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I have gone right back to the beginning of the archive to bring you more pictures of my favourite funny cars and drivers - most of which are action shots. This is the ex-Paula Murphy funny car soon to be re-named and re-painted as Houndog 7. The chap standing behind the car illustrates that even only 2,000 bhp or so can be very noisy! The venue for all the Houndog 7 pictures is Santa Pod Raceway. |
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Here is Owen Hayward in the re-painted Houndog 7 doing his very best to push Nobby Hills' tyre bill to stratospheric levels. |
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Yes I know this picture is almost the same as the last but I just couldn't leave an image like this in my cupboard. |
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Right up close and personal with another typical Owen Hayward burn out and no, this is not a blow up of the previous shot. |
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The next funny car the Houndog team ran (and built) was Houndog 9 (8 was a top fuel dragster). Sugarbeet County Raceway was the name given to Snetterton when Santa Pod held their occasional on-tour events there, this is therefore quite an unusual shot. The venue might have changed but the tyre bill is still suffering heavily. All the Houndog pictures on this site, and lots more of mine and others besides, can be seen on Chris Blows' excellent site dedicated to the team. Go to the Walkin' the Dog site but not until you have finished here! |
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You want more pollution-packing burn outs? Step up Roland Pratt at the wheel of the Hillbillies' Hillman Avenger-bodied funny car. This shot was taken at Blackbushe Aerodrome one quiet Sunday . . . |
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The Hillbillies again this time letting fly in the pit lane at Santa Pod. The body on this car used to reside on Dennis Priddle's first funny car, the Hillbillies acquired it and replaced their previous Reliant Scimitar body shell which had dodgy aerodynamic properties at the sort of speeds that Roland Pratt liked to drive at. |
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Back at Blackbushe and no let up in the action. I often wonder what the pilots used to think all the black marks on the runway were about when they came in to land on a Monday. I hope they had a better view out of their windscreens than Roland Pratt had in this picture. |
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It says Pete Barnett and Clive Skilton on the roof so it's anyone's guess who was driving here. All I can say for sure is the body shell was a Vauxhall VX/490, the venue was an NDRC meeting at Snetterton, and it was a great burn out. |
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Great oaks from little acorns grow. This is a not a very wonderful picture of Liam Churchill's first funny car taken near the start line at Santa Pod. If my memory serves me correctly it was a useful but not outstanding performer. As we will see in the next couple of shots he rapidly went on to bigger and better things. |
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This picture was taken at the top end at Snetterton and it looks as if The Sting of Liam Churchill has been well beaten by the Skilton / Barnett Vauxhall. However, my contemporaneous note states that both cars ran almost identical times and speeds and it was merely the timing of parachute deployment which gave rise to this apparent anomaly. |
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Fast forward a season or so and Liam Churchill is back at Snetterton in an all new Sting with sponsorship from Euro Exhaust Centres (a strange choice given the din it made). The car by now was very competitive. It is seen here at the beginning of a burn out with a fifth wheel fitted by Motor magazine linked to an electronic device they used when testing cars to accurately record speed and acceleration, unfortunately the vibration generated by a fuel engine at full chat was too great for their equipment! |
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Now believe me this is a very rare shot indeed - Allan 'Bootsie' Herridge with the laundry out early. This must have been a problem with the parachute, as his nickname suggests the man was incredibly reluctant to lift his foot even slightly off the accelerator let alone pull the 'chute. |
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A typical Bootsie burn out in the ex-Don Schumacher Stardust funny car - very smoky and very sideways. |
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And here he is at it again this time in the spectator lane. All of the pictures of Stardust were taken at Santa Pod Raceway. |
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Closer in on a Stardust burn out. |
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Stardust yet again but do you notice some changes from the previous pictures? The car has passed in to the very capable hands of the Stones' team, the engine is now Chevrolet-based and the driver is Dave Stone who had previously driven the team's Tee-Rat Fuel Altered. He was therefore no stranger to evil-handling short wheelbase cars so this sideways burn out was no problem for him at all. |
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This was Bootsie's next ride after Stardust - the ex-Chadderton & Okazaki Vega now re-named Gladiator. Otherwise it was business as usual. |
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The last three pictures on this page are devoted to the man who, in my opinion, was the greatest 'privateer' fuel car driver of his generation. I refer of course to Dennis Priddle who owned, and usually built with his own hands, a long line of top fuel dragsters and funny cars most of which have been displayed on these pages. Here he is at Snetterton in front of an empty grandstand preparing for a qualifying blast in the time honoured way. |
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Here is Dennis at Blackbushe in front of a much larger crowd including, of course, yours truly. It is always difficult to know whether shots like this taken at Blackbushe were burn outs or cars going up in smoke on the notoriously slippery surface. I hope it was the former or Dennis was going to have difficulty aiming for the finish line with all that smoke in the cockpit! |
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Dennis Priddle back at Blackbushe in his Chrysler Avenger-bodied funny car with an even larger crowd to appreciate his driving skills. There is no doubt that Priddle was the master of this surface, he always seemed able to extract a high six second run from it while the other drivers laboured in the sevens. |
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