All of the pictures on this page were taken by Lawrie Gatehouse,
I am indebted to him for making them available for us all to enjoy.
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Click on any image to get the bigger picture |
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Lawrie's third page is entirely devoted to funny cars, a bit of a dying breed in the UK in the early 21st century but commonplace in the 1970s and '80s. These two shots show Owen Hayward driving Nobby Hills' Houndog 7 flopper which had originally been campaigned in the USA by Paula Murphy with STP sponsorship. |
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Houndog 8 was a Top Fuel Dragster so the team's next funny car was Houndog 9. In contrast to its predecessor it was an entirely home-built affair and the workmanship and standard of finish was up to Nobby's usual standard - second to none. |
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Left :
Lawrie has managed to capture the header flames in this
shot. |
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Left : Owen
Hayward in his place of work. |
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A couple of top end shots to prove that Lawrie was there long before Sharkman came along. |
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Some night
time shots to finish off the Houndog 9 section. |
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Guess what Lawrie got for Christmas then? He has gone all artistic on us with this special effect starburst filter. |
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As
noted above, Houndog 7 was imported from the USA and this was quite a common
thing way back when. The usual deal was that a US driver would come over with
his car and drive it at one or more meetings and the car would then be purchased
by Santa Pod Raceway. |
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The Blue Max versus the late Lee Anders Hasselstrom in his Swedish Air Force sponsored Monza. Raymond seems to have got the jump on Lee Anders in this match up. |
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Raymond Beadle taking the win over the late Allan 'Bootsie'
Herridge in Gladiator. |
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Another of the top US stars to visit Santa Pod on a 'bring and
sell' deal was Gene Snow. He is shown here leaving the line in his immaculate
Snowman Plymouth Arrow-bodied car. |
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This is Lawrie poking his lens in again as Gene Snow prepares for another pass down the quarter mile. |
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Ouch! That looks like it cost somebody a few quid as Gene's
engine starts hurting just as he goes through the top end
traps. |
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Tony
Froome's Sundance was probably the most radically styled funny car ever to be
built in the UK. As you can clearly see in this shot it was rear engined and
featured (believe it or not!) a Vauxhall VX/490 body. |
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Meet the man who will always hold the absolute ET and terminal speed records at Santa Pod Raceway. He set these marks at the July meeting in 1984 by clocking a staggering 3.583 seconds at 386.26 mph. I refer, of course, to the late, great, Slam'n Sammy Miller who was quite simply the fastest accelerating human being on the planet - bar none. Sammy is shown here being interviewed by SPR commentator Brian Taylor in 1978. |
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Left : the
car would sit eerily silently on the line, and then : |
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All material on this site is copyright and should not be reproduced without permission |
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