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 majority of the pictures on this page were taken by Austrian
drag racing fan Josef Rabl and submitted on his behalf by his friend Steve
Chivers. |
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And here is Bootsie driving the first incarnation of the Gladiator funny car. |
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Left : Allan working on the engine of the Mark II Gladiator
funny car, that may be Roy Phelps behind the motor in the red
jacket. |
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Left : this was a relatively common sight in the days of the Pro
Comp class where methanol burning dragsters, funny cars and altereds ran against
each other heads up. |
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And now for some more funny car action starting with Phil Elson driving his Sneaky Gloworm funny car. This car combined the chassis from Phil's AA fuel altered with the Ford Capri body taken from the Gloworm funny car originally built in the late 1960s. |
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With the greatest respect to Phil Elson, Gloworm was not exactly in the funny car Premier League. This man definitely was! Don 'The Snake' Prudhomme was almost unbeatable for a number of years driving a series of US Army-sponsored funny cars which included this Plymouth Arrow. Notwithstanding that, Don had a pretty unsuccessful trip over to the UK as I recall. |
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The practice back in the 1970s and '80s was for Santa Pod to invite top US drivers over for one or more meetings and the deal almost always entailed purchasing their car (the only exception to this that I can remember was 'Big Daddy' Don Garlits). Anyway, the Snake's Arrow soon morphed into the Cannonball which was driven by 'Wild Bill' Sherratt. |
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I really like this shot because it brings back great
memories of night racing at Santa Pod. This picture shows Dennis Priddle in his
John Woolfe Racing-sponsored Chevy Monza funny. It wasn't really quite this
dark and gloomy but would you fancy driving at over 200 mph in anything less
than perfect visibility? |
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And to finish off our cavalcade of fuel funnies - the Houndog 9 flopper owned by Nobby Hills and very capably driven by Owen Hayward. |
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We are not quite finished with funny cars - here are a couple of
alcohol-burners. |
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I have left the fastest accelerating funny car of all time to
the last. |
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Continuing the theme of exhibition cars, here are Santa Pod
Raceway's two jet-powered dragsters Vampire (in the foreground) and
Hellbender. |
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Sylvia Hauser launching her Sunoco-sponsored Dodge Challenger off the line at Santa Pod. |
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The Liquidator Ford Pop competition altered. This car was originally owned by Tony Merry before it passed to Pete Goddard, I am not sure who is driving on this lap at the Pod. |
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This is Keith Potter's absolutely immaculate The Devil 5 window coupe Top Competition Altered with Tim Claxton's Coyote in the background. Tim recalls that the two cars were racing on a handicap system but that even with over a second advantage, Keith was able to run him down at the stripe. |
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Roz Prior aka 'The Fast Lady' driving Santa Pod Raceway's Maneater fueller. |
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The late Henk Vink getting very squirrelly straight off the line at Santa Pod on his double Kawasaki-engined Big Spender fuel bike. |
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John Hobbs (with the fair hair) is deep in conversation as he crouches down behind his double engined The Hobbit fuel bike. Ian Messenger tells me that the other chap is John's long-time crew member Ian Dentith. |
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And finally, two absolutely stunning images of the double
Norton-engined Pegasus Top Fuel Bike taken by none other than Ian Messenger
the
co-owner and rider of Pegasus with Derek Chinn. |
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All material on this site is copyright and should not be reproduced without permission |
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