Team MAD

Team MAD (known at the time of the original series' run as Team BlazerBotics), are a family of roboteers who competed in later series of Robot Wars and the second series of Robot Wars Extreme. Team MAD consistently reached the Grand Finals of the reboot, winning Series 8 outright with Apollo, and reaching the Series 9 Grand Final through a wildcard.

The Team
Team MAD refers primarily to two brothers, Alan Young and Dave Young. Both operate the touring company Robots Live! by profession, and Alan Young also creates robots under commission for television shows. All robots entered by Team MAD were built by Alan and Dave Young, however the former could not be a competitive member of Team MAD in Series 8 due to his involvement with the production of the show, until Series 10 when he joined the televised team. Alan Young received a speaking role on the show when Carbide damaged the arena wall during the Grand Final. Dave Young, along with teammates Mark Dermott and Ben Bacon, former bluecoats and Robots Live! presenters, won the series with Apollo. Young and Dermott returned to Series 9 as a duo, where they reached the Grand Final, losing in the first round having qualified via the wildcard. Marc Dermott could not return for Series 10 due to his career change taking him to the United States of America, so Dave and Alan Young reached the Heat Final of Series 10 together, losing to Behemoth.

"The tricky part this year has been working with my brother, because he works in the Midlands, and lives in the Midlands, and I live in North Wales, so we've been trying to work a workshop between the two of us; communicating online, designing things with Cloud, doing CAD software, and then turning it optical to get laser cut, so communication and trying to get together for a team at one time has been one of the biggest challenges yet!"

- Dave Young to Haynes Manuals at the time of Series 10

Team MAD have fought with several robots across Robot Wars, although they did not compete in the main heavyweight championship until Series 8. Although they entered several featherweight and antweight robots under their original name, Team BlazerBotics, they failed to win any event in either Extreme 2 or Series 7. However, one of their antweights, Hades, won the ninth Antweight World Series one week after Extreme 2 was filmed.

The team also built notable heavyweights, including Merlin, which entered the pilot episode of Series 8 and was originally intended to enter Series 7, but withdrew from the qualifiers. Alan Young also entered Monte into the Series 8 pilot, but only Dave Young entered (and won) the main competition with Apollo.

As the then-reigning champions, Team MAD were asked to be mentors on Robot Wars: Battle of the Stars but had to decline due to work commitments.

During the show's original run, the team were local to Leicestershire, although as of the reboot, Dave Young is local to Conwy, North Wales, while Alan Young lives in Birmingham. The team represent North Wales, but were erroneously listed as a Birmingham-based team in Series 8 despite Alan Young not being a televised team member at the time.

In Heat 1 of Series 10, various family photos of the Young brothers from around 2004 was shown, allowing robots such as Alpha and Merlin to make cameo appearances.

Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 12
 * Losses: 11

NOTE: The performances of Merlin and Monte in the pilot episode are excluded

Outside Robot Wars
In addition to Robot Wars. Team BlazerBotics entered its sister show Techno Games with a wedge-shaped robot named Blazer, the team's first middleweight and from which they received their original name. Blazer entered the Assault Course, but lost to Bugs Buggy, and was later equipped with a pneumatic flipper for combat events. However, it would not attempt to qualify for Robot Wars.

After Robot Wars entered its hiatus, the team bought Raging Knightmare, which they renamed Knightmare and later sold on to another roboteer who renamed it Raging Morg. Team MAD also fought with Merlin, UFO and former FRA UK Champion Kronic 3, the latter having been retired and superseded by Apollo in recent years. Team MAD also set up a company called Robots Live!, which hosts live robot combat events for heavyweight and featherweight robots. Along with Extreme Robots and RoboChallenge, Robots Live! is a very well-regarded event organiser in the roboteering community, and currently hosts the FRA UK Championships as one of their events. Team MAD have also bought the shell of Wedgehog, which they use only for display purposes.

Of Team MAD's robots, Merlin underwent several rebuilds since the Seventh Wars, and competed regularly at live events with considerable success; most notably reaching the finals of the 2006 UK Championships and winning that year's Tag Team Terror with Velocirippa. Kronic, meanwhile, earned the team's biggest successes until its retirement; becoming the UK Annihilator Champion twice in a row in 2010 and 2011 and finishing fourth in the 2012 UK Championships.

The team also participated in Scrapheap Challenge, competing in the Giant Archery competition at the Scrapheap Challenge Roadshow at 2007 Bodelwyddan Medieval Festival. There, they competed as The Robot Warriors, and narrowly missed out on a place in the final.

Under the name of Team Chronic, Team MAD applied to participate in the 2015 reboot of BattleBots with Chronic, a blue wedge-shaped robot with a flipper and a similar body shape to Apollo. Although Chronic was not chosen to compete in the main series, it was the first robot to fight in the new BattleBox, battling Swamp Thing, built by Team Hardcore Robotics of Tombstone fame. This battle was staged as a test for the camera equipment, where Chronic threw Swamp Thing around, causing external damage to it by causing the robot's thwacking tail to fall off, but Chronic eventually broke down and lost the battle. Chronic remained a reserve for the series, but was not required to take part. Chronic was also due to compete in a nine-robot rumble at the end of the series, but due to time restraints in filming, it never took place.

Although Chronic was not accepted to take part in the 2016 series of BattleBots, Alan Young was still able to participate by joining Team Storm and Andrew Marchant in entering Photon Storm, a heavily upgraded version of Tiberius. It lost to the Brazilian robot Minotaur in round one, surviving for a good amount of time before a heavy drum blow to the side caused a weld to break and took both of its drive motors, damaged the battery while also damaging the hydraulic line that powered the weapon. Photon Storm was not selected as a wildcard, and thus, was eliminated.

Alan Young represented Team MAD in the Chinese TV show King of Bots, competing with a heavyweight robot named Vulcan, armed with a large bladed axe.