Anthony 'Buddy' Ryder

Wendy and I first met Buddy at the SummerNats in Canberra in the late 80's.  He was down from Queensland with a few of the guys and Hugo DiGianvincenzo (my brother Hugo) introduced us.  Well, talk about not being able to get rid of a Queenslander....we are still trying!

While Buddy still resides in Queensland, he has helped on all three dragsters we have owned, the L.A.Raider, Purple Haze and the current Black Widow.  He either drives down from Brisbane ('Relaxes my nerves...' he quotes) or jumps on a flyer, but is at every event we have (except the DOTD, our best event - Ed).  He has jumped up his interest in this car as he bought a state of the art Racepak with all of the bells and whistles, and fitted it to the chassis. He has since added a Weather Station (although we still have to ask him if it's raining yet as the unit doesn't actually tell us).  So, to say that Buddy wasn't an integral member of our team would be like saying that Queensland won't win any more State Of Origin games.

Buddy has been at Telstra all his grown life (after he left McDoanlds and still refuses to grow-up) and does virtually nothing else but play and work with computers. His knowledge and flair with the Racepak is exceptional, and the amount of data that he is logging will help us immensely in the future.  The rapport that Buddy has with the Racepak and Vinnie is poetry for a computer geek, and even though being an 'out of towner', is an asset to our team.  Many phone calls happen between our guys with sharing and gathering information.

Buddy is also responsible for our own web site and the site for the Australian Nostalgia Fuel Association (ANFA.com.au) and is continually updating them with pics and reports.  They're both pretty cool.

 Steve Turner