North Wales foster carer Tony Adams and his ‘Wacky Races’ team have bagged the main prize of best car design at this year’s car rally Benidorm or Bust 2019 event; Flying the flag for Fostering Solutions with our logo proudly displayed on their car’s body paint. The trip saw over 150 cars drive through sun-kissed Europe towards the famous Spanish coastal resort.
Following on from our post earlier this year announcing Tony was to enter the rally for the third consecutive time with a custom build Mercedes CLK transformed into Dick Dastardly’s infamous ‘Mean Machine’, we caught up with Tony and asked him to describe how he and his team managed to go one better than the villainous cartoon racer himself to finally win the 3,500 mile round trip race.
“We set off from Denbigh at 7am, before driving up to Burnley to get the rest of the team”, explained Tony. We met up with three other teams at the Sandbach services and two more teams at Leicester services, then all convoyed down to Dover to register for the race. It was a hot day and it wasn’t long before the water pistols were out!”
“The next day we boarded the ferry, where there were about 400 people all in crazy costumes, it was hilarious. Once we arrived in France and looked at the map, we noticed we were very close to Paris, and decided we just had to try and get a photo of the Mean Machine with the Eiffel Tower in the background. The French people loved our car.”
“After journeying through amazing Andorra, we dropped down through the Pyrenees and into Spain for the last leg of the race onto Benidorm. After getting to Benidorm at around 3pm, we quickly checked into the hotel before heading down to the finish line. The event staff had hired a large car park for the afternoon, so we parked up and went chatting to other teams as we left the bubble machine on the car running all the time, filling the carpark.”
“5:30pm came and it was prize giving time. There was a lot of great cars, so we didn’t know how we would do. We were rooting for 3rd place, so when they called 3rd place and it wasn’t us, we thought our luck was out. 2nd place was then called, which was a fantastic Ghostbusters themed car. We now thought it was 50/50 between either an amazing Batmobile or a tank. When our team was called out we were stunned. 1st place, we still can’t believe it.”
Tony went on to describe the sheer amount of effort it took in the build-up to the prize winning trip. With over 120 hours of work clocked in total, Tony represents a prime example of how a dedicated foster carer can still make time to enjoy their own hobbies and take care of a family unit with specific needs.
“For the last six years, I have fostered a child who has special needs and is quite disabled to the extent of being non-verbal.She enjoyed watching me build the car when she could, while my 9-year-old daughter Lucy was the one who made sure we had a working bubble machine!”
“When building a car around family and other commitments, it was important to grab an hour here and there when I could. Once the kids were asleep, I would nip out to our garage space to get to work. My wife is also very understanding and would also help out where she could”.
Will Tony and his team be back next year to defend their crown? “We went much bigger and better this year than we have ever done and it paid off. We might pull back a bit next year and get around to working on it as and when we can”.
If you’re at all interested in becoming a foster carer, why not drop our ‘outstanding’ team a line today.