donington looked awful, very unloved, and they are still signs referring to "the Grand Prix Venue". A little presumptuous I thought - unless they are referring to 92.

Ivan was very nervous and qualified poorly 19th for the first race and 21st for the second. Saturday night, when we went to dinner he was not happy. His old man, who looks half my age, had flown in from Moscow for the race. Sunday morning Ivan went out and nailed it, finishing 11th in both races.

I was up in the media suite and the grandstand watching the race and it occurred to me that we were completely in Ivan's hands at this point, there was nothing more the Team or I could do and I realised that this really was the ultimate autonomy, no radio link to the driver, the rest of us were passengers on Ivan's journey. We had a pit board to let him know how he was getting on, we could give him information but no instruction or help.

So we ended up in this part of the business almost by chance, but certainly not as a consequence of any inspiration on my part and this is very significant for me. I could spanner the car if the boys were stuck, but I don't need to, as I said before, I'm a passenger and loving it. I'm sure that it is a significant moment for any entrepreneur where another member of the team has the idea, and drives it forward and all I had to do was say yes to the risk.

The foray into what is probably the most competitive UK racing series right now has really kindled my passion for the sport and I think I will enjoy the f1 season even more in my new found role as team owner.

Trust is a wonderful thing and the feeling you get as an entrepreneur where someone else runs with the ball, and carries it further and faster than you could is one of the best ones. 

 

28 Days Later/It fell of the back of a lorry guv/Places I have been cont…

You may have seen a previous comment about Richard Brunning, Daytona Technical Director and I, taking a trip around the old Monza banking. I recently found a website which celebrates individuals gaining access to interesting places to which they should not (under law) have gained access.

I have a (imho healthy) interest in military installations, particularly those that are abandoned or disused and it was a web search that introduced me to 28 days later. I do not know anyone who contributes to the 28 days website but I do find that I am possibly guilty by association or intent and I have interests in common with the contributors. I will provide the web address to you to at the end of this comment so patience please although half of you (both of you) have probably already headed over there.

So these guys find access to interesting places, military, technical, industrial etc. They are a very ethical bunch and have a code that they never leave anything behind, including litter, and they never take anything away (apart from photographs).

My interest is particularly in old military installations and have visited many in person and virtually. In a previous life I was a photographer and I collect photographic prints so I consider myself to have an eye and an interest. The photography on the website is out of this world and some of their stories are very entertaining. One or two of the entries concern a place called Dean Hill which is (or was) an MOD facility in darkest Wiltshire, and this is where the guys from 28 days later and I coincide again.

In early 2003 I was running a technology business and was looking for a site for another business that I was thinking of starting and Dean Hill came up on the radar. Dean Hill was what was known then as a defence munitions site - ergo the MOD stored weapons there. I managed, by various methods of subterfuge also known as lying, to fly over the site in a helicopter and then to visit the site and to undergo a guided tour by the then commanding officer.

Dean Hill is a 750 acre site, built in the Test valley. It has its own police station, sewage plant, railway station, its own narrow gauge railway network, pistol range and most significantly 25 or so underground bunkers in which, back in 2003, the MOD stored bombs, lots of bombs. One of these bunkers was used to store nuclear weapons.

During both Gulf Wars paveway bombs were assembled and installed with their GPS targeting systems at the site and the ordinance then made its way to Southampton or places such as RAF Brize Norton for onward delivery to Saddam Hussein. The site was more like something out of a James Bond movie, with all of the underground bunkers and K9 patrols. Dean Hill had its own (secret) railway siding off the western trunk line which would deliver the hardware, which would then be put on cars on the narrow gauge railways for shipment into the underground bunkers. The biggest problem in the bunkers was moisture - I guess pave ways and moisture don't go together well - and the MOD had installed a number of dehumidifiers in each bunker. According to some information that I was able to acquire later these dehumidifiers cost an obscene amount to run, something in the order of £0.5million a year.

Dean Hill was used for overnight storage of nuclear weapons, when the aforementioned were travelling from Aldermaston (where they were fuelled up) to Southampton (as to where they went from here - your guess is a good as mine!). When nuclear weapons were on site a platoon of marines lived in a large bungalow next to the entrance of the nuclear bunker.

So - as the story goes a nuclear device has spent one night during 1987 at DH and is due for onward transmission to Southampton in the morning - the bomb was loaded onto a truck and left DH. Unfortunately the truck was involved in an RTA just outside the gates of DH and the truck left the road due to some ice and it was at this point that the truck and the bomb parted company. I was told this story whist I was on site in 2003 and later checked the veracity on line and it would appear that one of the UK's most protected assets, second possibly only top the crown jewels did actually fall off the back of a lorry! Oooops, good job lieutenant Al Qaeda wasn't tooling down the East Dean Road that morning. 

Dean Hill was closed later that year and sold for £1m to a private consortium. The site contains areas of special scientific interest - weevils or moss - not sure - but the new owners had to acknowledge and guarantee their approach to this and I am intrigued to know what their plans are for the site. It would make a wonderful IT storage facility, if it wasn't for that moisture problem.

In the meantime go to www.28dayslater.com and enjoy the photography and the irreverence. You will find a visit by a 28 days team on that web site with some photographs of the site.

For various pieces about the RTA search google “dean hill nuclear bomb”

Bing aerial here:

 

 

If you have any comments about your experiences at any Daytona venue, I would like to hear about them. Good or bad - let me know by clicking here: feedback@daytona.co.uk

2010 CEO Comment Archive // 2009 CEO Comment Archive