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Photographs for Asia.
31st December: Our good buddies at Svensk Dragracing and Racebilder are both raising funds for
the victims of the Asian tsunamis and we urge you to visit either or both sites to make a donation.
First up is the Svensk Dragracing web site at www.dragracing.se
who have posted their annual galleries of 'eye candy' by Swedish photographer Stefan Boman. This year Stefan has
provided pictures at 1024 pixel width which can be used as Windows wallpaper. Stefan and Svensk Dragracing ask that
if you download any pictures then you follow the link on the
index page to make a donation.
©Eurodragster.com
The Racebilder web site at www.racebilder.nu has also
announced that money from all photo sales in January will be donated to the disaster fund.
You know what to do, folks.
Eurodragster.com nominated in poll.
31st December: Eurodragster.com has again made the shortlist for Web site of the Year
in the end-year Dot Com Awards on influential US web site
Competition Plus. Eurodragster.com is in some
pretty prestigious company, sharing the shortlist with the official NHRA and IHRA web sites as well as
such popular sites as Drag Race Central, Drag Racing Online and Draglist.com.
©Eurodragster.com
If you would like to cast a vote for Eurodragster.com then you can find the Competition Plus Dot Com
Awards by clicking
here; the Web site of the Year vote is on the second row.
If every one of our four to five thousand daily visitors voted then we would put up a very strong
showing in this poll.
New Year Nitrous offer.
31st December: Paul Cann of Twisted
Sanity Nitrous Systems has been in touch with a special New Year's Day offer for Eurodragster readers wishing
to purchase a Nitrous controller at a 50% discount. Paul also tells us that the company has had a very
successful first year in business.
"The staff and crew at Twisted Sanity Nitrous Systems would like to say a
very Happy New Year to everybody for their support during their first year
of trading", says Paul. "Things have gone better than could be expected for the business and we
have many new products to be released in the New Year. We are building a new web site and we
will be moving to our new offices in Watford at:
Twisted Sanity Nitrous Systems
Unit 10 The Empire Centre
Imperial Way
Watford
Hertfordshire
WD24 4YH
"We will also be adding a second office phone number.
©Eurodragster.com
"As a Thank You to all of Eurodragster's readers for their help and support we
are holding an exclusive New Year's Day offer. Any orders received by E-Mail
for our top-of-the-range Nitrous
controller, usually 300, will get a 50% discount. This is a one day only offer and there is no VAT to pay, just
postage. This offer will end at midnight on New Years Day without exception and orders are limited to one per customer."
You can find full details about the Nitrous controller on the Twisted Sanity web site at
www.twistedsanity.com and place your
order via the site's Contact Us page.
Meanwhile Paul tells us that the Twisted Sanity Rocket Dragster will be back on track
very soon. "The next date for the car will be on 23rd January", says Paul. "We're pretty sure that we
have all the bugs ironed out now and are looking for a sub ten-second run. We
also have sponsors for the car, and will release details in the New Year."
If you fancy building your own rocket car then the Twisted Sanity gang have that covered too.
"We are planning a section on the web site which will include step-by-step
instructions on exactly how we built the car and a detailed explanation of
how it works", says Paul. "Everything we used in the build-up is commonly available,
apart from the starters for which you will require an explosives license.
Those among you who have met us personally will probably be falling about
laughing now at the thought of anybody in their right mind giving us an
explosives license but they did, and if we can get one then so can you! No
excuses not to see the birth of many new rocket projects next year."
SCR Dinner Dance approaching.
31st December: Beth Satchell has been in touch with a reminder that the Shakespeare
County Raceway Dinner Dance and Trophy Presentation is fast approaching. The Dinner Dance takes place at the
Corus Hotel in Bristol on Saturday 22nd January 2005.
©Eurodragster.com
"Merry Christmas to you all - hope Santa bought you all those new engine parts you needed for a fast and prosperous New Year!", says Beth.
"If you wish to join us at the Dinner Dance then please download the entry form by
clicking here and sending it with payment either to myself or to
Wendy Talbot. The cut off date for ticket orders is Friday 14th January so please don't leave it too long before applying.
If you have already applied for tickets, I am sending them out so you should receive them within the next week.
I look forward to seeing you all at the party, and in the meantime have a very Happy New Year."
Hunting the Cobra Jet.
31st December: On the subject of Shakespeare County Raceway, track announcer and keen historian
Jerry Cookson would be pleased to hear from any reader who can give him any more details about a Jet car which
was reportedly imported to the UK some years ago.
Jerry tells us that an article in the March 1990 issue of Thoroughbred and Classic Cars related the
story of Craig Black of Lake Tahoe, who bought a crashed AC Cobra. The car was originally a genuine 289 Cobra of
1964 vintage, and Craig raced it until the chassis was damaged beyond repair in an accident. Craig eventually
fitted the car with a J34 jet engine and it was reportedly imported into the UK by Northern Wheel and Tyre
Supplies of Darlington, County Durham. The trail goes cold at this point. "It sounds like one of those
undiscovered LSR/drag projects that never saw the light of day", says Jerry.
If anyone can help Jerry with information about the Jet Cobra then please drop him an E-Mail at
quartermilenewsmakers@yahoo.co.uk.
©Eurodragster.com
Postcard from Hal Far.
29th December: If you were tuned in on 7th December
you will recall that UK Pro Stock Bike racer Chris Hope took up an invitation from Italy's Davide Ricci to
test his bike at Malta's Hal Far Raceway. Chris' son and Crew Chief Mark, who got in some track time himself,
dropped us a line to tell us how things went from the UK team's point of view.
Hal Far Raceway is a great track and is superby laid-out with all the facilities in pristine condition. We got the bike ready and made a few
adjustments to suite dad's riding style before testing. Some changes were forced upon us because fuel was unavailable - we were running on
C25 as opposed to SV-05, this meant the carburetion had to be changed and there were no settings to start from. By Saturday evening
Dad seemed comfortable with the bike and we were starting to get to grips with the fuelling. After a few Becks in the Power Bar we
discussed some further changes we could make the following day.
Davide arrived first thing on Sunday morning and set his Super Street Bike up ready to race. He seemed very pleased to see us all working as a team.
After studying the rear tyre we decided that it should be changed, and before we could even get the rear wheel out Anthony Borda had arranged for
it to be picked up and taken to a garage to be changed. Thanks guys, you made our life so much easier.
On Sunday we only managed one pass as we misplaced a magnet from the clutch basket and were not prepared to take any chance of it
damaging the engine. With only the final rounds to race off we began to pack the bikes into the van to make an early getaway back to the
apartment. I must say, Malta is the only place Ive ever seen with articulated trucks fitted with Turbos and slicks!
©Eurodragster.com
Monday saw more testing but first we had to fit the spare engine. It was while we were doing this that I was asked to ride Davides Super Street
Bike. There were discussions about me riding the bike on the Saturday night while out having a few drinks, but mum soon put a stop to that
discussion. So we forgot about it, well we did until Anthony returned from a trip to gather a few parts for the Pro Stock Bike and a few pizzas and
pies and asked if Id fit in dads leathers. Luckily mum was out exploring the beautiful churches of Valetta, so I had an opportunity which I could
not refuse. I was told to take it easy as Id not ridden anything like this before, so I left the line gently, but after shifting through the gears into third
I couldnt resist it any more and opened the throttle fully, Whoops, that left a bit of a black line which was far from straight. What an experience!
I got back to the start line where dad and the guys were waiting, slightly less coloured in the face. I think it must have looked worst than it felt. Id like
to say thanks to Davide for letting me ride his bike and to Anthony for persuading me to have a ride.
Once Id had my fun it seemed only fair to help Dad, Carlo and Martino to get the Pro Stock Bike ready. Once the engine was complete and the
bike ready to race, it was back to the drawing board with the carburetion. At the end of Mondays test session wed managed to run a 7.8 with
a 1.152 sixty foot, which we were informed was the fastest sixty foot for a bike at Hal Far Raceway. The track was very impressive and with
a little more rubber from some bigger cars could be a very fast circuit.
On Tuesday morning we were greeted with rain! Luckily by the time we had finished making changes to the bike, the wind had blown most of
the water off the track and the sun began to heat things up.
All in all it was a very successful weekend. Carlo and Davide and the team were happy with the information they had learned, Anthony seemed
happy to have new faces around, and as a family we were all very pleased with our trip, which was far better than we could have ever imagined.
Big thanks to Carlo, Martino, and Nicki for travelling all the way from Italy, and assisting us in the Becks oclock events. Thanks to Davide for
making it happen and for his great hospitality, and Anthony and the guys at Hal Far Raceway for doing a great job on the track and keeping us all
amused. Oh and Anthony, I think my mum wants a word with you next time...
We would like to thank all our sponsors and helpers during the past season:
Davide and Carlo for their hospitality in Malta
Garry Coull of Pinnacle Autocentre, Falkirk
Steve Clark and Dianne of Nimbus Motorsport and TorcoDirect.com
John Hoole of Wunoff Exhausts and his friend Johnny, now Director of Entertainment
Chris Tombleson of Straightline Racing
Dave Branch Engineering for helping us to get rid of surplus wine
and Ian Dales for giving us something to think about (always!).
Wishing you all a fast and safe 2005.
Cath explains VWDRC exit.
29th December: Former Volkswagen Drag
Racing Club Chair and VW Sportsman racer Cath Bishop has been in touch to let us know about
the circumstances surrounding her resignation from VWDRC:
Christmas is over and I hope you all had a great time. The New Year is nearly here and it will be the first in over ten years that I won't be involved
in the VWDRC. It already feels like a part of my life is missing since I missed the AGM earlier this month, so heaven knows how it will feel
when the race season starts next year!
I'm sure that there are romours flying round as to why I didn't attend the meeting etc. so this is just to put the record straight. Those of you who
have known me for a while know that I've suffered with back problems since 2000. That year I struggled to compete in the Baja at every round
but I did and came away with Street Champion. 2001 saw my family business (My Grandad/dad's business for over sixty years) forced to close
by the bank. So after thirteen years of employment I was jobless. I found another job and continued racing, and also joined the Committee.
In 2002 I had mega problems with my back again and those of you who were at Shakespeare County Raceway that August saw just how bad
it got. I could hardly walk and Steve Nelmes (then VWDRC member) got permison from the officials and myself to drive my new car at that
event. Yet another new job in 2003 for Rob and myself and our holidays were restricted meaning we could not compete at the Easter meetings.
Rob then had an accident at work and was off for three months. Finally in June 2004, after four years of back trouble I had an operation
to help correct the problem which again put me out of racing for the rest of the year. I attended Bug Jam but just four weeks
after the operation it was the worst decision I had ever made - not only physically, but mentally too.
©Eurodragster.com
"Where is this all going?" I hear you ask. Well, every year we have had a massive financial blow dealt to us and this year being off work
again for three months finally caught up with us, and for want of a better term 'kicked us right up the arse'. I have kept plugging away in
the background at VWDRC, a lot of which never came to light. It is very difficult to keep involved and informed when you are not able
to attend race meetings! The Committee stuff got the better of me, and I sent the Committee a personal E-Mail explaining the situation.
Thanks to Brian Burrows and Steve Lee for replying. The reason that I could not attend the AGM was because my car had to come
off the road as I literally had no money to tax it, let alone fill it with petrol! Also, I had to start working overtime to try and claw back
some financial stability which in turn was aggravating my back after the operation. As you know financing a race car is not cheap, especially
with no sponsors; with a house and family to support it has to be the last priority.
It has not been an easy decision for me to leave the VWDRC after ten years. It really does feel strange but the final decision was made
not only for financial reasons (which are pretty critical at the moment) but personal too. Rob's dad is fighting cancer and my dad has dementia
and this Christmas was probably his last at home.
Years ago I was criticised for being slow when I was running 18.35 in the Baja, and also for being a bad mother for bringing my daughter to
race meetings! Well, this time I hope I have put the record straight for those of you who may have heard other reasons for my missing
the AGM. I finished my VWDRC career by running low fourteens and Victoria is hel- bent on joining the Junior Dragsters. So all in all it's been a good
ten years.
I hope to be able to get to either track as some point during next season and I would like to wish you all in the VWDRC a very Happy New Y
ear and lots of Good Racing. I'll keep my eye on Eurodragster.
SPRC Perpetual Awards week 6.
27th December: Once again Santa Pod Racers Club and Eurodragster.com are teaming up to give
readers the chance to have input to the SPRC Perpetual
Awards, which will be presented at the SPRC Dinner Dance on Saturday 5th February 2005.
For six of the seven 2004 season awards, the SPRC Committee has decided upon a shortlist for which votes can be
submitted by E-Mail. Nominations for the seventh Award, the Alex Brachtvogel Memorial Trophy, are being accepted
throughout the voting period (see below). The votes of Eurodragster readers will be taken into consideration when the
SPRC Committee decides upon the winners of all seven awards.
This week's vote, the sixth, is for the Paul Giddings Memorial Trophy.
The Paul Giddings Memorial Trophy is a bike-only award is named for late racer Paul Giddings, and is presented for
overcoming adversity. Nominees have typically had to endure personal problems, severe or prolonged mechanical trouble,
an accident or other such troubles, but have faced those problems head-on and come out on top.
The SPRC Committee's shortlist for the Paul Giddings Memorial Trophy is as follows (in alphabetical order):
©Eurodragster.com
Shaun Branch, Special Branch Funny Bike
Tony Clark, Paul Rose Motorsports Pro Stock Bike
Anders Larsson, Colormailer Pro Stock Bike
Len Paget, White Lightning Pro Stock Bike
Ian Turburville, S & S Sure Shot Supertwin Fuel Bike
To place your vote, go to the official SPRC Perpetual Awards
page which you can view by clicking here or by clicking on the
SPRC Perpetual Awards vote link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster page. Voting is per category, so if
you have voted for the previous four categories then you can of course still vote for the Paul Giddings Memorial
Trophy this week.
The Alex Brachtvogel Memorial Trophy, for which nominations are now being taken, was first awarded to Santa Pod Raceway's
late Chief Marshal, Alex Brachtvogel, in 2001 to mark his outstanding contribution to Santa Pod Raceway and the sport as a whole.
After Alex's death the trophy was named in his memory and continues to be awarded for contribution to drag racing.
There is no shortlist for the Alex Brachtvogel award. Nominations are invited for racers, race officials, track and safety crews, club
officials, media, or anyone else who has contributed to the sport. Last year the trophy was awarded to Kjell Pettersson and David
Lloyd-Jones of Santa Pod Raceway. Again see the official web page for more details or E-Mail your nomination to sprc.awards@btinternet.com
specifying SPRC Alex Brachtvogel Trophy as the subject and your nomination in the body of the mail.
Web site updates.
27th December: The European Pro Mod Association web site at
www.promod.nu has been updated with a team page for
Fil Papafilippou's Drag Warriors team.
©Eurodragster.com
The B + J Nostalgia web site at
www.bjnostalgia.com has been updated with an
entertaining Christmas page featuring a mix of pictures from the team's Personal folder as well
as some historical shots.
What's it like to drive a race car?
25th December: The first of Eurodragster.com's Christmas presents to our readers is
News Editor Tog's promised feature about driving Nev Mottershead's Toyota Supra Super Gasser, which he did
at the Halloween Showdown at Shakespeare County Raceway in October.
©Eurodragster.com
The four-chapter feature comes complete with pictures and video clips of Tog's two passes in the Toyota.
It should provide enough reading to get you through the Christmas break but if you don't have the luxury of
time then we recommend that you head straight for Chapter 2, entitled So, what's it actually like to
drive a race car? in which Tog tries to describe the both the practical side of, and the sensations and
thoughts involved in, driving a Super Gasser.
You can read Tog goes Super Gas by clicking
here, or by clicking on the Features link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster page.
Presents from the Top End.
25th December: Eurodragster.com Photo Editor Sharkman is also in present-giving mood, having
posted two updates on his personal web site Sharkman's Top End Tales.
The first update is the 2004 class of Sharkman's School of Excellence, a gallery featuring
the very best of the photographs which didn't come out exactly as intended. As well as Sharkman's own
efforts the School of Excellence features talents as diverse as Carla Pittau of 2004 UK National
Pro ET Champions Heaven and Hell Racing, Alan Currans of the Acceleration Archive,
Big Stan Mellström and the aforementioned Carl Wadkin-Snaith.
©Eurodragster.com
The second update is Sharkman's annual screen saver, featuring his photography from 2004, which this year
comes in four flavours:
- The full version, which weighs in at 48.3 Meg and is only for those with broadband
- Cars only (35.6 Meg)
- Bikes only (12.9 Meg)
- Diet version (15.1 Meg)
You can find Sharkman's School of Excellence and screen savers on his web site at
www.topendtales.com.
Drag Racing Unplugged VI.
25th December: As has become traditional on our last pre-Christmas update, we have posted
the season's best quotes from Eurodragster's Event Coverage, and others we didn't publish at the time. We
are pleased to present Drag Racing Unplugged VI, the 2004 collection.
©Eurodragster.com
Click here to view Drag Racing Unplugged VI, or click on the Event Coverage link
on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster page. Enjoy!
Eurodragster's Christmas break.
25th December: We will now be taking our Christmas break, although we will only
be gone until Monday (27th December). Keep those news items coming in to
news@eurodragster.com and we will post them on Monday.
As has become traditional we are pleased to bring you our Christmas lists and New Year resolutions.
©Eurodragster.com
Top of Tog's Christmas list: The means to run Eurodragster.com full-time, rather than just feeling
as if I do!
Top of Sharkman's Christmas list: Seeing as Santa han't managed it for the last two years, it must be third time lucky for me?
A '69 Cuda or Challenger with a 383 in it. If it happened to have a 440 and six pack or a Hemi then I wouldn't say no!
Our New Year resolutions:
Tog: As I work for the UK government (see, I do have a day job - Ed), I am going to pull strings to introduce a bill into Parliament
to return capital punishment for those who claim out of rote that "I heard something about this some time ago" every
time Eurodragster.com breaks a big story.
Sharkman: Concentrate on what I am good at (well, the photography anyway) and not get drawn into doing a lot of other
things at the track. I still want to be enjoying the racing as much at the end of the season as I do at the start.
Tog and Sharkman would like to wish all Eurodragster readers and their families the very Happiest of
Christmases, and to thank everyone who has sent us personal Christmas wishes and cards as well as those on
our on-line Christmas Card.
See you on Monday!
Kats announce new rider.
24th December: Roger Yelland of 2003 ACU Super Street Bike Champions Team Krazy Kat has
proudly announced the team's new rider for the 2005 season.
David Warren of Team Manor Racing will be taking the saddle of the 8.1-second bike. David has raced since 2001, when at the age of sixteen
he started in 10.90 Bike and then moved up to 9.90 Bike, winning the 2003 Ultimate Power Championship and achieving a best of
third in the UK National 10.90 Bike Championship.
"I was honoured to be asked to ride for such a prestige team and bike, and it took me the whole two milliseconds seconds to come out with a Yes!",
says David.
"The decision has not been an easy one as Karl Larcombe, a longtime good friend, has had a difficult year", says Roger Yelland. "But the team has
been eager to get out and run that seven. Karl will still be test pilot if needed."
The bike is going to take some getting used to as David's PB so far is 9.72/146, a second and a half off the 8.16/175 best of the
Krazy Kat III, although David is widely regarded as a natural and one of the UK's brightest prospects on two wheels. The team plan to test in February
and March after exhibiting the bike at the Xtreme Wheels Show on the 19th-20th
February.
"Stay tuned as we will be hopefully announcing some more news in the near future, but during the meantime you can keep up to date at
www.braggofsurbiton.com", says Roger.
Erbacher has big bells.
24th December: Andrea Wucher of 2004 FIA European Top Methanol Funny Car Champions
the Fat Attack Drag Race Team has been in touch
to let us know what Urs Erbacher and the team have been up to recently. It transpires that there has been
a lot of partying going on.
"Our Championship party was great and loud and with a lot of people", says Andrea. "Max, our dear friend from England
with the great black pick-up we used at the Pod as a tow car, even came to Arlesheim just to join the
party. So if you would like to know the inside story about the drinks, the girls etc...ask him! Our friends
from Turtmann brought a very nice present for Urs from the Valais. Do you remember the cow bell
at the European Finals in the pits and at the prize-giving ceremony (Oh, yes - Ed) ? We now have our own team bell, so
you had better get used to the lovely sound of it (right, click on picture for large version).
"The prizegiving gala in Monte Carlo was a lot of fun, and impressivea as Andy described it. By the
way the food was excellent, I wonder why no English guy mentioned that in his report (Because I didn't ask - Ed)?
But the best part was after the official part, enjoying the party in the Jimmyz Club with all the other Champions until
early in the morning. So whoever followed 'early to bed, early to rise' missed the best part...sorry. Too bad that on the
Eurosport coverage the drag race guys were non-existent again.
©Eurodragster.com
"Urs and Christian were cruising through Monte Carlo on their custom bikes for some days before.
Honey, forget your Ferrari, Maserati or Bentley in front of the Hotel de Paris - all the girls wanted to have their picture taken with
the bikes. Needless to say, the guys enjoyed that. I think the Fat Attack trailer was the first bike trailer to park in front of the main entrance of the
Hotel de Paris."
The Midland Oil-sponsored FC is scheduled to go on display in Dubai for two months, accompanying two of Urs' custom bikes which
are already on their way. In the meantime, Andrea tells us that the Fat Attack team have had a delivery from Santa Claus.
"The package is big and it smells a little bit like...nitro", says Andrea. "As soon as we have unpacked it, we will let you know. But I am
sure that it is fast and I will be spending the next week studying new regulations: different class, different regulations.
We are all looking forward to getting some more presents under the Christmas tree and to enjoying
holidays in the mountains, skiing, eating cheese soup and raclette (the mugge schlugge guys know
what that is)."
You can stay in touch with the Fat Attack team on their web site at
www.fatattack.ch.
PMR Brentwood Show update.
24th December: Paul Marston has been in touch to thank everyone who responded to his plea
for exhibitors at the Brentwood International Racing Car Show, which takes place at the Brentwood International
Exhibition Centre on 8th-9th January. Paul tells us that both the Show and Trade parts of the drag racing
contingent are now filled.
"We really have been spoilt for choice, and quality too", says Paul. "The final line-up reflects a cross section of drag race machinery: something
for everyone, from a Fuel Funny Car to a Junior dragster, attempting to reflect where drag racing is today. There will be representatives from
each team present to meet, greet and proudly discuss their race cars or bikes with the deceptively-knowledgeable public. Potential sponsors
from the motor sport world watch out - the drag racers mean business, great business exposure that is!
"This year the drag racing contingent will also be playing a much more participative role on the main stage, with interviews and guest appearances.
Perhaps not the usual kind of guests too, this year's Brentwood Show is primarily aimed at the motorsport participant and hard-core race enthusiast.
So expect the stage guests to reflect that, it will be Sportsman racers from all types of motorsport discussing their year, sharing stories and
experiences, and explaining technical aspects of their race cars. Drag racings Sportsman racers are real heroes to a lot of people (Hear, hear - Ed),
so it is only fitting that they also should see some of the limelight.
©Eurodragster.com
"Along with this the video wall will be showing highlights from the 2004 UK National and FIA European Championships, and
don't forget to collect your Santa Pod Raceway and Shakespeare County Raceway 2005 Event Calendars, available at the Santa Pod Raceway
stand. Once again we must thank Santa Pod for their support of the Show and for débuting the Santa Pod Fuel Funny Car and Junior
Dragster, always a firm favourite.
"Representatives from Paul Marston Racing will be on hand both days to answer any questions regarding the Paul Marston Drag Race Driving School
and the infamous Passenger Rides, both of which make excellent Christmas presents: details are available from the office on 0208 597 4575 or
mobile 07831 650230, or at www.paulmarstonracing.com.
"Paul Marston Racing would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and we look forward to seeing you all in the New Year."
The Brentwood International Racing Car Show is open from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm on Saturday-Sunday 8th-9th January 2005. Admission
is 10 for adults and 6 for OAPs and children.
Web site updates.
24th December: Recent Eurodragster.com contest winner Carl Wadkin-Snaith has updated his
The Fang web site with an feature on the the team's new Fuel bike, the Tandem Twin (right). "News has been
a bit thin on the ground because I've been waiting for the crank to be returned for three months", says Carl. You can
check out the plans for the Tandem Twin on the Fang web site at www.thefang.co.uk.
©Eurodragster.com
The Drag, Rod and Classic Review web site at www.drcreview.com
is running a contest with three T-Shirts up for grabs from 2004 FIA European Top Fuel Dragster Champion
Andy Carter and a feature on Ray Eldred's Sanity Assassin Super Pro ET Toyota Celica,
and a brief interview with American Tom Hanna about his Egyptian front-engined dragster.
UK Supercharged Outlaw and Wild Bunch team Bennett Racing have launched a web site at
www.bennettracing.moonfruit.com. The nicely-designed web
site tells you everything you would like to know about Frank Bennett's blown Topolino altered and Luke Bennett's Wild Bunch altered,
featuring news, list of achievements, pictures, previous cars, sponsor page and more.
Söderquist's open house.
23rd December: Although Carbon By Design Top Fuel Dragster team owner Knut Söderquist
invited us to his housewarming party a couple of weekends ago, we were unable to make it due to family
commitments. Photo-journalist Andy Willsheer
(on the left of this picture participating in
the Shockwave team's pre-season training) made the trip to Ljungbyhed with the British contingent and kindly sent us a
report on the evening. Click on any link for a picture.
Knut Sderquist, expatriate Swede and owner of a stable of four Top Fuellers, has decided to up sticks from Blighty and base his
quarter-mile operation out of his homeland from hereon in. The well-chronicled carbon fibre injector manufacturing business - Carbon
by Design - will remain in the UK, however, under the stewardship of Carlo Gandolfi, and with a full order book its unlikely that the Pods
former track manager will be twiddling his thumbs for some time to come.
A housewarming party was recently held at Knuts new home in Ljungbyhed and over forty people were on hand to partake of some
Swedish hospitality, including a dinner that was catered by the man who was
a ships cook at one time in his misspent youth. The spread he put on was splendidly indicative of the TF kingpins not-forgotten expertise in mass catering.
The workshop (right, click on picture for large version) out of which Europes top blown-nitro line-up will be campaigned is in Astorps, a relatively easy drive from Knuts
village abode that en route passes the home of Tommy Mller, who has just acquired an ex-Doug Herbert McKinney car to hopefully
shake up the troops in 2005.
Long-time friend Jonny Nilsson suggested to Knut that he could share his premises, which take the form of a cleverly converted railway
engine shed. The capacious set-up allows former drag racer Jonny to beaver away on making Ford GT40 replicas and other sports
car endeavours in one half and Knut and able assistant Chris Andrews to labour away in the other. Chris is slated to drive the car formerly
shoed by Smax Smith, so suffice to say theres a vested interest to ensure the operation works out to everyones satisfaction.
At the time of our visit there were three long cars sitting in the workshop, each in
various stages of assembly. Jran Perskers Nasty Toys Team
machine was being readied for return to the speed shop owners safekeeping over the winter, during which period one of Knuts trailers will be outfitted
to accommodate both the rail and Jrans Pro Stocker.
The move from Pig Farm International Knuts tongue-in-cheek reference to the distinctly insalubrious, rural workshops from which the TF business
was run for many years here in the UK was a bit of a nightmare logistics-wise, but with four tractor/trailer units crammed to capacity with an
accumulation of cars, parts and house contents the exodus from Blighty was accomplished without too much drama.
Chris performed a stirling task in unloading everything whilst his employer was away at the ACDelco Las Vegas NHRA Nationals, and with
astute Knut having procured orders from the States for more than two-dozen injectors the resettlement seems to have been accomplished with
propitious timing.
©Eurodragster.com
Everyone at the convivial housewarming do seemed to enjoy their hosts hospitality (very much so if the stack of empties was anything by which to judge!)
and although the cattle truck flight from Stansted was bereft of any frills the same cannot be said of the Kings entertaining affair in southern Sweden.
Okay, so one of the Brit contingent 'lost' their passport and was resigned to staying abroad until he could get along to the British Embassy in Stockholm
on the Monday and obtain a temporary replacement, only to find the missing document tucked away in a pocket of his luggage as we were waiting in
Malmo to get the bus to the airport for Sundays evening return flight. I shant repeat what everyone said to the person in question, but suffice to say
that sundry expletives were not short in number!
Itll be interesting to see how matters pan out in 2005 for the squad that comprises half the field at most FIA Championship rounds, though its a safe
bet therell be the usual dramas for which Top Fuel Team Sderqvist seems fated to endure. But with renowned American crew chief Bill Schultz
being contracted to come over and assist Action Jackson, matters certainly ought to be a little less hectic for the hard-working AJ.
Collective thanks go to our congenial quarter-mile guru and heres hoping that the transition pays dividends in the coming season.
Many thanks to Andy for the report and pictures, and to Mark Turner for providing a couple of extra shots.
Gary Page also told us an amusing story from the evening at Knut's. "Knut made an excellent speech and he said what
a great bunch of guys his English crew are", says Gary. "So we thought we would ask him for a ten per cent rise - but
then we realised that he didn't pay us anything!".
Gardermoen statement on NDRS.
23rd December: The Board of Gardermoen
Raceway have issued an statement on their web site concerning the withdrawal of
Gardermoen from the 2005 Nordic Drag Racing Series. Bjørn Vidar Pedersen of Gardermoen Raceway
tells us that the below is a good translation of the statement:
The board of Gardermoen Raceway has decided to pull out of the Nordic Drag Racing Series for 2005. We pay dearly for arranging
NDRS races, money that is sorely needed for Norwegian drivers, upgrading the race track and for a more attractive Norwegian series.
The board of Gardermoen Raceway also wished that the NDRS series should be free from required races. With the exception for the Finals.
We suggested that every driver could count five races before the Finals, and that these should be free to choose regardless of which country the
race is run in. This will not happen for 2005, and this together with the economic situation led to that Gardermoen Raceway chose to pull out
this year. If the economic situation allows for it, we will later re-evalue if it may be of interest to participate in NDRS for 2006.
The European and Norwegian Championships will be run as planned.
©Eurodragster.com
Fund started for Duckworth.
23rd December: Members of the bike racing fraternity have organised a support fund for
Straightliners organiser Trevor Duckworth, who has been charged with manslaughter after a fatal accident during
a sprint at Port Erin, Isle of Man, earlier this year.
"As Trevor was Clerk of the Course the buck has stopped with him", says Shaun Walker. "It certainly could have much wider implications throughout
the country on anyone taking the responsibility of organising a sporting event.
The other problem I foresee is that if a case goes against the accused there would no doubt be a civil case started, with the usual huge financial penalty
to follow if it succeeds. The trouble is that this is a sport mainly run by enthusiasts and they
simply cannot afford to suffer these losses, never mind the mental strain that must go hand in hand with it. One of the reasons we have brought
this to people's attention is that the legal costs are horrendous. Trevor's lawyer is good but he is also having to spend a large amount of time
on the case, not to mention the fact that Trevor has had to travel back and forth to the IoM like a yo yo to see the police and others.
"There is no way on earth that Trevor can pay his legal bill without jeopardising some part of his life, his job, house etc. so we are trying
to raise some money to offset the bill a little."
If you would like to contribute towards Trevor's legal costs then there are two ways in which you can help:
Cheque made payable to Sarah Quigley, to:
Sarah Quigley
1 Botany Lodge
Lower Macclesfield Road
Whaley Bridge
High Peak
SK23 7GE
Alternately you can use Paypal (with 4% commission) to send
contributions to 200@200mph.net.
"It is a bit like investing in your future so if people can give a fiver that's great", says Shaun. "A tenner would be even better but we realise that
not everyone is made of money, and it is Christmas, so wait until the New Year if you want because this will not be over for a few months yet."
You can stay in touch with the latest information on the 200mph forum at
www.200mph.org.uk.
Tombleson returns.
22nd December: The UK's Chris
Tombleson will be returning to the track in 2005 on a six-second Vose-built Pro Mod Bike (right). Chris was
last seen on-track contesting Pro Stock Bike although he has remained involved with PSB racer Richard Gipp and
also through Straightline Racing.
"The bike was originally built by Mr Pro Mod Billy Vose back in 1997", says Chris. "It was ridden by Mimmo Marciano and became the sixth
member of the Fast By Gast Six Second Club in 1998. The bike has run a best of 6.91/197 and runs consistent 6.9s.
©Eurodragster.com
"I plan to upgrade the bike over the closed season with a view to running 6.8s next year. Optimistic, but with a diet and a bit of motor work, very possible!
It's a Precision chassis, with full Pro Mod Nos system plus Schnitz progressive. I just ran it on the dyno, and it presently makes good, competitive power.
With the winter upgrade, it should have about another 50 bhp at the wheel. Once I get to grips with it, I think we can be competitive.
"The plan is to run it at a couple of test days early in the New Year. Then we will race at the two FIM rounds at Santa Pod, plus Hockenheim and two of
the ACU UK Funny Bike rounds. I may run in Sweden and Norway, if time allows."
2005 NDRS Calendar.
22nd December: Svensk Dragracing have published their provisional calendar for the
2005 Nordic Drag Racing Series. There have been a number of changes to the calendar with some tracks
no longer included and others introduced.
©Eurodragster.com
One of the new tracks is Malmö's Meca Raceway, whose NDRS date is 10th-12th June 2005. Jan Ekström
of Skne Racers Ideella Frening says that all classes from Junior Dragster
to Pro Mod and all motorcycle classes will be warmly welcomed.
You can read all about the 2005 NDRS and check out the calendar on the Svensk Dragracing web site at
www.dragracing.se.
Postcard from a Champion.
22nd December: 2004 FIA European Top Fuel Dragster Champion
Andy Carter says that he
went to the recent FIA Awards Banquet determined to enjoy himself after being overawed by his first visit in
2001. Andy kindly sent us a postcard of his second visit to Monaco - the first time that an FIA European Top
Fuel Dragster Champion has made the trip twice.
"We flew out to Nice on the Thursday morning and were taken by limousine and taken to the Hotel De Paris - the only place to stay in Monte Carlo!",
says Andy. "Last time I was here we stayed at the Mirabeau and you dont really get a feeling of the prestige of the FIA awards. Staying at the
Hotel De Paris, reminders are everywhere: FIA signs outside, the FIA Press office is based in the hotel and, to cap it all, sitting down to breakfast
Friday and Saturday morning Bernie Ecclestone was on the next table. From the other tables I could not help hearing snippets of motorsport talk, it
felt good!
"The weather on the Friday was a great 68 degrees, so we spent the day relaxing by the pool, in the coffee bars, having a massage and of course
walking the F1 track. In the evening we met with Russ Malkin (of Image Wizard) and Keith Bartlett for a catch-up on Drag Racing BS. I was also
lucky enough to meet the head of the RAC and his wife Barbara in the bar before the FIA shuttles picked us up; I dont know how many there were,
but there was a constant stream of Mercedes people carriers (with big FIA logos on their sides) pulling up outside running a shuttle service to the
Banquet.
"When you arrive it's straight onto a red carpet and lots of cameras, filming, BS etc as you go in. Its hard to describe (well it is for me anyway) the
grandeur of it in words, but its fantastic!
©Eurodragster.com
"The drag racing Champions were first on stage. We were held at the side behind the curtain with our hosts until the three-minute drag racing video,
which is shown on three massive screens, had finished. Then it's on to the stage and stand on the cross you had been briefed to go to - of course I
went out and went to the wrong cross first! Then the spotlights come on, you are announced and given your trophy, then it's exit stage left or right
depending on which side you are on.
"Then they go through all the other awards for the lesser motorsports, Rallying, Formula 3, etc. and of course last is Formula 1. Each motorsport has
a short video and are given their trophies quite quickly, the only motorsport which gets a little longer is Formula 1. When the Formula 1 presentation
is over all the winners are asked to come onto the stage for the group photo. You are all positioned with the curtain down, then the curtain rises and
you stand there while all the press take photos and film for about a minute, which seems like forever!
"After the group photo there is the chance for everyone to leave their tables and mingle.
"After a great breakfast on Saturday morning, all that was left was pay the bill and book the rooms for 2005. Then it was off to the airport and back to
sunny England.
"I hope that everyone (even Eddie) has a good Christmas and a great New Year. Im looking forward to the New Year and to seeing everyone at the
Pro Fuel Shootout!
"I have posted some pictures from the Banquet on my web site at
www.andycarter.net/gallery.htm."
Web site updates.
22nd December: Carla Pittau of 2004 UK National Pro ET Champions Heaven and Hell
Racing has updated the team web site with a minor revamp and some news which she describes as
"Not completely stale". Check it out at www.heavenhell.org.
Carla also tells us that the team will be launching a new web site at a new address soon.
©Eurodragster.com
Attention UK Street racers!
21st December: UK Street Eliminator Class Manager Dale Reardon has been in touch
with next year's Street Eliminator dates and an important message for racers intending to contest the
class in 2005.
Next year's Street Eliminator Championship dates are as follow:
26th-28th March: Easter Thunderball, Santa Pod Raceway
16th-17th April: Power Nationals, Shakespeare County Raceway
18th-19th June: UK National Championships, Shakespeare County Raceway
25th-26th June: SPRC Summernationals, Santa Pod Raceway
22nd-24th July: Bug Jam, Santa Pod Raceway
27th-29th August: Custom Car Magazine Allstar Nationals, Shakespeare County Raceway
1st-2nd October: UK National Finals, Santa Pod Raceway
©Eurodragster.com
"I have sent a 2005 registration form to those intending to race next year", says
Dale. "These need to be completed and returned along with the 30 registration fee
(made payable to Street Eliminator) no later than 31st December.
Simply, if you don't sign up for the class you will not be
permitted to race. Further updates will only be mailed out to fully paid up members, so please,
demonstrate your commitment to the new class with a prompt reply."
For more information about Street Eliminator or for a registration form please drop Dale a
line at hellstownchopper@aol.com
or call his mobile 07973 864995.
NDRG drops Pro Mod.
21st December: Thanks to Patrik Jacobsson of the European Pro Mod Association for passing
on the sad news that NDRS Bilsport Pro Modified will not be featuring at this year's NDRG Drag Challenge
at Norway's Gardermoen Raceway in August.
"The organisers of the Norwegian round of the Bilsport NDRS Pro Mod series
have withdrawn from the NDRS series in 2005", says EPMA Chairman Micke Gullquist. "We are sorry for all Pro Mod
fans in Norway, but we hope they will come to Mantorp the weekend before to
see the biggest, fastest doorslammer field ever in Europe."
©Eurodragster.com
The NDRS Bilsport Pro Modified Championship schedule is currently being put together; keep an
eye on the EPMA web site at www.promod.nu
for details of this and for all of your off-season Pro Mod news.
We understand that NDRG are withdrawing not just from Pro Mod but from the NDRS as a whole; stay tuned
and we will bring you more news as we receive it.
Swift snippets.
21st December: 2004 FIA European Top Fuel Dragster Champion Andy Carter would be
pleased to hear from any company or individual who can do him a good deal on an awning for his trailer.
"If anyone can supply me with an awning then please contact me at
fiatopfuel@aol.com or call 07860 405060",
says Andy. "Have a good Christmas and a great New Year."
©Eurodragster.com
Andy Marrs has been hard at work again to update his list of European
Champions' Champions which we published on Friday. "I have separated out the points for FIA Top
Methanol Dragsters and FCs from 1996 and 1997 when they ran as a single class", says Andy. "They are
now included in the individual Top Methanol sheets and also in the cumulative sheets. In addition I should
have mentioned that the FIM/UEM points system changed in 2001 so I recalculated the points under the
new system". You can view Andy's and Simon Groves' lists of European and UK Champions' Champions by
clicking here or by clicking on the
2004 Champions' Champions link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster page.
The perfect Christmas present.
20th December: Courtesy of our good friend Heather Bond comes the fantastic news that
UK Funny Bike racer Sarah Jane Head is to be allowed out of hospital on Wednesday, just in time for
Christmas. Scary has spent several months flat on her back in various hospitals since her frightening top end
crash at the Easter Thunderball back in April, and although she still has some hospital time to go before
her recovery is complete the chance to go home will give the popular racer a huge fillip.
"Scary is very happy!", says H. "She says they had to let her out since she needs to get down the shops to
get some food in for Christmas. What she doesn't know is that the hospital are letting her out so that
they can have a quiet Christmas! Scary will be in a wheelchair but to get out of hospital and get
home and back to Dave is the best thing which could possibly happen for her and the timing is perfect."
©Eurodragster.com
We are sure that Scary would appreciate Christmas cards to welcome her home; her address (posted with
permission - Ed) is:
Sarah Jane Head
23 Fox Lane
Thorpe Willoughby
Selby
Yorkshire
YO8 9NA
Alastaro: Let's get noisy!
20th December: Esko Raisvuo has been in touch to let us know that Finland's Alastaro
facility will be allowed to run its famous Night Race again in 2005. The Night Race and other motor
racing at Alastaro was disrupted after environmental concerns were raised but the local authorities have
now allowed it to continue.
©Eurodragster.com
"We have now had the news that only dirt racing is to be disallowed", says Esko. "All racing on paved surfaces is allowed, but limited.
Extreme noise dates are allowed, with a maximum of four days in July, so the FIA event has official permission too.
Also the legendary Night Race will be back! Once a year noise is allowed at night up to 22:00 and if there are weather problems the Race Director can
let the race continue to midnight! The Night Race must be held in August (dark nights and still not too damp on-track).
"Finland is going to be so fine again! Yippee!"
Lundqvist/Leanders at full Velocity.
20th December: Swedish Top Methanol Funny Car racer Martin Lundqvist has been in touch
with an update from the workshops of Martin Lundqvist Racing and Leanders Brothers Racing, who will be competing
as a two-car team in 2005 as revealed here on Eurodragster on
9th June.
The joint Leanders/Lundqvist Mondeo/Firebird TMFC team, Europe's first two-car TMFC operation, will be racing
under the banner of the Velocity Performance Group and have launched a web site at
www.vpgroup.se.
"There are a lot of things happening at the moment", says Martin. "The coach which I used 2003 has been
sold to a music group, and we have bought a Volvo FH 12 truck and a Wilson double-deck
trailer. To get two identical coaches we are also working on a deal to purchase a second
Wilson trailer in exchange for the trailer which the Leanders Brothers used last season.
©Eurodragster.com
"Whilst Ulf Leanders and I are working to secure sponsors, Jörgen is spending his time in the workshop
to get the Funny Cars race-ready for next season."
The Velocity Performance Group web site is packed with information including team biographies, details on the
cars, 2005 calendar, feature on sponsor IronCAD's 3D product, team records and much more.
SPRC Perpetual Awards week 5.
20th December: Once again Santa Pod Racers Club and Eurodragster.com are teaming up to give
readers the chance to have input to the SPRC Perpetual
Awards, which will be presented at the SPRC Dinner Dance on Saturday 5th February 2005.
For six of the seven 2004 season awards, the SPRC Committee has decided upon a shortlist for which votes can be
submitted by E-Mail. Nominations for the seventh Award, the Alex Brachtvogel Memorial Trophy, are being accepted
throughout the voting period (see below). The votes of Eurodragster readers will be taken into consideration when the
SPRC Committee decides upon the winners of all seven awards.
This week's vote, the fifth, is for Most Promising Newcomer. Nominees for Most Promising Newcomer have
contested their first full season in 2004. The list includes UK National
Champions as well as event winners and racers who have impressed for other achievement within their chosen
classes.
The SPRC Committee's shortlist for Most Promising Newcomer, in alphabetical order, is as follows:
©Eurodragster.com
Derek Flynn, 6th in UK National Super Pro ET Championship
John Hackney, UK National 10.90 Bike Champion
Nick Hartwell, 3rd in VWDRC VW Sportsman Championship
Linda Platt, UK National Sportsman ET Champion
Gary Springford, 10th in UK National Pro ET Championship
To place your vote, go to the official SPRC Perpetual Awards
page which you can view by clicking here or by clicking on the
SPRC Perpetual Awards vote link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster page. Voting is per category, so if
you have voted for the previous four categories then you can of course still vote for Most Promising Newcomer this week.
The Alex Brachtvogel Memorial Trophy, for which nominations are now being taken, was first awarded to Santa Pod Raceway's
late Chief Marshal, Alex Brachtvogel, in 2001 to mark his outstanding contribution to Santa Pod Raceway and the sport as a whole.
After Alex's death the trophy was named in his memory and continues to be awarded for contribution to drag racing.
There is no shortlist for the Alex Brachtvogel award. Nominations are invited for racers, race officials, track and safety crews, club
officials, media, or anyone else who has contributed to the sport. Last year the trophy was awarded to Kjell Pettersson and David
Lloyd-Jones of Santa Pod Raceway. Again see the official web page for more details or E-Mail your nomination to sprc.awards@btinternet.com
specifying SPRC Alex Brachtvogel Trophy as the subject and your nomination in the body of the mail.
Next week's category will be Paul Giddings Memorial Trophy.
Swift snippets.
20th December: If there were prizes for ingenuity then UK Pro ET racer
Terri Lee and her husband and
Crew Chief Ian would be on the shortlist for this excellent Candelabra forged from
an old crank (right). "Well, you've got to use the damaged parts for something!",
says Terri.
©Eurodragster.com
Supertwin racer, photo-journalist and graphic designer Ian 'Turbo' Turburville is having an
end-year blowout auction of his sizeable stock including Craft helmets, die-cast models
and his complete camera outfit. You can find Turbo's goodies on E-Bay by
clicking
here.
DVD Contest winners.
20th December: Eurodragster.com's European Championship DVD Contest had the highest entry of
any of our competitions with the exception of our Fifth Birthday Give-away. The correct answers to the questions
were as follow:
2004 FIA European Championships DVD:
Q: Who won FIA Top Fuel Dragster at the 2004 FIA Main Event at Santa Pod Raceway?
A: Tommy Möller
2004 FIM/UEM European Championships DVD:
Q: Who won FIM/UEM Top Fuel Bike at the 2004 Veidec Nitro Festival at Mantorp Park?
A: Roel Koedam
2004 NDRS Bilsport Pro Modified Championship DVD:
Q: Who won NDRS Bilsport Pro Modified at the 2004 FIA European Finals at Santa Pod Raceway?
A: Patrick Wikström
©Eurodragster.com
Congratulations to the winners:
FIA European Championships DVD: Jan Vidar Vestvik, Norway
FIM/UEM European Championships DVD: Carl Wadkin-Snaith, UK
NDRS Bilsport Pro Modified Championship DVD: Jessica Selles, Holland
Thanks to everyone who entered the Contest, and a big Thank You to Santa Pod Raceway for
posting the prizes.
Kågered on #1 spot.
19th December: Swedish Top Fuel Dragster racer Micke
Kågered has reacted with pleasure to yesterday's news that he has regained his #1 spot in the all-time FIA
European Championship points tally.
"I have always been placed among the top three in the FIA series, so I guess I have done pretty well through the years", says Micke. "To me it proves
even more that my crew is the best and will hopefully stay the best in the years to come. It pleases me to see that Niclas Andersson is in the all-time
fourth position and I am very happy to have him driving for me in Top Methanol Funny Car. Both of us have been in the business a long time and plan
to stay amongst the top teams a long time still to come.
©Eurodragster.com
"My personal goal for the 2005 season is to win the FIA Top Fuel Championship. I have been very close twice, so I know it can be done. Next
season we are sticking to the same race car as in 2004, which hopefully means that we can start the season better rather than struggling as we
have been doing the last two seasons with new cars and new combinations. Before the season is over I would love to see Niclas take over the #1
position in Top Methanol Funny Car and we know that can be done as well.
"On behalf of all of my crew I would like to wish everyone a great Christmas holiday, and we are looking forward to meet you all on the tracks
in 2005!"
Swift snippets.
19th December: An amendment has been published to the Pro Mod rules as posted on the
FIA web site. Maximum blower overdrive will be 25% until 31st July and will then be changed to 20% from 1st August.
You can read more on the European Pro Mod Association web site at
www.promod.nu.
©Eurodragster.com
LA Performance Services update.
19th December: Lee Child of Ultimate Power Championship promoters LA Performance Services
has been in touch with news of a new sponsorship opportunity at Shakespeare County Raceway.
"We have a high number of waste bins on site at Shakespeare County Raceway", says Lee who jointly sponsors Eurodragster's Links pages
through LA Racing Parts. "We now have plastic covers for the bins which
are very strong and waterproof. Any logo can be placed on these covers, in a wide range of colours (right): this is a great opportunity to get your logo in front of
the fans all the time. We can also supply race tracks and race teams with these great covers, so dont delay - E-Mail today. We can ship
internationally with no problems. If you want to sponsor a bin or bins, or if you have any queries, then please contact me by E-Mail
at lee@laracingparts.com."
Lee has also asked us to thank everyone who contributed to events at Shakespeare County Raceway in 2004. "This year was a tough one",
he says, "the weather playing a major role in our proceedings. Only two events escaped the rain, the American Car World Nationals and the
Power Nationals. The Ultimate Power Drag Racing Championship is growing at a steady pace, enjoying a good reaction from our sponsors
whose support is totally awesome. I really do enjoy working with the track sponsors, without whom it would not happen.
©Eurodragster.com
"2005 looks to be a good year, with sponsors continuing to stay with the Ultimate power championship and more sponsors joining. Keep
an eye on Eurodragster for the latest updates.
"A big Thank You must go to Anthony Hodges and Melanie Mason for their help and for having faith in me. They have been a power of
strength after such a wet season. The on-site staff have also been great to work with and we've had a lot fun but still got the job done!
The track prep trio of Darren Prentice, John Cross and Sharkman have done an excellent job yet again and the traction will get better
and better for 2005.
"But only the hard work of all the marshals makes the event happen, a big Thank You goes out to you guys. Wendy Talbot with daughter
Annette and Ozzy do a fantastic job and really put in the hours, and I cannot thank them enough. Last but not least Thank You to my wife
Emma, who my rock. It needs great people to make it all work.
"I would like to wish everybody a great Christmas and a Happy New Year. See you at the track."
European Champions' Champions.
18th December: Following on from Simon Groves' list of UK Champions' Champions which we
published earlier this week, fellow Eurodragster.com Honorary Staff member Andy Marrs has again kindly provided us
with a breakdown of FIA and FIM/UEM points tallies which he has calculated from his own records, from the
Svensk Dragracing web site, and from the King Racing web site.
Sweden's Micke Kågered has regained his Champions' Champions title as the FIA racer to earn the most
points since the FIA Championships started, taking back the #1 spot from last year's leader Michael Malmgren,
whilst Roger Pettersson racks up his sixth consecutive year as the FIM/UEM Champions' Champion.
The highest-earning points scorers in each class are as follow:
All-time FIA points: Micke Kågered 3572 points
FIA Top Fuel Dragster: Barry Sheavills 1787 points
FIA Top Methanol Dragster: Dave Wilson 2144 points
FIA Top Methanol Funny Car: Leif Andréasson 2667 points
FIA Pro Stock: Michael Malmgren 3565 points
©Eurodragster.com
All-time FIM/UEM points: Roger Pettersson 1740 points
FIM/UEM Top Fuel Bike: Roel Koedam 1170 points
FIM/UEM Supertwin: Ton Pels 1252 points
FIM/UEM Pro Stock Bike: Roger Pettersson 1740 points
You can see the full FIA points tallies by clicking
here and the full FIM/UEM points tallies by clicking
here. We have also added the European data to Simon Groves' analyses on the 2004 Champions' Champions
page which you can view by clicking
here or by clicking on the 2004 Champions' Champions link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster page.
"If anyone wishes to use my data in any format and for any purpose please E-Mail me for permission first at
andy@tsitimers.co.uk", says Andy. "I am unlikely to refuse, although I will expect a credit!
If the data is used without my permission the very least that will happen is that Geoff Quaife will be popping round to see your daughters.
Also, if anyone wants any specific information which is not on these sheets then please contact me directly and I'll do my best to fulfill your request."
Many thanks to Andy for his hard work.
Swift snippets.
18th December: Norwegian Top Methanol Funny Car racer Arvid Grødem got in touch yesterday
whilst we were out performing mandatory pre-Christmas carousing to ask us to say a big Happy Birthday to his Crew
Chief Per Egil Nordby. "Per Emil had his twentieth (times two) birthday", says Arvid. "The whole team wishes
him a Happy Birthday!". Tog and Sharkman and all of Eurodragster's readers also wish Per Emil all the very best and
hope that he had a great day.
Don't forget that entry to Eurodragster's European Championships DVDs contest closes at 23:59 UK tomorrow, Sunday 19th.
For your chance to win one of the three DVDs, check out the official Contest page by
clicking here or by clicking on the
European Championships DVD contest link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster page.
Greek Power Awards.
18th December: Alex Vourvachis of the Dragster.gr web site has
been in touch with a report on Greece's Power Awards, which were presented by Power Techniques magazine on Thursday evening:
Power Awards: an event whose popularity and importance for the Greek tuning scene can only be compared to a combination
of the National Elections and the Miss Universe Beauty Contest! For the past two years, the readers and editorial staff of
Power Techniques have officially recognised the best modified cars, aftermarket products, tuning houses, race drivers
and their cars, and production cars aimed at drivers with the passion for driving and tuning. This unique event exhibits a
true revolution on a pan-european level! It aims to improve and popularize Greek tuning on a wider level, expand the
existing marketplace, and to ultimately bring together the representatives of the two major automotive worlds:
tuners/customizers and manufacturers.
The Power Awards contest is comprised of two parts: the Power Car Of The Year and the actual awards. The Power Car of
the Year contest is an open invitation to all street-legal modified cars, where each prospective candidate is awarded points
according to quality, effectiveness and overall technical prowess of their modifications. A Power Car is a repartee to all
those who consider automotive customising and tuning to be a pointless renegade hobby. Its a challenge for the tuners and
the modifying scene supporters to prove their talent, their capabilities and what they are really worth. We have to consider
the fact that the cars that take part in this 'showdown' are put through their paces over a period of three days, and are
subjected to more than ten different trials; they are graded on the basis of more than 100 standards. Testing includes
dynamometer evaluation, performance tests, track driving, and an evaluation of its user-friendliness on an every day basis.
The thing which differentiates the Power Car of the Year, however, is the technical evaluation of the vehicles modifications
in more than seventy different areas. The technical committee is an experienced hardcore team made up of established
tuning gurus who are well known, respected and accepted by the Greek tuning community. This year, the team was
comprised of six tuners two of them having travelled all the way from the UK and two Power Techniques technical editors.
©Eurodragster.com
The Power Awards contest is laying out the foundations for the future of tuning in Greece, thus making the concept of
modfiying an accepted notion. The awards introduce automobile afficionados to tuning, whilst at the same time elevating
their opinion to a powerful force in the tuning & aftermarket field. They reward those in the modification/tuning business
in the best possible way, and define the cars that we will be tuning in the future. Our readers vote on the products and
service providers that they consider to be the best for their car on the basis of their personal unbiased opinion, regardless
of whether its the engine, the suspension system or its aesthetics both inside and outside. They are also given the
chance to vote on the most popular race drivers, the most popular race cars and the best production cars. Most of our
award recipients have already proven what they are worth through various technical articles which have been published
in Power Techniques. As you will find out for yourselves, the basic ingredients that will lead us to pan-European recognition
are exposure, quality aftersales, a technical foundation and successful marketing.
Most popular dragster driver:
- Filippos Papafilippou (right, presented by Costas Papatriantafyllou, publisher of Power Techniques)
- Grigoris Dimitriadis
- Dimitris Barbaris
Most popular dragster team:
- ACE Motorsport
- Drag Warriors
- Barbaris Electric
Most popular drag race cars:
- Lancia Delta Integrale
- Toyota Celica GT4
- Citroen AX
Koedam Racing season review.
18th December: Marius van der Zijden, Crew Chief for 2004 FIM/UEM European Top Fuel Bike
Champion Roel Koedam, has written a report on the
Dutch team's successful season:
Let me take you back to a year ago. The 2003 season was near-perfect with excellent weather conditions and winning just about anything.
The 2004 race season looked promising and though expectations were high, we knew that it would be very hard to beat the results of 2003.
Technically speaking we finished 2003 with a good combination but with a bottom-end which was ready for the scrap yard.
The good thing was that Zodiac stepped up and became our main supporting company.
The focus for 2004 was on winning as much as possible and (giving the conditions) attempt to make a 5 second pass.
About winning: This year we entered nine events. Although we are convinced that the engine was in better shape than last year, it
didnt always show in the results as you can read in the following chronological summary - for the more comprehensive versions go to the News
section of our web site.
Speedfreaks Ball / Santa Pod, England For the third time in a row this was our season opener. A festival for jet-propelled vehicles and
a Top Fuel bike v Supertwin shoot out. The event was plagued by low ambient temperatures and a few rain showers. Though we did not run any
spectacular numbers we won the event.
Main Event / Santa Pod, England The first round of the FIM European championship. Due to a tricky track surface and changing weather
conditions it was a hard battle against the track. On top of that we suffered transmission problems on more than one run and thrashed like crazy.
Despite this we won the event.
Fast and Furious / Drachten, The Netherlands This was the only round of the three for the Dutch National Championship which we could
enter due to other obligations. We do not run for the National Championship, just to entertain the spectators and maybe improve the all-time
National eighth-mile record. We made some crowd-pleasing runs but did not improve the record (which we hold anyway). What was surprising
however is that we equalled our best sixty foot time of 1.05. It must be said that we ran that time on the dedicated drag race track of Santa Pod
therefore showing the potential of the temporary Dutch track.
Nitro Nationals / Alastaro, Finland The second round of the FIM European Championship. Initially we didnt plan to attend this round
because of the enormous travel time and expenses, but we went because Zodiacs Ton Pels offered to take our bike and stuff in his trailer. Changing
weather conditions again with rain and sun. We suffered a little misfire during the event which was discovered to be a failure of one of the two magnetos,
but not until the next event. Though we made it to the finals, this round had to be cancelled due to persistent rain showers.
Because of this all we were never able to show the bikes real potential to the Finnish spectators. We remained points leader.
Veidec Nitro Festival / Mantorp Park, Sweden The third round of the FIM European Championship. Once again very changeable weather
conditions, from a hot summer's day to cloudy and persistent rainfall. Because the run-off area is still too short for us to come to a safe stop, we
were (again) never under full power for the entire quarter mile. Despite this, our 6.37 was good enough for the #1 qualifier position.
On race day we made it to the finals, which were postponed till very late that afternoon when a heavy rain shower set in just before the final
rounds. Nevertheless we won the event.
Drag Challenge / Gardermoen, Norway We stayed in the southern Scandinavia area as on the weekend following the Swedish round its
up to Gardermoen for the fourth round of the FIM European Championship. Despite the extremely tight pit area, this is one of our favorite tracks.
We went in with high expectations, however a renewed launch pad surface did not deliver what everybody expected.
On the high side we made some spectacular passes together with Norways Sverre Dahl, in fact we ran the quickest and fastest side-by-side
Top Fuel Bike run outside the USA with Sverres 6.20/361 kmh to our 6.24/355. However we had a rare problem in the semi finals when we
had to shut off our engine after the burnout because some debris was discovered half way down the the track when we were about to pull into
stage. After a fifteen-minute delay, we fired the engine again but it was running on three cylinders so we had to give our opponent a bye run.
Later we discovered that it had dropped a valve seat in the unusual process. Luckily we remained points leader.
NitrolympX / Hockenheim, Germany The fifth and penultimate round of the FIM European Championship. Sadly this otherwise superb
venue was again not able to provide us some decent traction this year. Hopefully next year they will be able to work it out as we really, really
want to give the enthusiastic German crowd more value for their money. This track could become the fastest and safest track in Europe if only
they can find the proper traction. Except for a rain shower overnight there were again hot beautiful summer weather conditions all weekend long.
As mentioned above everyone was fighting the track conditions like crazy, only hoping to put down some decent passes. We were forced to
take out power and clutch each time. The numbers we ran were far from spectacular, however we managed to stay in control and made the best of it.
Our 'poor' 6.4/348 was good enough to put us on the #1 qualifier spot. Apart from traction we also had a big problem with a crack in the cylinder
head. With combined efforts we were able to make a temporary fix but had to nurse the engine from there on round by round. The fixed cylinder
head held through firmly and we managed to win the event.
With one more Championship round to go our points lead was big enough to capture the FIM European Top Fuel Bike Championship title for
the fourth time! This relieved the tension a bit for the last Championship round. It was also good to have Dakota with us for their home event.
Werner Das Rennen / Lausitzring, Germany One weekend before the last Championship round we went to the former Eastern part of
Germany where we were invited to highlight a bike/music weekend with some demo runs on one of the world's most spectacular motorsports
facilities. It was the first time that there had been drag race demo there, with minimal preparation to the eighth-mile track. Under hot summer
conditions again and in front of an enthusiastic crowd we performed our show on Saturday. All went well and the spectators really enjoyed our show.
However the totally unexpected happened during our Sunday performance when the bike suddenly went silent some hundred metres into the run.
A timing chain had snapped! We had a number of bent valves, some piston damage and minimal damage to the crank sprocket. This with less
than a week to go before the last Championship round! Not too much sleep in the following days.
European Finals / Santa Pod, England For the sixth and last Championship round we returned to Santa Pod Raceway for the
third time this year. Because of the previous weekend's events we arrived with a bunch of parts and had to assemble the complete engine at the track.
As the Championship title was already ours, we could concentrate on improving our personal best of 6.04. Given the right conditions we would try
to attack this. The weather conditions changed very much over the weekend which didn't do any good for the otherwise perfectly-prepared track.
The track conditions deteriorated during the event because of the weather. We managed to run a best of 6.26 at only 206 mph (due to an early click-off).
This remained the best ET and kept us in the #1 qualifying spot. During eliminations our efforts stopped in the semi finals when the bike left unusually slow.
The datalogger system revealed that it was accidentally put in high gear during the staging procedure.
About a five-second pass: We are convinced that the bike is capable of doing so. To achieve this one needs ideal track and weather conditions.
In Europe there are actually only a very few occasions to do so and at the moment we feel that there are only two tracks safe enough. One of them is
Englands Santa Pod Raceway. We raced there three times this year but at one of those events, the Speedfreaks Ball, the track preparation is not
ideal. The third occasion where it would be possible was at Norways Gardermoen Raceway. However this track too had just received a new launch pad
and traction was simply not up to its usually perfect standards. The last time when was when we returned to Santa Pod Raceway the third time this year,
for the European Finals. The track was up to its usual conditions again and so was the start line area. This time the weather spoiled our plans as it rained
more then a few times and therefore ruined the track preparation.
During this last meeting we made an unusual change to the fuel system to step up the power. It either would fly or die. It didnt fly because of a clutch
malfunction, but it didn't die either - quite the contrary. It produced massive more power and still the engine didnt show any stress at all. The plugs
once again came out like from your average cruise-around-town bike. This indicated again that we were still not pushing the engine to its limits.
To us this is probably one of the most important facts from this year. We learned that we can easily step up the fuel system without raising the risk
of hurting the engine. As you will understand this new combination will definitely be our way to go for next year. I guess our attempt to run that
elusive five-second pass will have to wait until next year!
What else? New to our list of supporting companies was Arie Molenaar Motors.
The big motorcycle dealer in the heart of Holland took care of our custom-tailored new leathers. Not only did it provide more safety, we also looked better.
Also new this year was the launch of our own web site at www.koedamracing.nl.
Here you can find all the details about the team and we have a regular update after each race event in the Race Reports section.
On the down side this year we had to perform a lot more in-between fixes caused by all kinds of small gremlins. There is no need to explain that the
focus during this winter break is on these aspects. One of them is a complete new spragless transmission which we will be installing over the winter.
Another major job will be converting our billet cylinder head to a skull type head (i.e. installing alloy bronze combustion chambers).
Hopefully the forthcoming modifications will release us a bit from the little problems which caused a lot of late night shop hours.
For next year we hope to have as much fun as we had this year. Apart from that, winning races and trying to run our first Five will be our main goals.
A final word goes out to the supporting companies who made it all possible. Thank you all!
Zodiac International / Mijdrecht, Holland;
Arie Molenaar Motors / IJsselstein, Holland;
Torco International Corp., USA;
Nimbus Motorsport, GB;
Arai Helmet (Europe) BV / Hoevelaken, Holland;
Dakota-Industry, Germany;
Flexion bv / Roermond, Holland;
Goedhals machinefabriek / Amersfoort, Holland;
Goodridge Benelux BV / Delft, Holland;
/ Eindhoven, Holland;
Jan Smit's Power Parts / Wormerveer, Holland;
Jan Roelofs Race Service / Valkenswaard, Holland
In particular we would like to thank Ton Pels company Zodiac. Not only for the tremendous back-up, but also for Ton's personal assistance
on several occasions this year. Thanks also to British Pro Stock bike racer Chris Hope for taking our oil supply all over Europe this year and
finally Thank You to all of our supportive fans, we hope to welcome you at the track next year.
All of us at Koedam Racing, wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy and safe 2005.
©Eurodragster.com
SPR seek Nostalgia vehicles.
17th December: David Lloyd-Jones of Santa
Pod Raceway tells us that the plans for March's Easter Thunderball are coming together very well, but that he
would be pleased to hear from anyone with a Nostalgia car or bike which they would be willing to display at the event.
©Eurodragster.com
"The Nostalgia display will consist of a large marquee where the vehicles will be on display to the public", says David.
"Ideally, we are looking for vehicles which are of historical drag racing significance having won races, events or Championships,
which have been raced by famous drivers or riders, or which hold records of some sort."
If any Eurodragster reader is able to help to track down cars and bikes for the display, then please contact David by E-Mail
at david@santapod.fsnet.co.uk.
Five titles, a medal and more.
17th December: 2004 ended well for NDRS Bilsport Pro Modified Champion
Håkan Nilsson and the Nilsson
Motorsports team as the Veidec-sponsored racer brought home his fifth Championship.
"To the mix we could also add a bronze medal in the Swedish Championship, a second place in the UK National Pro Mod Championship
together with one #1 qualifier and one event win", says team member Ulf Stadig.
"Hkan was also nominated Drag Racing Driver of the Year by the biggest car and motorsports magazine Bilsport here in Sweden.
It was a real accomplishment, and by winning that award Håkan also had a chance to win the 2004 Bilsport Senior Award,
but the competition was too hard Mattias Ekstm, the 2004 German DTM Championship winner, took home that trophy.
©Eurodragster.com
"The Nilsson Motorsports/Veidec Racing team are now looking forward to the 2005 season, and we are very grateful to all the people
who have supported our team this year. Make sure that you visit our sponsors and make a deal with them if you are knocking on the door of
a Championship win in the future! We would like to wish everyone out there Happy Holidays!"
You can find a 2004 season review on the Nilsson Motorsports web site at
www.nilssonmotorsports.com.
Fansfueler project update.
17th December: Chris Parker of the Fansfueler project, which is securing pledges
from fans and industry to finance the return to the track of UK Top Fuel Dragster racer Barry Sheavills, has
been in touch with an update on the project.
In the short time since the launch of Fansfueler, the project has managed to attract pledges to cover a large proportion of the cost of racing the Fansfueler Top
Fuel dragster in 2005. Pledges have been received from all over the UK and beyond, and fans can see how well the project has done on the totaliser on the
progress page of the Fansfueler web site at www.fansfueler.co.uk.
However, the ambitious target for 2004 has not yet been achieved and so the project team have decided to extend the deadline for pledges into 2005. This allows
more time for drag racing fans to take advantage of this unique opportunity, as well as being able to pledge in time for Christmas but without needing to pay until 2005.
This is the present for any Top Fuel drag racing fan, and making your pledge couldn't be easier - simply download the pledge form from the Fansfueler web site
or E-Mail details to info@fansfueler.co.uk. As Classic American magazine says, this project
offers the rare chance to be directly involved with the running of the ultimate quarter-mile machine.
The project team will be continuing to promote Fansfueler at future events, such as Autosport International at the NEC, Birmingham on 15th-16th of January 2005 which
they will be attending in association with Santa Pod Raceway. Barry Sheavills and the team will be on hand to talk to drag racing fans, existing and prospective members
and we look forward to seeing you there. In the meantime Barry, Richard, Chris and Becky would like to wish all their members, sponsors (Carlube Triple R, AEZ, NGK,
PSI, Fast X Records and Yanks - plastic and diecast models) and Eurodragster readers and staff a very Merry Christmas and a quick and safe New Year!
©Eurodragster.com
Swift snippets.
17th December: Mark Raynor of Hepworth Racing has been in touch to tell us that the
Huddersfield Daily Examiner has published an obituary to late Supertwin racer and Top Methanol tuner
Bernie Hepworth. You can view the very fitting tribute by
clicking
here.
©Eurodragster.com
Adam Charnley tells us that his Cougar Racing Topolino altered will now not be appearing
at Autosport International in January as originally planned. "The University wouldn't let us prepare the
car over the holidays, and now there isn't enough time to get
the car ready for the Show", says Adam. "Instead I'll be working on the
Frankley CLC stand where the F1 in Schools track will be
running all four days. If anyone wants to get revenge after a long hard season then
you are quite welcome to come and have a play with the cars.
We will be situated in Hall 10, the National Motorsport area."
Web site updates.
17th December: Our good buddies at Svensk Dragracing have updated their web site
with some more words on the new car acquired by the Lorentzon and Möller Top Fuel team as well
as some very interesting statistics about the Nordic Drag Racing Series. Check it out at
www.dragracing.se.
©Eurodragster.com
Christmas update schedule.
17th December: Eurodragster.com will be taking its annual Christmas break on
25th-26th December (Christmas Day and Boxing Day). The last news update
will be posted on Christmas Eve and will consist of all news items received up to midnight on Thursday 23rd.
We will also continue to update the Christmas Card with
all greetings received up to midnight on Thursday. We will of course be leaving our traditional Christmas presents
to keep you amused during our break including the annual Drag Racing Unplugged compilation and Tog's
feature about driving Nev Mottershead's Super Gasser. The first post-Christmas news update will be posted
during Monday 27th.
©Eurodragster.com
Marvellous Monaco!
16th December: 2004 FIA European Top Methanol Dragster Champion
Dave Wilson,
his wife Linda and son David travelled to Monaco for last Friday's FIA Prizegiving Banquet, where
Grumpy was presented with his 2004 trophy (right).
"Monaco was marvellous!", says Grumpy. "Any time you get to go to an event such as the FIA Banquet
it's marvellous, and it was important for us to be there to represent drag racing since everyone who
is anyone in motorsport attends. This evening was the Centenary event so it was even more prestigious
than usual."
©Eurodragster.com
Grumpy and fellow 2004 FIA European Champions Andy Carter, Urs Erbacher and Jimmy Ålund were
the first FIA Champions to be presented during the ceremony, after a three-minute video clip was
displayed on a video screen which filled the entire back of the stage. "First or last are always the
best placings", says Grumpy. "It was very good for the sport and I was very proud to be up there."
One of the big aspects of the FIA Banquet is the chance to network with bigwigs from other motorsports
and promote the sport, a task which David Wilson approached with relish. "David was on a table with a
lot of high-powered Rallying guys", says Grumpy. "By the time he had finished with them they were
quite interested in us and what we do!"
Bergqvist pulls the numbers.
16th December: Lennart Bergqvist of Autoshop
Racing Engines Inc tells us that the race engine which he took to the Popular Hot Rodding Engine Masters Challenge
made some impressive numbers when put on his own dyno.
©Eurodragster.com
"We have tweaked the combination a little since the Challenge", says Lennart. "The Mr Gasket air cleaner and Magnaflow mufflers were in place, Shell regular
pump gas was in the tank, and the pulls where made from 2500rpm to 6500 rpm. The 410 ci Small Block Chevy made 586 lbs peak torque and 625 peak hp
under weather conditions similar to those we had in New York in October. We made 1002.6 points torque and hp average, and that would have put us #1 in
our group and fourth overall in the original race.
"To get some European flair we invited Sweden's Mats 'Apple Racing' Appelgren, a top notch engine builder in his own right, to witness the dyno pulls
(right). Now we are looking forward to next year's Challenge featuring Big Blocks, and this time we have plenty more time to get things right."
You can view the dyno sheet by clicking on the picture at right.
Swift snippets.
16th December: European Funny Car racers have been invited to submit views about the possibility
of the production of European FC body styles. Django Mathijsen of Reinforced Plastics magazine is
carrying out the survey and you can receive a copy of his questions by dropping Lex Joon a line at
lex@lexjoonracing.nl.
The words "Scheduled to appear" in Tuesday's snippet about the Sporting
Scene Heroes piece to be published in this week's Motorsport News were chosen deliberately and it turns out correctly, as
the piece has now been put back a couple of weeks. "The article was moved whilst I was off sick", says Jo Holland
of MN. "It will now be published in the first issue of January".
©Eurodragster.com
We understand that the Bahrain Drag Racing Festival on 9th-11th November has now been granted
FIA status. However the FIA European Finals still take place at Santa Pod Raceway in
September so there is obviously more news to come on this, which we shall bring you as we get it.
Conor Lagrue of Race Shack tells us that Keith Ridley and Jim McGhee's V8s just beat the VWs in the recent Shootout at the Tewkesbury
facility's Mustang rolling road Dyno. "The V8s won the rear-wheel BHP shootout - but only by a whisker", says Conor.
"BHP per Litre of engine capacity went to the VWs. Keith ran an eleven-second pass on the dyno - keeping his foot down for the full quarter
doing the first transbrake launch of a V8-powered drag racer on a dyno outside the USA. With a couple of small changes we will get the ten-second pass.
Watch out in Custom Car and Volksworld for a further full report! We'll be bigger and better next season". You can see more at
www.raceshack.co.uk/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=15.
DRC elect officials.
16th December: Our good buddy Elias Vathias of the
dragnews.gr web site tells us that the Southern Greece
Dragster Club (DRC) have elected the following officials:
©Eurodragster.com
President: Elias Vathias
Vice-President: Antonis Mathiopoulos
Secretary: Dimitris Zafeiris
Treasurer: Dimitris Vasileiadis
Sp. Secretary: Filippos Papafilippou
Surrogate Members: Eyaggelos Tzanetis, Spyros Halaris and Panagiotis Bournas
"All of the elected members will do their best to promote the interest of the Clubs and Greek
Dragster", says Elias.
All part of the service...
16th December: Carla Pittau of 2004 UK National Pro ET Champions
Heaven and Hell Racing tells us that
Simon Groves' list of Champions' Champions, which we published on Tuesday, made her day. The
Heaven and Hell team topped the Pro ET list and also had the highest aggregate points tally
of any UK National car class.
©Eurodragster.com
"What can I say?", says Carla. "I was having a bad day at work and thought "I must check out Eurodragster to cheer up a bit" and wow did I cheer up!
I couldn't help but notice that Heaven and Hell collected more points than anyone in the car classes...I know, we have more cars, but still we didn't
race at all in 2000, we have to go more rounds, and it's not unusual to qualify fourth six thousandths off dial-in. So I am going to brag about that too and no
one will be able to stop me, so there!
"Simon Groves must have spent ages collating the data - what wonderful effort (Hear, hear - Ed)! Thank you very much for changing my day
from dark to light, from frustration to happiness, from boredom to hooray! Wait 'til Rick hears about this! Now let's hope we can keep it up!"
Web site updates.
16th December: Darren West has launched a web site for his company Power Race Graphics
at www.p-rg.co.uk. "It's been a busy twenty months since
I launched PRG and with three new machines with Power Race Graphics-designed paint schemes/graphics set to
début at the Xtreme Wheels show it's an exciting time for the business!
There is a stockpile of new design work for cars and team merchandise to go up on the site, which will be added
as race machines debut, and customer design/merchandise goes live. So please check back regularly!
I'd like to say a big thankyou to Chris Blows - webmaster of nhracing.com and Walkin' the Dog for putting
the site together. It would have been finished much sooner if it wasn't for my endless tweaking, so a big Thank
You to Chris for his help and patience."
©Eurodragster.com
Our good friend Alan Currans has been hard at work on the latest update to his excellent Acceleration
Archive web site at
www.theaccelerationarchive.co.uk.
"The days are short, gloomy and cold and everyone has got a bad dose of the SADS (Seasonally Affected Dragging
Syndrome)", says Alan. "Well, here is just the thing to lift the gloom and bring back those memories of sunshine and nitro fumes. This year my end
of season review is no less than four pages of pictures and they can be found in the Alan Currans Collection under Recent Pictures. It
goes from the Easter Thunderball through to the Halloween Showdown, taking in the Goodwood Festival of Speed, the London City Airport motorcycle
sprint, and a couple of other things besides. There are 93 pictures in all and they cater for all tastes be it on two, three (?!) or four wheels. There are
now exactly one hundred pages of pictures on the site. And, if that is not enough, how about a wallpaper page with twenty images downloadable
to your desktop? These are spilt into Ancient and Modern sections, but this relates to when the pictures were taken not the subjects.
There are two cars and a bike which appear in both sections! Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all drag racing fans, racers, crews etc.
everywhere a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - especially Tog and Sharkman for all their hard work during the year (Thanks Alan! - Ed)."
The Champions' Champions.
14th December: UK National Championship Co-ordinator and Honorary Eurodragster.com staff
member Simon Groves has sent us a very interesting analysis of UK National Championship points tallies since the
Championships started in 1999. Simon has spent some weeks ploughing through six years' worth of UK National and
ACU UK and MSA British Championship points and has calculated Top Tens based on total points won between 1999
and 2004.
Adding together all points earned between 1999 and 2004, or since each Championship started if more recent, the
top aggregate points earners are as follow:
British Championships
MSA British Drag Racing (Top Methanol): Rob Turner 2062 points
MSA British Nitro Funny Car: John Spuffard 1472 points
UK National Championships
©Eurodragster.com
Pro Modified: Nick Davies 1048 points
Super Modified: Andy Hone 5485 points
Super Pro ET: Martyn Jones 11320 points
Pro ET: Team Heaven and Hell 19400 points
Sportsman ET: Team Rainy City Lightning 17810 points
Super Comp: Tim Adam 16450 points
Super Gas: Frank Mason 18190 points
Super Street: Leigh Morris 16200 points
Junior Dragster: Joe Bond 13130 points
9.90 Bike: Jamie Sneddon 15290 points
10.90 Bike: Darren Winnard 11970 points
ACU UK Drag Bike Championships
Top Fuel Bike: Steve Woollatt 5490 points
Funny Bike: Neil Midgley 9635 points
Pro Stock Bike: Dave Beck 13110 points
Comp Bike: Phil Leamon 7835 points
Super Street Bike: Graham Dance 23150 points
You can see the rest of Simon's hard work - the Top Tens for each class as well as a record of event wins
and Championships - by clicking here.
Points which we found particularly fascinating were the number of instances of racers who have not raced for some
time still appearing in their Top Tens, which shows just what an impact they made on the class, and the
appearance in their Top Tens of racers who have never won a Championship, proving the point about consistency.
Many thanks to Simon Groves for passing this information on to us, and of course a tip of the hat to
his fellow points co-ordinators Yvonne Tramm, Ian King, Dave Alexander and Jim Broome for their work
over the years which provided the information for Simon's research.
We would be interested to receive comments from racers on their positions in the Top Ten lists. Drop us a line
at news@eurodragster.com and we'll publish
it here.
Caseley's first-year thanks.
14th December: UK Jet Dragster pilot Ian Caseley has been in touch to thank everyone
who has helped him in his first year with his Roadzombie II dragster.
"This has been a tough year with one thing and another and we have learnt far more than expected", says Ian. "The team and I
(Chris, Kate and Huw the switch') would like to convey our sincere thanks to everyone we have met at the strip. I can honestly say
that everyone has been supportive and enthusiastic throughout the year. I would like to name names, but there are so many and I'd
probably miss someone out.
©Eurodragster.com
"We have had some terrific weekends this year, all of them made better by the smiles on people's faces and the interest they show.
Once again, a big Thank You to everyone who has helped us. We look forward to running next year."
Swift snippets.
14th December: This week's issue of the UK newspaper Motorsport News, which will
be published tomorrow (Wednesday), is scheduled to include a short feature nominating five of drag racing's
Heroes of 2004 (on four wheels, MN being a car publication - Ed).
©Eurodragster.com
SPRC Perpetual Awards week 4.
13th December: Once again Santa Pod Racers Club and Eurodragster.com are teaming up to give
readers the chance to have input to the SPRC Perpetual
Awards, which will be presented at the SPRC Dinner Dance on Saturday 5th February 2005.
For six of the seven 2004 season awards, the SPRC Committee has decided upon a shortlist for which votes can be
submitted by E-Mail. Nominations for the seventh Award, the Alex Brachtvogel Memorial Trophy, are being accepted
throughout the voting period (see below). The votes of Eurodragster readers will be taken into consideration when the
SPRC Committee decides upon the winners of all seven awards.
This week's vote, the fourth, is for the James Edgar Memorial Trophy. The James Edgar Memorial Trophy is awarded
for outstanding performance by a Crew Chief. This year's shortlist includes the Crew Chiefs of UK National and Series Champions as well as National
record holders.
The SPRC Committee's shortlist for the James Edgar Memorial Trophy, in alphabetical order, is as follows:
©Eurodragster.com
Graham Balchin, Steve Venables (Super Street Bike)
Jeff Bull, various
Alan Cook, Ian Jackson (Custom Car Street Eliminator)
Mick Coombs, Andy Hone (Super Modified)
Martin Curbishley, Spencer Tramm (VW Alternate Engine and Super Gas)
To place your vote, go to the official SPRC Perpetual Awards
page which you can view by clicking here or by clicking on the
SPRC Perpetual Awards vote link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster page. Voting is per category, so if
you have voted for the previous three categories then you can of course still vote for the James Edgar Memorial
Trophy this week.
The Alex Brachtvogel Memorial Trophy, for which nominations are now being taken, was first awarded to Santa Pod Raceway's
late Chief Marshal, Alex Brachtvogel, in 2001 to mark his outstanding contribution to Santa Pod Raceway and the sport as a whole.
After Alex's death the trophy was named in his memory and continues to be awarded for contribution to drag racing.
There is no shortlist for the Alex Brachtvogel award. Nominations are invited for racers, race officials, track and safety crews, club
officials, media, or anyone else who has contributed to the sport. Last year the trophy was awarded to Kjell Pettersson and David
Lloyd-Jones of Santa Pod Raceway. Again see the official web page for more details or E-Mail your nomination to sprc.awards@btinternet.com
specifying SPRC Alex Brachtvogel Trophy as the subject and your nomination in the body of the mail.
Next week's category will be the Most Promising Newcomer.
European Championships DVD review.
13th December: 2004 saw a new TV production team installed to produce the European Championship coverage, and the
general consensus amongst those who have seen the broadcasts on UK satellite channels and Channel Five is that the change of production has resulted
in an improvement of the package. Three season review DVDs - the 2004 FIA and FIM/UEM European Championships and the 2004 NDRS Bilsport Pro
Modified Championship - have been produced by Sunspot Productions for Power Racing Promotions and are now available from Santa Pod Raceway. Santa
Pod kindly forwarded us copies of the three DVDs to review.
As with the Power Point Communications DVDs which we reviewed last week we shall publish the one review for all three as there are several common factors
between them.
The FIA and FIM/UEM Championship DVDs both come in at 210 minutes including extras whilst the NDRS Bilsport Pro Prodified Championship DVD comes in at ninety
minutes, also including extras. All three DVDs all feature bright eye-catching covers - incidentally featuring the work of Eurodragster.com photographer
Sharkman - which Rick Cuthbert of Trakbak Racing tells us were commissioned after one too many coffees! Lex Joon, Gary Jones and Marc Meihuizen are
the lucky racers to be featured on the front covers.
As befits broadcast material on DVD, the picture quality is very good indeed. There is a good variety of camera angles across the six Championship rounds, with
all the usual camera positions you would expect and extras such as a mini-camera mounted near sixty foot in the FIA Main Event coverage from Santa Pod,
showing the Christmas Tree and both vehicles on the start line. Also notable is the shutdown area camera at Mantorp Park which picks up the vehicles as they
come over the hill past the finish line and dropping their chutes. There some nice touches in the camera work, for example taking the trouble to get both vehicles
in shot when backing up from burnouts. The editing is also very good, passing your reviewer's stopwatch test for the length of the run as broadcast and the
displayed ET.
With so much to get through on all three DVDs, the races come pretty much one of top of the other. Before each event gets underway the scene is set with
pitside footage of the crews going about their duties as well as interviews with Championship leaders or number one qualifiers. The action is frenetic once the
racing gets underway although, unlike a lot of other TV broadcasts, the burnouts are shown - often they are the first thing to be cut to save time. The fast flow
of the action is down to tight editing and the removal of some of the backing-up and pre-staging routines. Captions and/or brief interviews with the competing
racers appear in small windows on-screen whilst the vehicles are approaching stage, which works very well in increasing tension before each race.
For each event a class is shown in its entirety rather than, for example, going from the first round of Top Fuel to the first round of Pro Stock and then back to
Top Fuel again. Showing a class in one go is infinitely preferable and is much easier to watch. On the Pro Mod DVD, the coverage of each event commences
with the second round, when the field is down to eight cars.
The commentaries are provided by UK track announcer John Price and Top Fuel Dragster racer Darryl Bradford, who make a very good and authoritative-sounding
double act. Pricey is never less than excellent whether he is at the track or at events such as Goodwood, but he must have spent hours on
his homework before performing the voice-overs for these DVDs as he has his facts at his fingers' ends, especially during the coverage of events at Santa Pod and
Mantorp Park. Darryl with his insider's view of the sport makes an excellent colour commentator and proves to be knowledgeable about all classes, not just those
in which he has raced. Darryl also undertakes some of the pitside interviews, sharing these duties with Mantorp Park track announcer and Honorary
Eurodragster.com Staff member Christer Abrahamson who also conducts most of the interesting and entertaining top end interviews - proof of Christer's
widely-regarded communication skills and explanation, as if it were needed, of why he is so much in demand.
Each DVD features a small amount of extras. In the case of the FIA Championship DVD the extras are a feature on snowmobiles and Martin Hill's
Fireforce 2 Jet FC, on the FIM/UEM Championship DVD the extra is footage of one of those stunt bike riders so beloved of your reviewer, and on the Pro
Modified DVD there is extra footage from Santa Pod and Mantorp Park including a number of races shown from both the start line and again from the top end
with no commentary. We were looking forward to seeing some of the 'Lifestyle' footage on which a fair amount of time has been spent this year but unfortunately
there was no sign - maybe down to DVD capacity constraints.
As with the Power Point DVDs reviewed last week we were very pleased to see this season's few accidents presented without sensationalism.
Sunspot Productions obviously share your reviewer's strongly-held opinion that an accident which happens
once does not need to be endlessly repeated. There are also fewer errors than in previous years' coverage: the Mantorp Park FIM/UEM
coverage being captioned Alastaro and Eric Teboul's Top Fuel Bike being captioned as a Rocket Bike are two examples we noticed, but there are very few such
problems which is evidence of quite some attention to detail on the part of Sunspot Productions.
With Christmas fast approaching any of these DVDs will make a great present for the drag racing fan in your life, or indeed for yourself if you can't wait for
the next two weeks. The splitting of FIA, FIM/UEM and NDRS Bilsport Pro Modified into three DVDs is a good call, allowing the fan to choose their own
preferred classes, and Santa Pod Raceway are also offering a very good price on all three.
The FIA European Championship DVD is priced at 16.99, the FIM/UEM European Championship DVD at 14.99, and the NDRS Bilsport Pro Modified
Championship DVD at 12.99 with postage and packing 2 apiece. Alternately you can buy all three DVDs for 35 and 3.99 p+p. For more information, or to
order your DVDs, check out Santa Pod Raceway's web site at www.santapod.com or call
01234 782828 (outside the UK +44 1234 782828). Santa Pod will be taking pre-Christmas orders up to this Friday, 17th December; orders received after
this date will be dispatched in the New Year.
Win European Championships DVDs!
13th December: Having reviewed the 2004 European Championship DVDs kindly supplied by
Santa Pod Raceway we are very pleased to offer the review copy of each of the DVDs as prizes in
Eurodragster.com's latest contest.
For your chance to win a DVD, simply decide which DVD you would like and answer the question for that DVD. In each
case the answer can be found on the pages of Eurodragster.com.
To win the 2004 FIA European Championship DVD:
Who won FIA Top Fuel Dragster at the 2004 FIA Main Event at Santa Pod Raceway?
To win the 2004 FIM/UEM European Championship DVD:
Who won FIM/UEM Top Fuel Bike at the 2004 Veidec Nitro Festival at Mantorp Park?
To win the 2004 NDRS Bilsport Pro Modified Championship DVD:
Who won NDRS Bilsport Pro Modified at the 2004 FIA European Finals at Santa Pod Raceway?
So that the winners get their DVDs in time for Christmas, this is a short-duration contest: entry closes at
23:59 UK next Sunday, 19th December.
To enter the contest, and to see the rules, check out the official Contest page by
clicking here or by clicking on the
European Championships DVD contest link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster page.
Christmas Card opened.
13th December: We are pleased to announce that Eurodragster.com's annual on-line Christmas
Card is now open. You can view it by clicking here or by
clicking on the Christmas Card link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster page.
©Eurodragster.com
If you would like to send a Christmas greeting to your fans, fellow racers, or Eurodragster readers then
please send an E-Mail to christmas@eurodragster.com
and we will place it on the Card.
All change for the Assassin.
12th December: The UK's Sanity Assassin Super Pro ET team has announced a
change of driver for 2005. Car owner and Team Manager Ray Eldred tells us that Vince Gibbs, who already drives a
wheelstanding Toyota of his own, is to take over the wheel of Ray's spectacular eight-second
Celica.
"I don't like to keep things the same year after year, as it can become a bit stagnant", says Ray. "So I decided to shake it up a bit by changing
the driver and making a few changes to the car as well! I have known Vince for many years and he is like a brother to me. We built a Toyota Celica
together many years ago, which Vince still races. He has ran a 9.20s in his own car so I feel confident that he will be fine when he drives
Sanity Assassin. The wheelstands might surprise him though! As well as welcoming Vince I would like to thank John and Lyn Everitt for
their help and involvement with the car over the last three years. We have had a lot of fun racing together and the team wish them well in their new ventures."
©Eurodragster.com
Ray tells us that he is very much looking forward to the 2005 season as he says that the team has worked out where the missing power went
to at the end of this year. "We also have a new 850 cfm carb set-up to try, and a few other things we want to experiment with", says Ray, "We will
be throwing Vince in at the deep end and shooting for 8.70s next year."
Smax sniffs out a Fueller.
12th December: US Top Fuel Dragster racer Todd Paton has been in touch to tell us that his
family have had their first encounter with 2003 FIA European Top Fuel Dragster Champion Smax Smith, who recently moved
to Canada. It seems that Smax's antennae for a Fuel car have not let him down.
©Eurodragster.com
"My dad, who is an avid reader of your site, asked me to tell you that Smax is just a few miles from the shop where we keep
our Top Fuel Dragster", says Todd. "Smax has been sniffing around our barrels of nitro, I'm not really sure what he's up to!"
Todd tells us that he and his father recently launched a Top Fuel Dragster school. "We're offering courses at many different facilities, including Gainesville after the NHRA race there in March",
he says. "If you are interested then please visit www.toddpaton.com/experience for
further information."
Todd promises to keep us up-to-date with Smax's activities in Canada. "I have to ask him to get back out of the car now", he says in
closing.
A dragster in the kitchen.
12th December: Eight-year-old Zak Johnson will be taking to the track in a Junior Dragster
next season after purchasing Johnny Walker's Junior Stock car. Zak tried out the Mitchell family's Matrix
dragster at the Halloween Showdown at Shakespeare County Raceway and the entire family was bitten by the
bug.
©Eurodragster.com
"After Zak's very promising runs and enthusiasm at the Halloween Showdown we couldn't help but buy one, so off to Bristol we went", says
Sarah Johnson. "We purchased Kelvin and Johnny Walker's Junior Dragster. Once back home the car cleaned up nicely, but unfortunately - or
fortunately - it fits in the kitchen! So we had to sort a new safe dry home for it. After speaking to Chris Round we now have a professional
custom-built trailer for the car to live in and be towed to the track. If anyone out there is looking for a professional and competitively-priced
custom-built trailer we recommend that you speak to Chris.
"Big thanks must go to Chris, Gill and Clayton Round, Roy Wilding, Tony Smith and Al Yates who all helped bring this together."
Christmas catalogue.
12th December: Martin Olsson of Skne Racers
Ideella Frening has been in touch to let us know that Meca Raceway's 2004 season review DVD is now available.
"DVD pack 1, which costs 169 SEK, has 120 minutes of racing plus 30 minutes of extras", says Martin. "DVD pack 2, which sosts 269 SEK, has two
DVDs with 120 minutes of racing and 120 minutes of extras, for example Junior Dragster and exhibition runs."
©Eurodragster.com
You can see a clip from the DVD at www.streetrace.com/srif/images/TTDS%20WEB%20TRAILER%2001.wmv.
"The commentary is in Swedish, but racing is racing!", says Martin.
For orders inside Sweden send 169 SEK or 269 SEK to BankGiro 5568-0953 or PostGiro 1335808-0. "Please don't forget your name and address", says
Martin. For orders outside Sweden call Haukur Magnusson at Hawk Video and Film on +46 40 27 02 95.
Web site updates.
12th December: Proving that everything we've ever said about Sweden's Anders Envall is
true, he has updated the News page of his Blackout Fullsize Racing web site at
www.blackout.nu with a newly-discovered video clip
of one of his previous race cars setting a world ET and speed record for towing a caravan at Pite Dragway.
"Please right-click and save the clip to your computer before playing it", says Anders. "Those were the days, and
they'll soon be back - now you know why I have a tow hook on my SS Impala - start guessing the time and speed now."
©Eurodragster.com
UK Pro ET racer Carl Burton tells us that he is getting a little lonely in the discussion forum on the
Pro ET web site at www.pro-et.co.uk. "Please
join me, it's going to be a long winter", he says.
Our little secret...
10th December: Malta Drag Racing
Association President Anthony Borda tells us that he spent the start of this week hiding a guilty secret. It
turns out that UK Pro Stock Bike racer Chris Hope (right) was not the only member of the family to take a turn down
the track at Hal-Far Raceway.
"I got Chris' son Mark to ride a really fast Bike for the first time in his motorcycling career, without his
mum knowing", says Anthony. "She would have killed me if she had known that I got Mark to ride to bike, but
when she came back from visiting our capital city Valletta, he told her everything. Mark looked great on the
Suzuki 1500cc Super Street Bike in his Dad's leathers. Who knows, maybe we will start seeing Mark on a Pro Stock
Bike pretty soon: although he has never ridden a fast bike, he has great Knowledge about tuning. He
really impressed me while they were here."
©Eurodragster.com
Anthony says that Davide Ricci, the owner of the bike which Chris was testing, and his team are good guys to be
around. "I have known Davide for a while now, since he has been coming to Malta every year for five years to
test his bikes", says Anthony. "Carlo of VM Racing is a great tuner and a good mechanic too and his English
is excellent - you don't find many Italians who speak fluent English. When I'm in a bind with the Italian
language, I always end up asking Carlo. Martino is a really wonderful person who does lots of work on
Davide's bike.
"Chris Hope is something else. He's got great riding skills and doesn't make any mistakes at all. He knows
what a bike needs and he has great knowledge about Pro Stock Bikes. I don't know him that well but in the
few days he was here, he was very polite and he knew what he was doing when tuning and riding the bike.
He praised our track a lot, saying that he never expected that we would have such a good track in Malta.
During the second day of testing, Chris told me that with the clutch fully locked, and 9000 rpm during
launch, the slick still was turning in the rim. That's how much grip there was on the track. They were
finding it a bit difficult during the launch.
"I would like to thank Davide Ricci, Carlo and his girlfriend Nicoletta Ascari, Martino (Jean Todt), Chris
Hope and his lovely wife and their son Mark for coming here to Hal-Far Raceway to test."
Davide and Chris' testing could lead to bigger things. "We have talked about having an Invitational
Event for the Pro Stock Bikes before the beginning of the European season", says Anthony. "Davide Ricci
and I are trying to get the European Pro Stock Bikes here to Malta for a race here at Hal-Far Raceway."
Anthony asked us to wish the compliments of the season to everyone who visited Malta last week.
FIA rules updated.
10th December: The FIA web site has been updated with all of next season's rule changes.
Sporting Regulations, Technical Regulations and Race Procedures, SFI specifications and Drawings have all
been updated, with changes highlighted in red.
You can go directly to the FIA European Championship rules page at
www.fia.com/sport/Regulations/dragregs.html.
Tomzilla!
9th December: Sweden's Lorentzon and Möller Top Fuel Dragster team will be campaigning
the 2005 season in a dragster acquired from Doug Herbert in the USA. There is no weight for driver Tommy Möller
to lose on a diet and so 2004's third-placed team had to find another way to get closer to the
minimum weight.
"The 2003 Murf McKinney Top Fuel Dragster (right, picture by Bob Frye) is quite similar compared to
our 2001 Peter Lantz chassis", says Crew Chief Kenneth Lorentzon. "Doug is about the same size as Tommy, six
feet five inches. Someone had to lose weight and it had to be the car."
Kenneth says that the team's engine programme will remain more or less the same, as will the team
personnel. "We already have the best and newest parts", he says. "The only thing which we will add will be
setback blower manifolds and PSI blowers. The Team will again be half Swedish and half Danish, which has worked out
extremely well. The guys are so easy-going and full of new ideas that it is a shame that the winter is so long."
©Eurodragster.com
The Swedanes already know their aim for 2005. "Our intention is of course to lower the numbers, not only
on the track but also on the spill plate", says Kenneth. "All of the other teams are trying to pick up
their performance too. Lex Joon seems to be a hard nut to crack, but it can be done and it will be done
with a new hot rod to ride and a good tuner to go with it. But to be honest I don't think that any one is
better than any other."
Kenneth says that he hopes that the nitro percentage will not be changing to 85% next season in Europe in line
with the mid-season NHRA change (We understand that it's staying at 90% - Ed). "Yes, in the USA
they are running quick, and maybe faster but at a much higher cost. Some teams are wasting an
engine each run and that's not us. You have to raise blower speed, fuel and timing to keep up the pace.
We are having a hard time to heat up the engine as it is now."
The 2001 Peter Lantz-built car (right) is for sale or can be rented turn-key with spares
and tuning assistance. "If it is not used then it will just rest in the new trailer and wait
to take part in the action", says Kenneth. "This car is absolutely one of finest dragsters out there and can
go to the final round any time - it has done it before and it will do it again. To find our more please
visit our web site at www.tf25.com or contact Tommy
or myself.
"I would like to say that I am looking forward to seeing all of our fellow racers and fans again.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."
Svensson returns.
9th December: NHRA Pro Stock Crew Chief and ex-pat Swede Markus Svensson is returning
home to open a clutch service business in Enanger. Since moving to USA in 1993 Markus has worked with Mike Thomas,
Mark Pawuk, George Marnell and most recently Mark Whisnant and has also acted as a consultant to racers in Comp
Eliminator and Super classes. Markus has also worked with Jonas Larsson and Niclas Andersson's Pro Stock team.
"AJ Hanson International should be open in late January", says Markus. "Everything is in the container which will be leaving for Gothenburg shortly.
I will be the European rep for a number of European companies: Lamb Components, Liberty Transmissions and East West Clutches
to name a few. I will keep a small inventory of parts from all of them.
©Eurodragster.com
"The shop will be able to perform service for racing clutches. This will include anything from check-ups to complete
rebuilds, for everything from Stock Eliminator to Top Fuel Dragster. I can also perform SFI inspections on East-West and
L & T clutches."
Markus is happy to talk to racers about their requirements. He can currently be contacted in the USA on
+1 702 336 1116, and then after 20th December he will be available in Sweden on +46 (0)70 875 1996; or E-Mail
ajhansoninternational@yahoo.com.
Tramm collects the trophies.
9th December: 2004 VWDRC Volkswagen Alternate Engine racer Spencer Tramm collected
his Championship trophy at the Volkswagen Drag Racing Club AGM on Sunday, and he tells us that he
came away with more accolades too.
©Eurodragster.com
"I received my Championship trophy along with a cheque from class sponsors AMR Motors (cheers Andy!)",
says Spencer. "I also took home the Becky Sutton Award for service to furthering VW Drag Racing, and
the Wagenmaster Driver Of The Year trophy, as voted by my fellow VWDRC racers.
"I would like to thank my team, my family, Martin and Ruth Curbishley, George and
Rachel Georgiou, and Ady Goodier. Thanks to Chris Isaacs for building me a top-notch
race car, Jeff Bull Race Engines for the awesome repeatabilty of the 468 ci
Chevy, and also to Curbishley Automotive and Neil Melliard at Prosign for creating
a paintscheme good enough to be nominated for the SPRC's Best-Looking Car award.
"Finally a big Thank You to my sponsors Shaun Hollamby at Big
Boys Toys and Mark Drennan at Stanley Parr
Limited."
Swift snippets.
9th December: Greek racer Filippos Papafilippou has added to his already-impressive
stable of race cars by acquiring Jim Oddy's Corvette C5 Pro Mod. The car has run as quick as 6.07 in blown-alcohol trim
in the USA. "We will enter some European Pro Mod races in 2005 to gain knowledge and experience", Fil told Eurodragster.
Stay tuned for more news about Fil's exciting purchase.
©Eurodragster.com
UK Supertwin Gas racer Les Harris tells us that his 2005 Supertwin calendar, featuring Les' own bikes and
a number of his NAST colleagues, is selling like hot cakes. "If you want one then you had better get in touch
fast", says Beardy Bloke. The calendar costs 5 plus 1 postage and packing and can be ordered
from Les by phone on 01603 412798. For more information check out our news item of
25th November.
A very Happy Birthday to our good buddy, Svensk Dragracing web reporter, Mantorp Park track announcer, TV presenter,
honorary Eurodragster.com staff member and all-round good guy Christer Abrahamson. We're sure that everyone
will join Tog and Sharkman in wishing Christer the very happiest of days.
Hal Far season ender.
9th December: The Malta Drag Racing Association
finished the season with its greatest event of the year, says MDRA President Anthony Borda. "The participation by the competitors was the best ever for this last event",
says Anthony. "The event took place as usual at Hal Far Raceway last weekend. Everything went perfectly, with great hot weather for the whole three
days it seemed like this meet was held in the Summer, since the temperature was over eighty degrees.
"During this event lots of drivers set Personal Best times but only one National record was broken. That was in Super Street Bike where Mario Attard registered
a 9.8 second Run on his Hayabusa 1300 cc Bike. Talking about bikes, we had with us one of the greatest British racers, Chris Hope. As I told you he was making
test runs during this event, with the best run coming on Sunday morning when he registered a 7.9 second run on Davide Ricci's 1500cc Pro Stock Bike.
Chris did more test runs on Monday and Tuesday, since the team want to be more competitive at next year's European events. Apart from this Pro Stock Bike,
Davide brought with him another Super Street Bike, which he tested himself during the weekend. This bike is a Suzuki 1500cc with Nitrous which used to be
one of Ken Cooper's bikes. This bike has a best Elapsed Time of 8.1 seconds and here in Malta is being tested by a Maltese rider named Carmelo Ciantar.
At the weekend the bike ran 9.2 seconds without nitrous. It was due to be tested on Tuesday morning with nitrous to see how well it would run with
the experience of a Maltese rider.
"Apart from the bikes, we had a good competition all round and especially in the Classified Altered big classes. As usual the best local drivers participated,
such as Chris Polidano, Alan Zammit, Manty Bugeja, Emanuel Muscat and many many more. Chris Polidano, driving his dad's Ford Escort with a 2.2 litre Cosworth
and Alan Zammit driving Emanuel Mangion's 2.1 litre Escort Cosworth stole the whole show and competed in the finals of two different classes, with Chris winning both
classes and recording 7.7 second runs. This car was in the verge of trying to break the European four-cylinder record during this event, but strong headwinds made it a
bit difficult. Chris and his Powerhouse Racing Team will keep trying, but it has to be in the coming years. Another inexperienced driver but coming along well was
Joe Carabott, better known as Mr.Whippy, who recorded his best-ever Elapsed Time in his 454 ci Top Methanol Dragster with a 7.6 second run. Joe looked like he had been
been driving for a very long time because he gives it all it takes, but actually this was only inside the cockpit of his dragster. Who knows who will be
driving his new Top Methanol Dragster, bought from the USA, next year. Is it going to be Manty Bugeja or Joe Carabott ? We will see next season!
©Eurodragster.com
"Other Personal Best Elapsed Times were recorded by Joseph Tabone, who registered a 9.6 second run on a two litre Pinto Turbo engine. Victor Felice in
his Small Block V8 Modified Escort recorded a 9.2 second run, Edmond Azzopardi in his Lotus Turbo registered an 8.4 second run, and many more.
"If you want to see all the results and Elapsed Times of this event, visit our web site at www.maltadragracing.com.
"I would personally like to thank everyone who made this event another successful one, especially all the owners and drivers of our Association because without their
participation there would be no more records and Personal Bests. Finally, on behalf of the Malta Drag Racing Executive Committee, I would like to send my best wishes
for the coming festivities of Christmas and the New Year to all drag racing fans all over the world and especially to Eurodragster for all the things you've done for
the Malta Drag Racing Association (Thanks! - Ed)."
PMR off-season update.
9th December: Having made it back from Orlando, Paul
Marston has dropped us a line to bring us up to date with the news from the PMR workshop:
Firstly I must thank Eurodragster for their outstanding coverage of my recent month-long trip to Orlando Florida, where I gained my NHRA licence
at Gainesville and competed at Bradenton in the Best Of Both Worlds five-day event in ex-pat Tony Morris' BLP-backed Super
Comp/Super Pro ET dragster. I have received many calls from both England and America from people who said that they enjoyed reading the stories.
Boy, was it back to Earth with a bang when I returned! Freezing weather, even snow, a stark contrast to what I left in Orlando, 110 degrees on the
startline, but such is life. Naturally I took the Paul Marston Racing shopping list, bringing back a mountain of speed parts as usual - as much as the
luggage allowance would permit, including the two fully serviced and rebuilt torque converters which left England with me for John Winters to
work his magic on at JW Performance Transmissions. JW Performance specialize in custom-building converters to the exact requirements of
your race car. In our case a Big Block Chevy Vega pick-up, the type and weight of race car, tyre size, rear ratio, gearbox, motor and motor
specification all factor in. The second converter is designed to match the specific set-up to be used on the PT Bruiser in the 2005 National
Championship. I learned a long time ago the importance of doing this, it cannot be over-emphasised. A big Thank You to everyone at JW Performance.
Add to that the rest of the parts we required for the Insanity Vega for the motor upgrade from Small Block to Big Block Chevy
during the winter break. This also included body parts from Corky Markwart at (Applied Race Technology). During the sauna season
it's useful to have some toys to play with!
©Eurodragster.com
If you are still wondering what to buy the old man or a die-hard drag race fan for Christmas, this could be your lucky day. Paul Marston
Racing may have the perfect gift! Beat the rush and book a Passenger Ride, nearly the ultimate Christmas Gift. In return for your
fee you will be sent a gift certificate which is valid until the ride is taken, you simply call the office from January and book it in. The ultimate
experience is to attend a Drag Race Driving School session, and due to the continually growing demand the programme has been expanded
for the 2005 season, with greater availability and even more race cars to choose from.
Better still, how about entering a National Event? If you are a retired driver looking to return without the hassle of having to put the old
team back together, buy another race car etc. then our arrive-and-drive could be for you. Or you may be a rookie looking to gain
valuable experience, or simply would like to have a taster of what keeps us all hooked to this fantastic sport of drag racing, the fastest
motorsport on Earth. With race cars available in most Sportsman categories, don't delay - call today. National Event places are
filling up fast, even if you are just at the initial stages call us to register your interest, the rates are very competitive.
For further details please contact us direct by E-Mail
at office@pmracing.fsnet.co.uk, call us on 0208 597 4575
or mobile 07831 650230, or check out the web site at www.paulmarstonracing.com.
Once again our thanks go to everyone who has helped this programme become the success it is, in particular Santa Pod Raceway and
all the crew at Paul Marston Racing. 2004 saw new drivers licenced and enter National event competition, providing exactly the stepping
stone we at PMR felt UK Sportsman drag racing needed. The 2004 season highlight was Gary Springford who competed in Pro ET at
all National events at Santa Pod driving Grumpy's Dodge. Gary finished fourth in the Santa Pod Racers Club Pro ET Championship, an
outstanding achievement for someone who never held a licence until this year. We are all looking forward to seeing how Gary gets on with his
own race car in 2005, again in Pro ET.
Paul Marston Racing can also confirm that the Drag Race Driving School will be attending the Brentwood Show on both days, and we look
forward to meeting and greeting everyone who stops by for a chat.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone we know - PMR team, drivers, passengers, sponsors, supporters, everyone at Eurodragster, and
all our fans a very Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year.
Hope's holiday, Day II.
8th December: Malta Drag Racing
Association President Anthony Borda kindly got in touch as promised to let us know how UK Pro Stock
Bike racer Chris Hope fared on his second day of private testing of Davide Ricci's bike
at Hal Far Raceway yesterday (Tuesday).
"Yesterday wasn't such a lovely day to test a Pro Stock Bike, since it rained in the morning", says Anthony. "But at around 11:00 am, the rain
stopped thank God and testing began once again on the Pro Stock Bike started once again. Whilst it was raining, the Bike's carbs were
changed as well as the back sprocket.
©Eurodragster.com
"Everything seemed OK, but still problems were occurring during the test runs. The bike didn't run as well as it should have yesterday, but
Chris still registered another 7.9 second run. Chris and Carlo talked about what to do for the best and decided to do some work on the carbs.
They were gauging the carburettor needle to consume less fuel, since there was a lot of fuel going in.
"The bike was tested again for the second time, but the ET remained the same. On the third run, they did some more tuning on the bike and
some more gauging on the carbs, but during the run a rocker broke and they called it the day.
"All in all Chris, Carlo, Martino, Davide and the rest of the team were very happy with what they achieved during the three days of testing,
and in the end they decided to come back here to Malta to test some more at the beginning of next year. The bike has potential and
when everything works perfectly, it will certainly run very low sevens.
"Thanks for your time with me Tog and Sharkman (You're welcome - Ed) and for all you do for us. Happy Holidays to you and to
all drag racing fanatics."
Stay tuned as tomorrow's update will feature Anthony's report on the weekend's race at Hal Far.
Meads steps in.
8th December: Street Eliminator racer Jeff Meads is making a welcome return to the track
in 2005, says fellow racer Ian Hook. The Essex-based racer will be contesting the
World Street Race in Louisiana in place
of Steve Kellett.
"Steve Kellett has unfortunately been forced to withdraw his
blown, big-block Ford-powered '03 Mustang", says Fatty. "The World Street Race was to have
been the début appearance for this brand new car, but various delays have
conspired to push the completion date to the right. With the shipping time
involved in getting the British cars across the Atlantic, Steve made the
difficult decision to withdraw now rather than risk letting the team down at
the last minute.
©Eurodragster.com
"However, another UK racer has been quick to step into the breach. Veteran
Street Eliminator campaigner, Southend's Jeff Meads, has stepped up to the
challenge bringing with him a quintessentially British hot rod packing an
all-American punch - a 1954 Ford Popular (Anglia) powered by a
nitrous-assisted 500-inch Chevrolet V8. Jeff has run as quickly as 8.39 on
full treads in this short wheelbase car and has constantly been a thorn in
the side of four-time Street Eliminator champion and fellow team member Steve
Pateman.
"The UK team are pleased to have Jeff aboard for this challenging event."
Carter joins the jet set.
8th December: Two-time European Top Fuel Dragster Champion and current European Top Fuel
record holder Andy Carter will be brushing-up, and jetting down, to
attend this Friday's prestigious FIA Championship Awards held in the glittering environs of Monte Carlo, writes Andy's PR John Andrews.
At what is officially described as A Prize-giving Gala in honour of the 2004 Champions of World Motorsport, Andy will be proudly
representing his country, his sponsors, his sport, and his team in what must be one of the biggest parties on the motorsport calendar.
Andy's commitment to professionalism and mind-blowing performance within the sport is legendary, so stay tuned for a full report and
some exclusive pictures next week.
©Eurodragster.com
Swift snippets.
8th December: This piece was almost a Christmas Catalogue entry but
we just managed to resist. UK Nostalgia race car builders B & J Nostalgia are now offering
build-your-own slingshot kits for the racer who doesn't have the facility to bend
tubing but who is able to do his or her own welding. The CDS kits start at 485. For more information
check out the B & J Nostalgia web site at
www.bjnostalgia.com. The B & J web site
has also been updated with a report and a superb photograph of last week's fire-up at the Ace
Café.
©Eurodragster.com
We will be posting Eurodragster's annual Christmas Card page next Monday (13th December).
If you would like to send a Christmas message to your fellow Eurodragster readers then the mailbox is
now open at christmas@eurodragster.com.
Staff update.
8th December: We are pleased to announce the induction of an eighth
Honorary Staff Member of Eurodragster.com.
Honorary staff members are inducted on an occasional basis in recognition of outstanding practical
help and support for Eurodragster.com.
©Eurodragster.com
Our latest Honorary Staff Member is Simon Groves, who will be well-known to our readers as one of the
two UK National Championship Points Co-ordinators, along with Yvonne Tramm. Simon will also be well-known
to our readers as daytime pitside reporter for Eurodragster.com's Event Coverage this season, a
service which he kindly offered to undertake and which has quickly become a highly-popular aspect of our
live reports.
Tog and Sharkman are very proud to welcome Simon onto our Honorary Staff.
Christmas catalogue.
8th December: Rick Cuthbert of Trakbak Racing tells us that this year's FIA, FIM/UEM
and NDRS Bilsport Pro Modified Championship DVDs are due to arrive at Santa Pod Raceway today (Wednesday).
"We are proud to announce that there is more drag racing than ever packed onto these high-quality
productions", says Rick. "Because they are so jam-packed, they are not available on VHS and can only
be bought in DVD format. Below is a quick run-down of the contents of each DVD, and news of the three-DVD
super-saver pack (maybe an ideal Christmas present for the drag racing fan in your life?).
FIA European Drag Racing Championships 2004: The 2004 FIA Drag Racing Championships went down
to the wire once again in a number of classes, but there were spectacular performances in every round
and in every class. This DVD features all the action from FIA Top Fuel Dragster, FIA Top Methanol
Dragster, FIA Top Methanol Funny Car, and FIA Pro Stock. Running time approximately 180 minutes.
Price: 16.99
©Eurodragster.com
UEM European Drag Bike Championships 2004: The 2004 UEM European Bike Championships were packed
with more action and top quality bikes and riders than ever, with exciting seat-of-the-pants racing
in every class. This DVD features the following professional UEM classes: Top Fuel Bike, Supertwins,
and Pro Stock Bike. Running time approximately 180 minutes. Price: 14.99
NDRS Bilsport Pro Mod Championship 2004: All the action from the massively popular Pro Mod
Championship, featuring full fields of beautiful cars and breathtakingly close racing from every round.
Running time approximately 90 minutes. Price: 12.99
2004 European Drag Racing Super-Saver Deal: All three DVDs for a discount price! FIA, UEM and NDRS
for 35.00."
For more information or to order your DVDs check out Santa Pod Raceway's web site at
www.santapod.com or call 01234 782828.
Stay tuned for a review of the DVDs and your chance to win a couple of copies in Eurodragster.com's
upcoming contest.
SPR Autosport update.
8th December: Rick Cuthbert was a busy boy on our behalf yesterday as he also sent
the latest news about Santa Pod's presence at Autosport International at the NEC, Birmingham on 15th-16th January.
©Eurodragster.com
"Santa Pod is headlining an impressive line of drag racing machinery with five familiar drag racing machines certain to get the attention of every Autosport visitor",
says Rick. "On display we will have Andy Carter's Championship-winning Top Fuel Dragster, Martin Hill's famous Fireforce 2, Santa Pod's Top Fuel
and Nitro FC show cars, Santa Pod's Junior Dragster hire-car and Ian Turburville's Supertwin Harley. Ian, Andy and Martin will also be on the stand
answering questions and shaking hands, and the Autosport show is a great place to ask Santa Pod staff and racers questions about the sport.
"The show will also be a great place to get the Championship review DVDs, a hard copy of the 2005 calendar, and fliers for events taking place at
the start of the season."
For more information about Autosport International including ticket prices, check out the Show's official web site at
www.autosport-international.co.uk.
Eurodragster.com will also be reporting live from Autosport.
Hope's working holiday.
7th December: UK Pro Stock Bike racer Chris Hope is having a busman's holiday at Malta's
Hal Far Raceway where he is making test passes on Davide Ricci's Pro Stock Bike supported by his wife and
family. Malta Drag Racing Association President
Anthony Borda kindly got in touch to let us know how Chris got on yesterday (Monday).
"Chris registered a stunning 1.15 sixty foot with an Elapsed Time of 7.8 seconds and a terminal speed of 166 mph", says Anthony.
"They are still working on the bike to get the right set-up for next year's FIA Main Event. There is still a lot left in this 1640cc Pro-Stock Bike.
Their intention is to run at least 7.4. Things looks very nice for the whole team and they have high hopes of going as fast as they are predicting.
Today will be another test day for them, so let's hope they get this bike wherever they want to."
©Eurodragster.com
Anthony tells us that Hal Far's last race of the season, which took place this weekend, had some other UK visitors too.
"Pete Ashworth and Paul Hensher of the Outlaw Anglias were here watching our event with their lovely wives", he says. "They really were
very impressed with what they saw and enjoyed the whole three-day event."
Anthony has promised to let us know how Chris gets on today.
Brentwood exhibits sought.
7th December: Paul Marston tells us that he is again organising the drag racing contingent
of next year's Brentwood International Racing Car Show, which takes place at the Brentwood International
Exhibition Centre on 8th-9th January 2005. Racers are invited to bring their car or bike along to the Show.
"The car or bike would have to be available and intact, with the owner or crew being able to deliver the car or bike on Friday 7th January, which
is the show build-up day", says Paul. "It is also important for the owner to arrange for a uniformed member of his or her team to be on hand
during the show to talk to potential sponsors and/or members of the motorsport world and public.
"If you want to display your vehicle then please call me either at the office on 0208 597 4575, on my mobile on 07831 650230
or E-Mail me on office@pmracing.fsnet.co.uk as soon
as possible."
Paul tells us that the 2005 Show could be the best yet for drag racing, with an extended display including Santa Pod's new display Fuel Funny
Car as well as their Junior Dragster. "Webster Race Engineering will also be attending the show, no doubt displaying a fine example of their
work", says Paul. "Paul Watson of Dynospeed Developments will be showing his stunning Pro Stock Bike, Drag Race Engineering will
hopefully be attending with a partially-restored race car, and the Xtreme Wheels Supercharged Outlaw Altered will be in
attendance, with information about their forthcoming show.
©Eurodragster.com
"Santa Pod merchandise, DVDs and Videos will also be on sale, and both Santa Pod and Shakespeare
County Raceway's 2005 Event calendars will be available. We will also be screening footage from the 2004 FIA European Championship, Custom Car
Street Eliminator and more during the day.
"A new feature of the 2005 Brentwood Show is the Live Forum which takes place on the Main Stage over the weekend, including interviews
with some of the stars of drag racing along with some technical sessions and information on how to get more involved in drag racing as a competitor
or crew. Representatives of the Sportsman Racers Association will also be in attendance throughout the show."
"This really is a packed show with a lot to offer and with the increased interest in drag racing being shown by the Show organisers it's really worth a
look."
World Street Race update.
7th December: UK Street Eliminator racer Ian Hook tells us that
preparations are continuing apace for the World Street Race in Louisiana next
March.
"On Wednesday WSR organiser Andy Frost is jetting off to the USA in his continuing quest to drum up further sponsorship for the race", says
Fatty. "Andy will be attending the Performance Racing Industry show in Indianapolis accompanied by WSR US representative Bill Erikson.
Whilst there he will also be a guest at the NSCA 2004 Night of Champions banquet the World Street Race will be taking place alongside
the NSCA Season Opener next year.
©Eurodragster.com
"Meanwhile sponsorship for WSR Team UK continues to grow, not only from companies but from individuals as well. One aspect of this
is the
WSR
Auction organised by Trevor Kitney. Check it out as items are being added all the time. You might just pick up
that perfect Christmas present for yourself or the one you love."
SPR's Easter extravaganza.
7th December: Santa Pod Raceway's PR Caroline Day has been in touch with more information
about next season's Easter Thunderball, which as well as hosting the first round of the 2005 UK National Championships
and the annual Pro Fuel Shootout also features a number of exhibition vehicles, a Nostalgia display and other attractions.
"The event on 26th-28th March 2005 has a whole host of exciting new attractions!", says Caroline. "As well as the National Championship
there is the invitational Pro-Fuel Shootout featuring the hottest line-up of European professional racers ever to grace the Thunderball. This
includes no less than four Top Fuel Dragsters and a generous helping of British and European Pro Mod doorslammers! There are certain to
be more top racers added, so watch this space.
"Alongside the racing, we have demonstration vehicles galore - an area where things are really growing for 2005 to create high-octane excitement
both on and off the track for a true motorsport extravaganza. The Fireforce Jet Cars, Eric Teboul's Rocket Bike and Michael Kooy's Jet
Quad will burn up the quarter mile whilst monster trucks, motorcycle stunt riders and other displays will be running off-track. Take a wander round
our Nostalgia Drag Racing display plus see a selection of historic race vehicles from Brooklands.
"To pack this lot in, we will be running until dusk, with a fireworks show on Saturday night! Santa Pod once again presents the most action-packed
event this Easter! Visit www.santapod.com for all the ticket prices and for regular updates."
©Eurodragster.com
SPRC Perpetual Awards week 3.
6th December: Once again Santa Pod Racers Club and Eurodragster.com are teaming up to give
readers the chance to have input to the SPRC Perpetual
Awards, which will be presented at the SPRC Dinner Dance on Saturday 5th February 2005.
For six of the seven 2004 season awards, the SPRC Committee has decided upon a shortlist for which votes can be
submitted by E-Mail. Nominations for the seventh Award, the Alex Brachtvogel Memorial Trophy, are being accepted
throughout the voting period (see below). The votes of Eurodragster readers will be taken into consideration when the
SPRC Committee decides upon the winners of all seven awards.
This week's vote, the third, is for Most Professional-Appearing Team.
The Most Professional-Appearing Team trophy rewards not just the presentation of a race vehicle
but the team's overall approach to racing. As well as a well-turned-out car or bike, the Committee
have considered such aspects as the appearance and attitude of team personnel, the organisation
and appearance of their pit area and support equipment, and their readiness when their class is called.
The SPRC Committee's shortlist for Most Professional-Appearing Team, in alphabetical order, is as follows:
©Eurodragster.com
Martin Bishop and team, Pro Stock Bike
Allen Curtis and the No Manners Racing team, Custom Car Street Eliminator
Mark Flavell and team, Super Pro ET
Andy Kirk and the Rat Fink team, Super Modified
Anna and Conrad Stanley and the Automate team, Junior Dragster and Super Gas
To place your vote, go to the official SPRC Perpetual Awards
page which you can view by clicking here or by clicking on the
SPRC Perpetual Awards vote link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster page. Voting is per category, so if
you have voted for Best-Looking Car and Best-Looking Bike then you can of course still vote for Most
Professional-Appearing Team this week.
The Alex Brachtvogel Memorial Trophy, for which nominations are now being taken, was first awarded to Santa Pod Raceway's
late Chief Marshal, Alex Brachtvogel, in 2001 to mark his outstanding contribution to Santa Pod Raceway and the sport as a whole.
After Alex's death the trophy was named in his memory and continues to be awarded for contribution to drag racing.
There is no shortlist for the Alex Brachtvogel award. Nominations are invited for racers, race officials, track and safety crews, club
officials, media, or anyone else who has contributed to the sport. Last year the trophy was awarded to Kjell Pettersson and David
Lloyd-Jones of Santa Pod Raceway. Again see the official web page for more details or E-Mail your nomination to sprc.awards@btinternet.com
specifying SPRC Alex Brachtvogel Trophy as the subject and your nomination in the body of the mail.
Next week's category will be the James Edgar Memorial Trophy.
Swift snippets.
6th December: Santa Pod Raceway's Race Director Darren Prentice has been in
touch to tell us about the raffle prizes at tomorrow's (Tuesday's) Drag Racing Night which
takes place in The Swan pub in Newton Bromswold (near Santa Pod). "A John Force banner, limited-edition
John Force hatpin set, and a Main Event T-Shirt - courtesy of David Lloyd Jones - can be won", says
Darren. The Swan is in Newton Bromswold, near Rushden, not far off the A6:
click here
for a map of the area. You can call The Swan on 01933 413506.
©Eurodragster.com
Congratulations to Sportsman ET racer Nick South and his wife Helen on the arrival of their son Arthur,
who arrived on 15th November. "That makes number four, only about five more and we will have a Top Fuel crew" says Helen's brother,
Super Comp racer Andy Williams. "Nick is thinking of taking some time off racing, we will miss you guys and the rugrats at the track. All the best
and lots of love from your brother, Maggie and the rest of the Wild Child team."
Power Point DVD review.
6th December: With the 2004 UK season over, and a long haul to the
start of the 2005 season, Power Point Communications
have produced four DVDs/VHS videos to get you through the off-season. Power Point kindly gave us copies of their
DVDs to review.
The titles on offer are Ultimate Power Championship Pro and Sportsman classes, Hardcore Street (Custom Car Street
Eliminator), and the 2004 Mopar Nationals. As there are a lot of common factors between the DVDs we are presenting one review for all four.
The Ultimate Power Championship Pro Classes DVD is a slight misnomer, because as well as featuring all the Fuel and Methanol car and bike classes it also features
Super Mod, two of the three Super classes, Super Pro ET, the ACU bike classes, Outlaw Anglia, Supercharged Outlaws, and the exhibition Jet FCs and Fuel Altereds. The
Ultimate Power Championship Sportsman DVD features the rest of the ET classes, Super Street, both Junior classes, 9.90 and 10.90 Bike, all NAST classes except for
Supertwin Fuel (which is on the Pro disc), the Wild Bunch, and all of the Volkswagen Drag Racing Club classes.
As well as on-track action the Ultimate Power Championship DVDs feature interviews and some pitside footage. With nearly thirty classes to cover across the two
DVDs the on-track action moves along at a breathless pace although everyone gets a look in and the interviews make a welcome stop for breath. There is more footage
of the Power Nationals and Allstar Nationals than of the Excitement Nationals but given the appalling weather at the first race of the season this is
understandable.
Hardcore Street also features on-track action, pitside shots and interviews as well as footage from the CCSE Cruises. Until your reviewer saw this DVD he had not
realised what a picturesque Cruise is taken from Shakespeare County Raceway! The interviews on Hardcore Street make for interesting viewing; the
racers are generally in humorous mood when interviewed and although there is the odd bit of good-natured ribbing they clearly have a high regard for
one another. Some of the CCSE racers mention their sponsors by name as well which always gives a good impression. Sue Jackson, who presents
some of the Hardcore Street interviews, must have found it an interesting experience to interview her husband Ian when as a member of Silver Fox
Racing she already knew all the answers to her questions.
The Mopar Nationals DVD is structured slightly differently to the others, each chapter showing a different aspect of the event such as the Run What
You Brung, burnout contest, Show and Shine, entertainment and so on. This DVD makes a good diary of the whole weekend and if you like your
Mopars then you could do a lot worse than to get hold of a copy.
The picture quality on all of the DVDs is crystal-clear, in fact we would go so far to say that it in terms of picture quality this is the best drag racing TV
footage which we have yet seen. There is a good variety in camera angles, too, with a portable camera around the start line area and fixed cameras
on the platforms at each track. On the Allstar Nationals footage there is also a wide-angle camera placed right on the finish line which gives a very
exciting view of vehicles rushing past - if you don't duck at least once then you have no nerves - as well as Trev Capewell's unfortunate meeting with
the guardrail. The same wide-angle camera is also used at other events for a high-up view across the start line and this works very well indeed.
©Eurodragster.com
The footage is very well-edited on all DVDs. We have seen Sportsman racers run five-second passes on TV coverage because of bad
editing, but there are no such problems with the Power Point material. A lot of painstaking effort has obviously gone into the editing of the footage
since a couple of stopwatch tests on randomly-selected footage shows the vehicles running around the ETs given on Eurodragster's Event Coverage
for that event.
One of the big issues which your reporter and all of the race fans he knows has with TV coverage be it NHRA, IHRA, Australian, FIA European or
any other is that the cars and bikes tend to be drowned out by the commentators. When one of the big things about drag racing is the noise made
by the vehicles, especially the sonic brute force of Fuel cars and bikes, it is always a disappointment not to be able to hear them although to be fair
the commentators are of course doing what they are paid to do and they must explain what is going on for the benefit of the casual viewer. Although
Lee Child and Jerry Cookson's commentary is unobtrusive in comparison, LA
Performance Services and Power Point Communications have obviously been listening to fans' comments as they have made
available a two-disc version of the Ultimate Power Championship Pro Classes DVD with the second disc completely devoid of commentary.
The second disc of this special edition of the Ultimate Power Championship Pro Classes DVD set
features all of the action footage of the first, although some of the pre-amble has been removed for obvious reasons. But what you get
for your additional money is the same crystal-clear picture quality with unadulterated and stunning stereo sound. Heavy application of
volume puts you trackside with John Price and Barry Bohannon's track announcing the only voices you can hear. In fact the sound is so good
that in one case a misfire is clearly audible on a blown engine although in the interests of continuing to receive a warm welcome in
that particular pit we had better not say who it is!
Something which the fan, as opposed to the casual viewer, will appreciate on viewing these DVDs is the low number of errors. It is not uncommon
for TV coverage of drag racing anywhere to feature misspellings of racers' names, or a commentator making uninformed or inaccurate comments, which
is something which your reviewer finds highly irritating although he is always shouted down for listening with too expert an ear. Nevertheless, on our
viewing of the Ultimate Power Championship DVDs we noticed very few niggles: Super Pro ET described as a Super class and Shaun Lathan's surname misspelt are
two which we noticed, and the commentary is halting in places on all of the DVDs. However, if this is all we can find to comment upon
then it just goes to prove that a lot of hard work and research has gone into the production of the DVDs. Helen Todd of Power Point Communications told us that she and David Coleman used
Eurodragster's Event Coverage as a reference, a fact we present without comment.
Another point which bears mention on these DVDs is the treatment of the few accidents which have occurred this year. It is an accepted fact that
accidents sometimes happen at the drag strip, and it is also an accepted fact that, with the high speeds involved in drag racing, the crashes make
for more spectacular footage than most other motorsports. It tends to be the habit of drag racing TV coverage anywhere on the planet to show the
same crash several times from as many different angles as possible, in real-time and in slow-motion, with the presenters screaming
their heads off. Your reporter's personal view is that if a crash has to be repeated at all then as it only happened once it should only be repeated once. On
the Ultimate Power Championship and Hardcore Street DVDs Steve Dunn and Wayne Saunders suffer terrible crashes but it is refreshing to see
sensationalism given a back seat.
With Christmas rapidly bearing down on us, any of Power Point Communications' DVDs make great gift ideas at 16.95 plus 1.50 p+p apiece, especially
as with Pro, Sportsman, CCSE and Mopar options to choose from you can tailor your gift to the particular love of the race fan in your life. If you can only
buy one of the titles on offer then consider the double-disc Ultimate Power Championship Pro Classes set (which also includes a lot of Sportsman racing) with the
no-commentary second disc at 21.95 plus 1.50 p+p because that second disc puts you at the race track. But any one of the discs contains everything a fan
could want and either of the Ultimate Power Championship DVDs or, depending upon area of interest, Hardcore Street would make a great introduction for anyone wanting to know more about
the sport. All of the titles are also available on VHS video. For more details, or to order your DVD or video, check out the Quarter Mile High web site at
www.quartermilehigh.com.
Turbo Busa crazy!
5th December: UK Super Street Bike racer Brad O'Connor tells us that if
phone calls from riders and dealers are anything to go by, UK Super Street Bike will see the
biggest-ever field of turbo-equipped Hayabusas in 2005.
"No less than seventeen turbo Hayabusas are already built, or just about to be
finished!", says Brad. "The kits fitted are from both Velocity Racing, via Big CC, and
Holeshot Racing. A number of the top-spec machines will be using Motec ECUs
allowing higher rev ceilings, onboard data logging, and progressive boost
control. At least eleven of these machines will be raced at Santa Pod Raceway under the
ACU banner, and the other six will be fighting it out in the Streetfighters
Straightliner series.
©Eurodragster.com
"The nitrous Hayabusa of Nick Parrish is, as yet, the only nitrous Hayabusa
that I'm aware of. Nick is using the dry manifold nitrous system from BTC Moto,
and he is in good shape with dyno figures of 370 bhp already and the potential for 470 bhp.
It'll be interesting to see if the gas Busa can beat the turbos.
"There is only one new Kawasaki ZX12R Turbo that I know of but let's face it, if
Steve Venables' Gainesville performances are anything to go by you'll only
need one to wipe the seventeen Suzukis out! I think Super Street will be a class
to watch next year...it's gonna be a wheelie good year!"
Swift snippets.
5th December: Many thanks to FIA European Championship Co-ordinator Kjell Pettersson for
sending us the official list of FIA Championship race numbers for 2005. In the FIA Championship, race numbers
one to ten are awarded to the top ten finishers whilst those outside the top ten use their personal
numbers. You can see next year's FIA Championship race numbers (PDF format) by
clicking here.
©Eurodragster.com
Time to buy Tuborg shares...
4th December: Carbon By Design Top Fuel Dragster team owner Knut Söderquist
says that his team will not be wasting any runs on experimenting in 2005. The CBD team are already set to field four cars
next season and that number could rise with the arrival of two more Top Fuel Dragsters from the USA.
"We will be sticking with what we know", says Knut. "We want to hit the ground running at the start
of the season and you can't do that if you are experimenting. We want to step up, but we will do it
with our existing set-ups rather than stuff we don't know."
©Eurodragster.com
Knut took delivery of two cars from the USA on Thursday, increasing his stable to six although he says
that this does not necessarily mean that all six will be running. "Right now we are running four cars
next year", he says. "We are very close to finishing the deal to run a fifth. It all depends upon
some deals I am working on with guys in the USA. Micke Kågered and Jöran Persåker
have already done deals for next year and the deal to put Chris Andrews in a car is ninety nine per cent
done. And we may have some surprises for you!".
Next up for the CBD team is Knut and Johnny Nilsson's "housewarming" party in Åstorp next weekend.
"We are planning to buy out Tuborg", says Knut. "We are taking four double-decker trailers to Denmark
and we will bring back three of them full of Tuborg and one full of Carlsberg for the English guys!"
Web site updates.
4th December: 2004 Wild Bunch Champion Tony Smith has made his last update of the year to
his web site at www.cunningplan.net. Tony has posted
a season summary on the News and Reviews page, and he reminds us that although he has finished posting
updates on his site for 2004, his Guess Who contest will be continuing throughout the winter.
©Eurodragster.com
Alan Currans' latest update to his excellent Acceleration Archive
web site is a second gallery of pictures from the archives of photo-journalist and graphic designer Mark
Gredzinski. "This update features another mixture of fine drawings of cars and bikes and Mark's excellent photographs", says Alan. "So if you
want to find out who drove a Bentley Pro Mod, or what a Britvic 55 really should look like, you need to see this page!". Check it out at
www.theaccelerationarchive.co.uk.
The Drag, Rod and Classic Review magazine at
www.drcreview.com has been updated with a
News section covering American automotive-related issues in the UK, a feature on driving the
new Corvette, and a history of STP. If you are on the look-out for a great Christmas present for
the race fan in your life then the site is also selling Steve Kirk's fine-art prints of
front-engined dragsters and altereds.
We have had a few enquiries about Eurodragster News Editor Tog's feature
about his experiences driving Nev Mottershead's Super Gasser. "The piece is growing like Topsy!", says
Tog. "I want to describe accurately just what it is like to drive a race car, since it's something about
which a lot of fans wonder. There is a lot to describe, so it is taking a while to write especially
since in the same spare time I am also updating Eurodragster News. The Super Gas feature will be
posted as one of Eurodragster's traditional 'Christmas presents' when we take our Christmas break."
Farewell to Bernie.
2nd December: Ian Turburville says that yesterday's funeral for Supertwin racer and Top Methanol
tuner Bernie Hepworth was a fitting send-off.
"The funeral was very well attended and there were a number of drag racers there on a
pleasant autumn day to bid farewell to this respected racer and tuner", says Turbo. "On
entering the crematorium we were greeted by the sight of Bernie's coffin adorned with
his Simpson helmet and gloves whilst Li'l Deuce Coupe by the Beach Boys played
in the background.
"The vicar gave a very poignant sermon and Tim read out the tributes
from Eurodragster, King Racing, the Borg Brothers and the National Association of
Supertwins. Then just before anyone could get too misty the sound of
Queen's Another One Bites the Dust filled the chapel and we all paid our
last respects.
"The entourage then retired to the Rose and Crown to raise a glass in Bernie's honour
and swap stories of this larger-than-life character who had touched us all. With
deepest respect to Diane, Sally, Stephen and Karen. A fitting farewell, it was an
honour to have known Bernie."
©Eurodragster.com
Firing up the Ace.
2nd December: UK Pro ET racers Liz and Iain Malcolm paid a visit to London's
Ace Café yesterday evening to take in the fire-up of the Windridge Hall Felstead Mckenzie
Nostalgia Slingshot and to enjoy the Executioners' meet. They found that they got three
fire-ups for the price of one and kindly got in touch to tell us about it.
©Eurodragster.com
"As well as Johnny Hall, Bob and Cathy Glassup were there with to fire up their Xtreme
Altered and promote the second Xtreme Wheels International Show at Alexandra Palace",
say Liz and Iain. "There was also a great selection of hot rods and custom cars.
"Bob Glassup was the first to fire up, sounding strong and drawing a good crowd. As
Bob shut down, a petrol slingshot (don't know this dragster) fired up, and as he shut
down Johnny Mental's engine burst into life, filling the night air with header flames
(right, click on picture for large version) and giving us probably the last smell of Nitro this year.
"As usual much bench racing was done between fire-ups, over hot tea and chips!"
Web site updates.
2nd December: Alan Booker, the airbrush artist responsible for the stunning paint job on
Doug Ripley's Top Methanol Funny Car, has launched a web site at
alanbooker.net.tc. Alan's web site
features huge galleries of his work, both automotive and non, and is well worth a long visit.
©Eurodragster.com
Joon grabs opportunity.
1st December: Dutch Top Fuel Dragster racer
Lex Joon says that things are coming together
very quickly for the MPM Oil-sponsored team. It was only in September that Lex announced that he would
be running his own operation in 2005, and in that time he has acquired David Baca's 2003 car with
three engines from the USA, crew, and a Crew Chief in the person of Eddie Corr.
"I am very honoured and thrilled that Eddie has decided in favour of our team and programme", says Lex. "When we made the agreement
to buy a complete turnkey car from the USA we knew that we needed a tuner who had the know-how and who is capable of making the right decisions.
©Eurodragster.com
"Although we had offers from respectable tuners on the NHRA circuit, we didn't hesitate for a moment when we knew that Eddie was available.
With the operation we have got from the States, Eddie has the possibility to work with the latest technology, from the data logger to engine
components. Some of the equipment used on the MPM Top Fuel dragster is years ahead compared with the dragsters in Europe.
"Although MPM Top Fuel Racing is a new team, all of the ingredients are in place to go for the FIA European Championship title in 2005."
2005 Mosten registration open.
1st December: Hans Jrgen Hitz has been in touch to tell us that registration is now
open for the 2005 Mosten Race Day, which takes place at Mosten Raceway in Denmark on 2nd-4th September 2005.
As with last year, appearance money is available to those who sign up quickly.
"In Supertwin and Top Fuel Bike, the first five to register will receive 10,000 Danish Kroner in
start pay", says Hans Jrgen. "For this money you must come to Race Day with a functional bike, and
make three passes on the eighth-mile at Mosten Raceway.
©Eurodragster.com
"The first prize in each class is 25,000 kr, the second prize is 15,000 kr and the third prize is
10,000 kr. There is also a cup. There is a royal crown Challenge Cup for the Fastest Time of Day, Sverre Dahl
from Norway currently has it for the fastest time in 2004. Tommy 'Hippi' Karlson from Sweden won
it in 2003, Anders Charley Karling from Sweden won it in 2002, and Per Bengtsson from Sweden
won it in 2001."
You can register for the Mosten Race Day on the Mosten MC web site at
www.mosten-mc.dk.
Swift snippets.
1st December: Tog and Sharkman would like to wish Shelby Webster a very
Happy Birthday. The daughter of Jon and Jeanette Webster is sixteen today and we are sure that
everyone will join us in sending our very best wishes for the happiest of days to one of the most
polite and pleasant young ladies you could hope to meet.
©Eurodragster.com
If you can't get through the winter without another whiff of nitro then don't forget that the
Windridge Hall Felstead Mckenzie Nostalgia Fueller is to be fired up at London's Ace Café
tonight (Wednesday). For more details check out our news item November Nitro
of 24th November.
Further to yesterday's news item we have now completed the recovery of all Eurodragster.com Event Coverage
which we have been able to find in our archives for 1999, 2000 and 2001.
Web site updates.
1st December: Our good buddy Elias Vathias has updated his Dragnews.gr web site with
the final standings in the 2004 Greek Drag Racing Championship. You can find the Championship run-down at
www.dragnews.gr/classifications/classification_2004.htm.
We were sorry to hear that Elias has been unwell recently but very glad to hear that he is now on the mend.
©Eurodragster.com
Earlier news
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