Everyone Should Have a Dream
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Importance of Work Life Balance
Work-life balance is an equilibrium between a person’s professional commitment and personal life and is crucial for maintaining overall staff well-being and productivity. Achieving a healthy work-life balance involves effectively managing time and energy to ensure sufficient attention is given to both work-related responsibilities and personal pursuits.
A well-balanced life enables staff to engage in hobbies, spend quality time with loved ones, and pursue personal goals. Some of our team have some unusual personal goals…
Dream Big
Many of our staff have found a healthy work-life balance and actively pursue outside of work interests. For some this involves fitness, with dreams of running marathons, for others, it is travelling the world. For our gas engineer, John, his dream was to own and race a stock car. Bet you didn’t see that one coming!
Growing Up
Since he was young, John has had a love for cars, mostly stock cars. It all started with his parents taking him to watch banger-racing. For John, there was nothing better than the roar of the engine, the smell of burning rubber and burnt-out clutches. However, he wasn’t allowed to race at a young age due to his family not being able to support or fund it.
For a good few years, he stopped going to races but, one night, for something different to do, he decided to attend a race. Very quickly, that same feeling he got when he was young came flooding back. John explained “After watching this race, I made the decision to do it! Before it was too late! I began with a basic formula but the car didn’t last very long due to race damages. I then moved up a level of racing to a non-contact formula and managed a bit of success in this. I still needed a win though! I did make it to a blue roof, which is an intermediate level. After a couple of years in non-contact, I decided to try my luck in a completely different style of racing - a single-seater, open-wheel, full-contact formula. This brought me to Spedeworth Superstox!”
The Difference Between Stockcars and Superstox
Stockcars is a form of oval racing motorsport on a quarter mile track. With fast racing and close proximity to your fellow racers. Superstox is one of speedworths (promotion) oldest formulas and is a full-contact, open-wheel formula. These are based on a purpose built chassis with all areas off the car being in the firing line for contact.
Expensive Hobby
Of course, preparing for and building a stock-car to make it race condition, doesn’t come cheap. So, John and his partner decided to actively recruit some sponsors, that’s where JCW came in! We often sponsor charitable events and donate to worthy causes. We also sponsor local youth sports teams, so when the opportunity arose to sponsor a stock-car, well - why not!
John added “Preparing and building a stock car to begin with has its expense. But mostly the expense comes to being able to keep and maintain the car to race standards. One of the biggest issues for ourselves as a sport just now, is tyres. The sport was once a working persons motorsport but over the last few years, this has changed drastically, as the costs go up and up. However, the sport is also always looking at ways to help reduce costs where they can. We are in talks of potentially starting to trial of more cost-effective tyres, especially as we only get 3 races out one tyre.”
Introducing Sally
After quite a few hurdles, Sally (the stock-car) was born and last weekend, sporting a colourful new skin (featuring JCW), she made her debut (well sort of).
Sally had undergone some pretty major refurbishments over the last few months, such as; a replacement engine to a Zetec, alloy body panels, radiator tanks, new seat and a complete re-spray. On the day Sally was due to race, it was clear that there were still some fundamental problems and John decided to retire her from the event, to work on these issues, so she can be ‘race-fit’ in June.
Through this process there has been much stress and personal turmoil, for John and other people involved with building Sally. However, it won’t be long now before John’s dream comes true. And who knows, perhaps a race win is on it’s way…!
Dream Come True
JCW are proud to sponsor John and his car Sally. His achievements prove his determination and dedication to a his dream and we are happy to be part of this story. Watch this space to learn more about Sally’s achievements in the future…
November - John and Sally Update
John and his car Sally, completed their final race of the season last weekend which ended on a massive high for the pair. They managed to complete both remaining heats, including the final, in the top 10. Although not a win, this was a massive achievement for the team after the struggles they faced, originally to get the car built, and then working through a list of teething problems which never seemed to end - until their last night when their hard work paid off and it all came together.
Well done to John, Sally and the whole team for ending the season on such a high, John added, “I just wanted to say thank you for this year's sponsorship from JCW, without sponsors none of this is possible.”
A Career with JCW
If you are an aspiring engineer or administrator who are interested in a career in the building services sector then please get in touch with us. We fully support work experience and apprenticeships and believe that the young people we recruit today really will continue to provide a firm foundation for our company in the future. We welcome individuality and enthusiasm and reward with our full support in your career progression.
If you would like to know more about a career with JCW then please get in touch by clicking here.
