Ice Racer

For the second of our quarter-finals, the bodgers must build fast vehicles that can race around an ice rink. As the space isn’t vast, we have imposed some criteria on the teams to which their vehicles must conform. Their machines can’t be more than five feet wide and seven feet long – and the engine capacity must not exceed one litre.

Hot Property

Ross Lindsay is an estate agent who works for Townends. Craig Smith and Scott House (no, really… Ed) are the company’s financial advisors. They are a confident team, great negotiators and have promised to play fairly. Hot Property are as safe as houses and in it to win it!

Hot Property’s technical consultant is Mike ‘Cookie’ Cookson, a man who has a life-long obsession with anything powered by an engine. His real passion is motorcycle racing. He’s done motocross, sidecar speedway and sidecar TT racing on the Isle of Man. He started his career as an agricultural engineer (always good preparation for Scrapheap) but nowadays he rebuilds passenger coaches and builds his own racing bikes.

Cookie’s plan is to build a Morgan-style trike with two driven wheels at the front and lots of sharp spikes in each wheel.

Jet Pack

Benjamin Jewell, his brother Toby and Jolyon Sanders are eccentric jet engine know-it-alls from Northants. They spend every spare minute of their time designing, building, testing and modifying these contraptions while trying not to set their garage on fire! The Jet Pack intend to thrust their stuff and launch into the final with a big bang.

The Jet Pack’s technical consultant is last year’s Mud Monsters’ expert, Richard Hopkins. There isn’t much he can’t do when it comes to off-roading. He has held almost every title for British off-road 4×4 events, including British Off-Road Champion and the British Hill Rally Champion. In between British tournaments, he competes internationally in endurance off-road events, including the Spanish and the Mexican Baja events and the gruelling Paris-Dakar.

Richard’s plan is a world first … a rear-wheel-drive vehicle with skates on the front to steer with.

The expert

This week’s expert is Graham Drury. About 20 years ago, Graham invented indoor ice speedway and has turned the annual event at Telford Ice Rink into a landmark in the international Speedway calendar.

He is a charismatic guy who has spent years doing weird things on ice. He knows all the technical stuff about ice rinks and has loads of knowledge about wheels on ice. He also does an act called ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ where he drives a motorbike around an ice rink – blindfolded, navigating through 10 people from the audience. He used to catch a bullet between his teeth but stopped doing it as he thought it was in bad taste. He’s also a magistrate and has the nickname ‘Judge’.