Santa Pod Raceway – Nostalgia Drags – Sat 1st to Sun 2nd August 2020

Considering the amount of notice racers had to get ready for the one-off nostalgia drags meeting announced by Santa Pod, it turned out to be a great meeting.

Despite many other sports in the UK not being able to operate with spectators, Santa Pod had been given the okay by the local council to have some much needed paying public enter the site, as long as they followed a good amount of guidelines, which they did. The pre registered crowd were also allowed to camp for the first time this season and turned up in decent numbers. For their reward they were treated to some great action over the two day event in great weather.

The Santa Pod track crew must have been working their track-prep magic before the event because despite the track seeing no major action in 2020, the racing surface was in perfect condition. This helped many of the races from the nine entered classes achieve personal best over the weekend.

The icing on the cake was a fantastic array of tasty customs and hotrods in the autoglym show and shine arena.

Hopefully the track can remain open for the rest of the season and continue to generate the much needed income it needs to survive in these very testing times.

If you like what I do, you could always support me and purchase a high res image for no more cost than a pint of cider (London Prices). Or you could even order a very reasonably priced print or a canvas

Anthony Collivers’ fantastic looking “From Hell” altered made its track debut. Not only does it look great but it also sounded the part on the couple of shakedown passes it made.

The families other ride looks the business and is getting rapid running 9.5 sec@139mph

Chris and Tania’s gorgeous little slingshot was running some serious numbers over the weekend. The little digger broke the magical 200mph barrier with a 201.68 blast and the car was very close to the other special figure of a 6-second pass at 7.07 seconds.

Tania was in full Saturday Night Fever mode with the celebration

Outlaw Anglia had a great number of entries, considering the short notice they had to get ready, which was a credit to the class.

With no Simon Barlow at the meeting, it was Colin Millar’s turn to step up to the plate and he didn’t disappoint. From the moment we saw “The Flying Fyfer” get off the line -straighter than we had seen in recent times -we all knew this would be a great weekend for Colin and the team. It was such a good weekend that Colin ran a quickest 7.114 sec run, which was a new Outlaw Anglia ET record, backed up by an earlier 7.14.

Mick Taylor’s woes were long gone and finally all his hard work, time and money paid off with some super pro et constant times all around the 8.3s bracket

Ginner was back out after his year-long break rebuilding Al’s Gasser and had shoehorned a huge motor between the chassis and was also running in the mid eights.

Barry Crookston was looking good until an increase in nitrous proved too much for the motor

Brother Scott was straight back in the groove, but just like many of the others is now 4 tenths off the leading pacemakers.

Just having Al at the track makes a meeting special, but when he’s racing the gasser it’s even better. Al even got the iconic car back into the nines.

One of the best built cars in the sport found the performance to match its great looks, although Kenny Gomez has some staging issues to sort out.

In a short space of time, Robbie Grabham has become a very competent Altered driver and was wrestling the great looking family Altered to some great times in the mid seven second zone.

No pressure Robbie 🙂

Fadster seems to be worried about something

The Supercharged Outlaws also had a good entry. Joel Kerr run some amazing times and speeds, and ran as quick as 7.00

Keith Freeman had “El Loco” flying with some P B’s ending with 9.79@135 mph.

Which had the crew chief jumping for joy

The Gassers were there, although it didn’t quite seem the same without the Ringleaders Nick Brooke Langham and Jungle Pat.

Steve Matthews was putting on a great show for everyone.

It was great to see Steve Johnson recovered and back at the track after his incident. Here you can see him fitting some shiny new wheelie bars.

Which unfortunately didn’t solve the handling issues in his crazy slingshot

The nostalgia Super Stockers were there in force. This class has gone from strength to strength in the last few years and provides some great action and also some great photographic opportunities.

The honours this time went to Jack Bishop, who beat Richard Layram

The nostalgia Pro Stock bike class held a line-up to try and cheer Mark Stevens. Diane McKrae organised the photo shoot, which I gatecrashed. Get well soon Nipper.