Team Nuts

"Often thought of as the 'joke team' of Robot Wars, yeah, who's laughing now?"

- Jonathan Pearce during Team Nuts' successful run in Series 10

Team Nuts are a team from Reading who competed in Series 8, 9 and 10 of Robot Wars, reaching the Grand Final in their third attempt.

The Team
"What a mixed bunch this lot are! Driver Rory is a cybernetics student alongside minibot driver Alex, while Dave works in a stock room for a DIY store. Handy for spare parts, no doubt! Chris is an engineer, so he must be the sensible one!"

- Jonathan Pearce on Series 8's Team Nuts

The team originally consisted of Rory Mangles, Dave Lawrie, Chris Shakespeare and Alex Shakespeare, who formed the team together after previously competing in live events with their own teams and robots. They reached the second round of Series 8 with Nuts, which lost all three of its Head-to-Head battles there, but returned to Series 9 with Nuts 2, which was eliminated in its group battle. Nuts also competes at live events with reasonable success.

During Series 8, the team wore top hats and furry waistcoats, with each member wearing a different coloured waistcoat. Rory Mangles wore orange, Alex Shakespeare wore blue, Chris Shakespeare wore purple, and Dave Lawrie wore green. After Series 9, when Dave Lawrie left the team, Gareth Barnaby filled his space, wearing a red waistcoat. Each member of the team now wears a beanie in place of their top hats.

In Series 10, the three members of Team Nuts, Rory Mangles, Alex and Chris Shakespeare, all wore flat caps to represent Rory Mangles' heritage as a farmer, and Chris Shakespare wore a new leopard-print waistcoat. Rory Mangles and Alex Shakespeare were both full-time roboteers at the time, with Rory Mangles now working for the same company as the Dorset Roboteering Team.

Team Nuts were notably quite scathing of their own machine, stating that it was 'not supposed to be a good robot' in spite of their great success in Series 10. "If we win here, we go straight through to the Heat Final, which is kind of scary, because you know... it is Nuts, and Nuts isn't supposed to be a good robot!"

- Rory Mangles

Team Die Gracefully Robotics
In Series 9, Dave Lawrie, who entered Series 8 as part of Team Nuts, entered a new robot, Jellyfish, alongside his wife Gemma, and in their VT only, Dave's brother Tim. The team is known as  Team Die Gracefully Robotics (also shortened to Team DGR), a name that he has used on the live circuit for many years. Dave and Gemma competed in Heat 1, battling Nuts 2 in the same Group Battle, where Angela Scanlon and Jonathan Pearce referenced a potential rivalry between the two teams.

Although both Nuts 2 and Jellyfish were eliminated in the same Group Battle, Jellyfish was reinstated into the main competition when Rapid withdrew, and Team Die Gracefully Robotics invited Rory Mangles and Alex Shakespeare to work with them as a reunited team. Although Jellyfish did not reach the Heat Final, the team collected a win over Sabretooth together.

Following on from Jellyfish and Ice Cream not being selected for Series 10, Dave Lawrie, along with Sam Elliott and Craig Croucher, began working on a new heavyweight, Two-Headed Death Flamingo. For more information, see Outside Robot Wars

Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 5
 * Losses: 6

NOTE: This incorporates the wins and losses of Team Nuts and Team Die Gracefully Robotics

Robot Wars Live Events
Prior to its performance in Series 8, Nuts made its combat debut at the Robot Wars live events, competing at various Live Tour events with initially limited success.

Alex Shakespeare also fought at the 2015 Robot Wars World Championship with AAK (An Adorable Kitten), also with limited success as the event was being used solely to test the drive system and the weapon had yet to be added. AAK fought TR2 and ThunderChild in its first round battle, but failed to move at all after blowing a fuse, and was eventually flipped out of the arena by TR2. It also fought in a six-way melee with Behemoth, Ripper, Luzifer, Weird mAlice and Meggamouse, but was eliminated early on after it was flipped onto its back by Meggamouse and could not self-right. Ripper would ultimately win the melee on a judges’ decision.

Other Robots
Before they formed Team Nuts for Series 8 of Robot Wars, team members Rory Mangles, Dave Lawrie, Chris Shakespeare & Alex Shakespeare had their own teams and fought with their own robots in the live events held during the show’s 12-year hiatus. While Rory Mangles was the original builder of Nuts, he has also built various other robots which regularly compete in live events. These include Richie, a black featherweight armed with an electric lifter with two-front mounted spears, and a variety of robots in smaller weight classes, such as antweights Bully Dozer, Slice To Meet You and Why Wait, and 2017 European Beetleweight champion Incomplete Control. Mangles also produces NanoTwo kits for roboteers competing in the antweight and fleaweight categories. These comprise of a set of NanoTwo ESCs, motors and wheels, as well as options for extra components and a version specially adapted to comply with fleaweight rules.

Between 2007 and 2017, Dave Lawrie fought at live events with his own team, Die Gracefully Robotics. Many of his heavyweights that he had built for the live events were designed to be basic in order to stand out from more modern flipper-wielding robots such as Iron-Awe 5. In 2007, he built his first robot called Monolith, a green wooden wedge-shaped robot, and later helped build Cabrakan, a two-wheeled robot armed with a stabbing chisel which was built as a joint project between Team DGR, Team Godzilla and Team Hell for the 2009 UK Championships. In 2010, Lawrie built Anger for the UK Championships which was armed with a front wedge, and for the 2011 UK Championships held at the O2 Arena, London, he built Wilhelm's Scream, a red and green box-shaped robot running on two wheels. During the events, Dave Lawrie has also fought with various featherweights such as Hoodrat, Canary Wharfare, Goon, Japanese Fighting Tortoise and TW3-RX5. He also frequently fought in the antweight class with several antweight robots, often entering as a completely new team for every event, although he has since retired from competing in this category.

Following their unsuccessful application for Series 10, Team Die Gracefully Robotics retired from robot combat, with Dave Lawrie later co-building a new robot, Two-Headed Death Flamingo, with would-be Series 10 teammates Craig Croucher and Sam Elliott. Armed with twin pecking 'heads' and side 'wings', Two-Headed Death Flamingo made its live events debut in October 2017, at Extreme Robots in Gloucester. It was extremely successful, participating in six fights, and managed to immobilise Eruption with direct attacks.

In the lead-up to the Series 10 Grand Final, Rory Mangles appeared on BBC Points West with the original Nuts machine and Two-Headed Death Flamingo. Mangles drove Two-Headed Death Flamingo while the BBC presenter drove Nuts in a practice battle held on Mangles' farm. Two-Headed Death Flamingo won the battle by stranding Nuts on the surface of its wheel.

Custom Antweights
Since 2014, team member Alex Shakespeare has also built and sold numerous custom antweight robots under the Team Shakey name, to fund construction and repairs to his own featherweight and antweight machines. These antweights are fully compliant with AWS regulations, and range from bespoke robots built to specifications set out by the customer to miniature replicas of heavyweight competitors.

In 2017, Team Shakey also began offering a selection of standard 'Ready To Run' antweights. Available designs include a flipper, an axe/grabber and an invertible pusher.

In November 2017, Alex Shakespeare set up a new website - Nuts And Bots - with the purpose of distributing the above 'Ready to Run' antweights, custom robot commissions and antweight components.

Trivia

 * After Nuts 2 defeated Concussion in Series 10, Dorset Roboteering Team captain Tim Rackley recommended Rory Mangles for a job at the same workplace as their team, eventually leading to a job offer.