All of the pictures on these pages were taken by readers of
The Acceleration Archive who have kindly agreed to share them with us.
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Click on any image to get the bigger picture |
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The first set of pictures on this page were kindly submitted by
Anthony Willstrop. |
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A fine shot of John Hobbs hazing the slick on his Olympus II double engined Top Bike entry. |
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This side shot emphasises just what an impressive bike Norman Hyde's Dr Jeckyll was. It was powered by two 3 cylinder Triumph Trident engines giving about 1500cc displacement in all. |
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This is Mike Kason driving his Kerbdozer competition altered. |
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Stripteaser started life as an unassuming Minivan with a Jaguar engine inserted for a little extra performance. By the time this picture was taken it was at the height of its development and featured a full race Jim Tester prepared Jag engine and a one piece lift up fibreglass body. It was famous for these crowd-pleasing wheels up launches. It may well be that Showtime team boss Bob Jarrett was driving Stripteaser here. |
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Time for a bit of
Top Fuel Dragster action and who better than Dennis
Priddle?
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Movin' Mike Hutcherson burning out close to the Santa Pod barn in Nobby Hills' Houndog 6 slingshot fueller. The practice in those days was to complete the burn out behind, rather than across, the start line. |
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Ollie Burn in The Lizard Top Fuel Dragster is manoeuvred into position by her crew. I must admit I had assumed that his wife Liz was driving the car but she confirms it was in fact Ollie. This car had previously been purchased from the Kuhl & Olsen team in the USA by Clive Skilton and campaigned over here as Castrol Revolution. |
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Great oaks from little acorns grow. |
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And for Anthony's final contribution to this page here is the wildest, wackiest
Fuel Altered of them all. |
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Dave Burditt is the Sales Manager of Datron Technology who produce,
amongst other things, data recording systems for use on dragsters. He is also a
fan from way back and has let me have these photos taken at Santa Pod in July
1971 for scanning. |
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The Stones team were campaigning their competition altered Opus One at this meeting. Unless I miss my guess that is Dave Stone standing up in the cockpit. |
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This is Kevin Pilling and Pure Seven getting the push car treatment. This is why I will always call the safety area between the strip and the pits the fire up road. In days of yore there were no clip on or on board starter motors on competition cars and this is how they got the motor started. There was always a great sense of expectation particularly when one of the fuellers started to move and then finally barked into life about half way down the road. |
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Ed Shaver in his John Woolfe Racing and Hot Wheels sponsored AMX Javelin. |
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Speaking of John Woolfe Racing and Hot Wheels sponsorship, here is the team's Top Fuel Dragster which was driven by the great Dennis Priddle. |
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Things were obviously not going too well in the Firefly Top Fuel Dragster pit . . . |
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The last of Dave's pictures shows the Hawaiian III Top Fuel Dragster of 'Mad' Arthur Christy which came all the way from South Africa. That was mad! |
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This final
selection of pictures comes to you courtesy of the efforts of quite a few
people. They were taken by Ken Cook at the last round of the 1964 Drag Festival
held at Blackbushe Aerodrome on Sunday 4 October 1964. The slides arrived for
me to scan via Pro and Super Pro ET racer John Atkinson and Tog of Eurodragster. The information for the
captions was supplied by that positive mine of information Nick Pettit of Time Travel DVD fame. |
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To give you an idea what a fantastic bit of kit this scanner is (a Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 ED for the technically minded), this is how Ken's slides started life. However, when you can produce a 10MB image which is over 5,000 pixels wide you have the ability to extract quite a bit of detail, such as . . . |
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. . . this picture of the very energetic flag man starting . . . |
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. . . this race which was the first round of 500cc bike
eliminator between Dave Lecoq on the left on his AJS against Dennis Jenkinson on
his BSA. Dave took the win with a 13.43 second pass at 97 mph against Dennis'
losing 13.47/92. Believe it or not, when you look at the full size image at
100% magnification you can actually read the numbers on the front of the bikes
and that is how Nick identified them. |
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This is Californian Doug Church in his Porsche-powered dragster which he called The Modern Specialist. Behind is Peter Bartlett's '57 Chevy push car. |
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And this is the late Tony Nancy driving his Wedge II gas dragster. |
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And this is Tony
a few seconds later into the run still boiling those
hides. |
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Two pictures of Dave Strickler in his Dodge A/FX getting a
handicap start against K S Pittman in his Chrysler Hemi-powered AG/S Willys
Coupe. |
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Alan Allard (far lane) in the works Allard Dragon racing Doug Church. Church won with an 11.37 second 110 mph lap to Allard's 11.54/125. |
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Alan Allard in his Dad's Allard Chrysler dragster racing Dante Duce in Moonbeam. Allard won with a 10.28 pass which was the quickest ever run in the car to Duce's 11.65, no terminal speeds were recorded. |
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This is Tony Nancy taking on Bob Keith in the Dos Palmos Gas dragster. Nancy won but blew his engine on this 9.57 second pass at 140 mph while Bob Keith broke his rear axle. |
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And finally, two of the great names in US drag racing - 'TV'
Tommy Ivo in the near lane versus 'Big Daddy' Don Garlits in the very last race
of the day. Ivo
got the jump on Big Daddy and won with an 8.27/191 to Garlits' quicker
8.19/196. |
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All material on this site is copyright and should not be reproduced without permission |
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