All of the pictures on this page were taken by Peter
Jones,
I am indebted to him
for allowing me to reproduce them here.
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Click on any image to get the bigger picture |
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The first five pictures on this page were
taken at Mantorp Park in Sweden in 1982 whilst Peter was accompanying the
Wheeldon & Claxton pro comp dragster team. |
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I can't tell you much about the Lönnquist & Carelius street altered except that anything which can lift its front wheels whilst smoking the slicks is OK with me! |
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The late Slam'n Sammy Miller talking
to the late Hasse "Z" Zetterstrom who was the Race Director at Mantorp for many
years (my thanks to Lars Andersson for that identification of Hasse). |
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Peter snapped off a couple of shots of the Santa Pod Raceway transporter on the road carrying the Hellbender and Vampire jet cars home. |
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And speaking of jets owned by Santa Pod,
here are a couple more albeit performing the rather more prosaic role of strip
dryers. |
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As with Vanishing Point, there is only one word to describe Ian Messenger and Derek Chinn's Pegasus - immaculate. Two Norton engines never looked so good. |
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The late Jim Read standing beside his rear engined Pro Comp Dragster aptly named Le Patron. This shot was taken in the pits at Santa Pod. This state of the art car was built by Dennis Priddle of whom we shall see more later on this page. |
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Peter Crane drove Hustler which was a re-worked version of Bootsie Herridge's Gladiator fuel funny car. I understand from Peter that the car was uncompetitive and therefore he did not drive it for very long. |
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Peter's privileged access allowed him to
take this rare shot inside the tower at Santa Pod. Brian Taylor is doing the
commentating and Tony Huck is in the background. Dave Riswick has come to the
rescue with help on the remaining IDs, from furthest to nearest : Alan Nash, his
son (Graham?) and (possibly) Ron Clark. |
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This picture of Phil Evans' Super Vogue street car burning out was also taken from the Santa Pod tower. Phil was a record holder in the production class in 1979. |
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John Whitmore's 2500cc V8 Daimler-powered nitro-burning Drag'n'Fly. There were a few such cars and they were absolutely great to watch as they could easily run in the 7 or 8 second zone which was really moving back then. They sounded good too. |
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Nigel Patrick gets a little heat into the rear tyre of his Pro Stock bike as he performs a nice burn out against the safety fence. |
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My thanks to both Vincent Pels (Crew chief of Zodiac Racing) and Clive Rooms for identifying H66 as a 1200 cc injected Kawasaki belonging to Jan Janssen from the Netherlands. |
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Vincent has also confirmed my identification (but incorrect spelling!) of Cees Van Dongen riding his unique Honda six cylinder competition bike. He certainly looks to be over-powering the track rather. |
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This is Cees Van Dongen leaving the line a little more conventionally. |
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These are the last of the 1980 Big Go pictures and feature Dave Burfitt's Boss Cat Fiat Topolino-bodied altered with straight six Jaguar power. |
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Peter rather threw his hat at this and came up with the name of Des Taylor, sounds good to me. |
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This beauty is Dave Grady's '57 Ford High Spirits. |
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They called Don Garlits 'The King of the
Dragsters'. Well , in my humble opinion the crown on this side of the Atlantic
was worn by Dennis Priddle and Garlits acknowledged that in a way by allowing
Dennis the privilege of driving his Swamp Rat fueller. |
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All material on this site is copyright and should not be reproduced without permission |
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Contact Peter Jones |
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