Meet Naughty Tyres

Many moons ago a mate of mine offered me a 1976 Alfa Romeo GT Junior for free.

Free.

Those are dangerous words to a petrolhead.

The poor thing had been sitting under a carport for years, slowly dissolving into retirement. My mate didn't know what to do with it anymore and, truth be told, neither did I.

Then I remembered one of life's universal truths:

When you don't know what to do with an old classic, you turn it into a track car.

Problem solved.

That's where my mate Olly came into the picture. Before we could wipe the snot from our eyes, another track toy was born.

The little Alfa turned out surprisingly sweet. It wasn't fast by any stretch of the imagination, but GT Juniors are inherently good-handling little machines. We fitted BMW E12 528 brakes, which meant the thing stopped so hard it felt like it had snagged an aircraft carrier arrestor cable every time you touched the middle pedal.

We entered it in Historic Racing's "Fine Cars" category.

The concept was simple enough. No roll cages required. Cars remained road legal. Owners were encouraged to drive them to and from the circuit.

The races were run over two ten-lap heats using a handicap format. Cars lined up in pit lane according to qualifying times, slowest first, fastest last, and were released at intervals. The theory was that everyone would bunch up during the closing laps and even the slowest car stood a chance of winning.

To prevent sandbagging, there was a breakout rule. If you lapped significantly faster in the race than you had during qualifying, you'd be disqualified.

The organisers had clearly never met me.

Olly and I weren't chasing championship points. We were there for fun.

And we arrived at our first race with tyres that weren't exactly within the spirit of the regulations. A particularly serious-looking bloke in a Lancia Beta walked around the Alfa, frowned at the tyres and muttered something about "naughty tyres".

I immediately liked the name more than I liked the bloke.

Naughty Tyres had officially been christened.

Because Olly was always a little slower than me, I sandbagged qualifying to give him a decent starting position for Race One. He had a fair run and finished somewhere midfield.

Then it was my turn.

For Race Two I decided the breakout rule could take a long walk off a short pier.

When the starter released me, I set about carving through the field like a rabid axe murderer with unresolved anger issues. I passed cars under brakes. I passed cars around the outside. I passed cars in places where even I wasn't entirely convinced there was enough room.

By halfway distance I was having so much fun that the possibility of disqualification had become little more than a future administrative problem.

When the chequered flag fell I crossed the line first.

A short while later the officials disqualified me.

Fair enough. I knew exactly what I was doing. The result sheet might not have shown it, but I'd had more fun in ten laps than most people manage in an entire season.

And that's what Naughty Tyres was all about.

A few years later we had the Alfa at Zwartkops along with our Porsches.

The plan was simple. Drive both cars back-to-back and compare notes. I went out first and put in a handful of flying laps.

Well...

"Flying" might be a generous description for a GT Junior. Let's call them enthusiastic laps.

When I came back in, Olly and I got talking about how impressive the braking performance was. The Alfa was tiny and light. The BMW brakes were designed for a much heavier car. The result was hilarious. You could brake ridiculously late and the thing would just stop.

No drama.
No complaints.
Just anchor deployed.

The next session Olly took the Alfa out while I watched from pit lane.

Then we swapped into our Porsches. A couple of laps later I arrived at Table Top and nearly fell out of my seat laughing...

There was Olly's black 911 sitting in the runoff area. And there was Olly. Standing beside it. Hands on hips. Still wearing his helmet. Scratching his head, er... helmet. Staring at the car like it had personally betrayed him.

The image is permanently burned into my memory.

The poor bugger had simply used the Alfa braking marker in the Porsche. Same driver. Same track. Very different physics. Back in the pits he reached for the traditional racing-driver excuse drawer.

"Think there was oil on the track."

There wasn't.

I knew there wasn't because I'd been using exactly the same piece of racetrack moments earlier and hadn't discovered any oil.

A few pointed questions later the truth emerged. The idiot had simply used Alfa braking markers in the Porsche.

In fairness, the Alfa stopped so violently that it probably altered his understanding of physics. To make matters worse, the session got red-flagged shortly afterwards when a bloke in a brand-new Nissan Skyline locked all four wheels into the Hairpin, ignored every available warning sign and launched himself into the kitty litter. The car dug in and flipped onto its roof. The skid marks told the entire story.

Naughty Tyres carried on for a few more years.

​Then life happened...

Olly emigrated to Australia. I became busy with other projects. The Alfa ended up parked. For a while I wondered whether I'd made a mistake building it.

Then I heard about a youngster called Deon. He'd packed up his life in Cape Town and moved to Johannesburg simply because there were more opportunities to go racing.

That's the sort of madness I understand. So I handed him the keys.

Looking back, it might be one of the better decisions I've made. Deon poured his heart and soul into Naughty Tyres. The little Alfa got raced hard, maintained properly and continued doing exactly what it had always done - making people smile.

Eventually Deon moved back to Cape Town.

A few years later the car came back to me. In pieces. Most normal people would have regarded that as a warning.

Unfortunately, racers aren't normal people...

Around that time Keith Rose's assistant, Leon, was looking for a way into motorsport. One conversation led to another and before long Naughty Tyres had found yet another custodian.

The original idea was simple enough. Put the car back together. Race it at Killarney. Have some fun.

As is often the case with racing, simplicity lasted about six minutes. Leon started investing his own money into the car. Then some more. Then a little more after that. Before long we found ourselves in one of those awkward motorsport grey areas where enthusiasm, friendship, ownership and financial reality become difficult to separate.

We never really resolved it.

Truth be told, neither of us tried very hard.

The car was being loved, developed and raced. That seemed more important than paperwork. These days Leon has gone through the motor again and continued developing the old thing. Last I heard, Naughty Tyres should be back on track within the next month or so.

Which means the little Alfa is still doing what it was never supposed to do. It was supposed to rot quietly under a carport...

__________________________
It keeps finding new owners, new drivers,
new race tracks and new stories.
Not bad for a car that somebody once gave away for free.
__________________________

-Pierre Martins 

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