All of the pictures on these pages were taken by readers of
The Acceleration Archive who have kindly agreed to share them with us.

Click on any image to get the bigger picture

The first set of pictures on this page were kindly submitted by Robert Powell.
This opening set features John Hobbs and his legendary The Hobbit Top Fuel Bike.
If you want to know all there is to know about John's racing career read the full article by clicking here.

Left - the mighty pair of 850cc Weslake engines which powered The Hobbit down to low eight second passes at over 170 mph.
Right - this picture was taken in 2001 and shows John (with the fair hair) working on The Hobbit.

Left - John Hobbs patiently waits on the Santa Pod rollers with his arch-rival (but very good friend) Henk Vink in the background.
Right - John and Henk in stage at Santa Pod.  The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that these two pictures were not taken on the same occasion.

The next set of Robert's pictures feature one of the most amazing drag bikes this country has ever produced.  It is Brian Chapman's diminutive 500cc single cylinder Vincent Comet-powered Mighty Mouse.
Brian quietly developed this bike over the years until it was capable of running down into the eight second zone.  It is astounding to think that such a diminutive machine as this could ever go as quickly as that.
They don't make them like that anymore!

Time for another legendary figure in UK drag racing - Dennis Priddle and the beautiful fuel funny car he built for Olavi Knuutinen.
In the shot above it looks as if Dennis is going to race Tony Froome in his rear-engined Sundance flopper, a rather uneven match-up it has to be said.
The other two pictures show the car at Santa Pod in typical drag racing weather.

To finish off Robert's pictures on this page here are four images of The Needle Top Fuel Dragster driven into the sixes at over 200 mph by Radio 1 DJ Dave Lee Travis.  You don't see that many pictures of this car so it is always nice to publish a few more.  Dave is leaning on the roll cage in the shot below, you can see why he earned the nickname of 'The Hairy Monster' can't you?

The second set of pictures have been submitted by Tim Claxton who competed in competition altered and later, in partnership with Norm Wheeldon, in Pro Comp.
These two pictures show the front and back of a hero card put out by Ed Shaver when he was driving this rear-engined funny car built by Mark Stratton.

Before he graduated to the funny car, Ed Shaver used to drive the Reliant GTE Hot Wheels Sizzler campaigned by the John Woolfe Racing team.

Dennis Priddle once drove the Sizzler (or the Hustler as it was called before the Hot Wheels sponsorship came along).  Dennis then graduated up to Top Fuel Dragsters as you do and here is Dennis about to fire up Mr Six, the third JWR fueller in as many years, in front of an expectant film crew.

Drag racing guru Nick Pettitt reckons that this footage was shot by Anglia TV and used in the film 'Draggin' in Olde England' which was narrated by Brian Taylor.

When you have built a dragster from the ground up and developed it to the point that it can be driven down into the mid-six second zone as the team did - what do you do to improve the performance?
Easy - you buy one of the last slingshots ever built in the States and carry on the good work.
Dennis eventually drove Mr Revell down to an absolutely blistering 6.04 seconds which made it the fastest front-engined Top Fuel Dragster in the world for a considerable number of years before nostalgia Top fuel racing took off in the States.

Tudor Rose was the first blown and injected dragster Dennis Priddle ever drove and Tim owned the famous old car at one time.
This is a picture of the artwork on the cowl.

What can you say about Tee-Rat?
It started as an eight second injected altered with a very dodgy looking roll cage, grew a blower, went down into the sevens, got written off and was soon rebuilt with a proper funny car chassis which I believe was based on the Hillbillies funny car chassis.
The picture on the left was taken at Silverstone I think and shows Dave Stone (in front of the roll cage) pushing the car in the pits.  The picture on the right shows the rear of the car with the aforementioned Dave Lee Travis in the very fetching head gear signing autographs by the look of it.
The new Tee-Rat is shown below before the sign writing had been added.

Don Schumacher's Stardust flopper attracting a lot of attention in the Santa Pod pits.
This car was purchased by the Raceway and driven by the late Allan 'Bootsie' Herridge with great success before passing to the Stones' team to be driven with equal enthusiasm by Dave Stone

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