Open Sport Nationals, Shakespeare County Raceway, UK
One week after the luxurious surroundings of Hockenheim and the NitrOlymp’X, it was a brief trip down the road to the slightly less well appointed Shakespeare County Raceway for a UK National Championship round and the final event (of two) of the APIRA championships. Heading up the entry road to SCR is always a thought provoking event, wondering if the same potholes are there (they usually are, just a little big bigger), what size of crowd would be pulled in (at the prices charged, not very big at all – why not take a leaf out of the ADRL book and give away tickets in local outlets and schools for instance? It’s not as if the gate is going to be the make or break factor at the end of the season is it?), and how good the track would be. The views on the latter varied, as always, depending upon who you spoke to in the pits, but with a couple of track top speed records reset there seemed to be available traction if the settings were right. We’ll support our local track until the cows come home (actually, sheep are more typically found grazing the green acres of the airfield surrounding the raceway), but it would be really nice to see some of the cash that is gleaned renting out the airfield for the Bulldog Bash bikers festival and Global Gathering dance events actually invested in tarting the place up a bit. Hopefully things will progress if the plans for the proposed eco-town just outside the facility are rejected (we believe a decision is imminent) because, as we have said before, British Drag Racing really needs Shakespeare County Raceway to survive and thrive.
Nostalgia Fuel Altered Association
Dave Grabham and his Freddy’s Revenge alky Topolino have been going very well this season. With a shift from small block to big block motivation at the start of the year, Dopey has been resetting his PB at each meeting and, having got down into the 7.1s with a 7.194/182.33, Freddy’s Revenge took it’s first NFAA event win with a slight holeshot beating Nick Davies’ Havoc to the strip by less than a car length on side-by-side 7.3s.
The Open Sport Nationals saw the return of Frank Bennett’s Relentless Topolino after some heavy revision during it’s time away from the track. The first pass saw a pretty close inspection of the armco after a wild launch, and a subsequent motor check found some broken lifters and that put them out for the rest of the meeting.
We thought John Wright’s first launch of the meeting would represent the photo highlight of the Chaos nitro Topolino over the weekend, with daylight underneath all four wheels after a wheelie got a bit high and headed up into tireshake. Unfortunately, car owner Lawrie Gatehouse’s pocketbook took a substantial hit on the Monday morning when the car took a major tumble (see www.dragracingonline.com/agent1320/2008/1320-x_8-36.html for the full sequence) and put the Chaos crew out for the rest of the season.