Shaky start but we’re back with a win!

2018 has been a difficult year so far for the world of drag racing in the UK. We’ve lost a race track due to the owner selling the land for a housing development and the new surface at Santa Pod has been tricky to say the least.

The work to completely dig up the Santa Pod track was due to start before the winter set in but was postponed over and over due to bad weather until eventually the concrete got poured in February. Then the bad weather continued, and it we hardly got a dry day for weeks. It really hampered the track prep guys.

Our first race meeting was over the Easter weekend, but 3 days of rain and cold temperatures meant that we didn’t even get to make one pass down the track. Hardly the start of the year that anyone needed.

The next race was the International Main Event in May. The previous week we had run at a test and tune day to check out how the car would run after the winter rebuild, but we found along with several others, that the car got loose at the 1/8 mile mark. A new situation for us as we’ve always managed to get down any track before. A difficult thing to get your head around as some cars had no problems but the 4 link dragsters all seemed to struggle. The opposite of what you’d expect.

Anyway, we persevered and made some adjustments and ended up 0.007s off, only good enough for 10th spot. On race day the car stayed hooked, but we broke out in the 1st round. Not the start we were hoping for.

We’ve just completed the Summernationals at Santa Pod and for once we are basking in a spell of glorious weather. The uncertainty of the track surface has gone away and we ran quick and fast all weekend. After 2 breakout runs during qualifying our 3rd was bang on, 7.5602 on a 7.56 dial in. #1 was ours.

An odd number of entries gave us a bye run in the 1st round and then 3 good tight races put us in the final. Here we met Brad Jackson in his dragster who hit us with a 0.001 reaction time. Impossible to beat but luckily for us, Brad was too far ahead, didn’t back off at the finish line and broke out, giving us the win on a plate!

Not the text book way to win, but we’ll take it! This has put us right back up to 2nd place in the championship and is a great confidence booster.

Looking forward to the next race now as we’re on a roll.