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

These three pictures are of Geoff James and his 350cc blown Triumph Icarus.  Geoff sent me the following information to accompany them :
"I was a contemporary of Peter Miller's and we actually worked together for several years when first embarking on our careers.  Whilst Peter was carving out a name in the 500cc class (holding the world record at one stage), I started campaigning a blown 350cc Triumph (Icarus) in 1967.  Because it revved freely with the blown motor, the piston crowns separated from the piston at the oil control ring on several occasions.  In order to reduce mean piston speed, I designed a very short stroke 350, using a cut-down 500cc Triumph barrel with a one-off short stroke crankshaft.
"This completely solved piston breakages but the short stroke motor lacked the torque of the previous engine and required quite a bit of development to make it competitive against Fred Wells’ Time Traveller, which was the fastest 350 of that era.  I think the fastest run on methanol at Santa pod was in the mid-11’s from memory.  It was pretty quick over the standing start mile though and my only run at a Greenham Common event produced a mid-30’s time into a howling gale!  Because of the need to be cautious with a 1-off crankshaft, I never ran the bike on a nitro mix whilst we were still developing the motor.
"Sadly, I didn’t get time to develop the motor further as I joined the staff at Cranfield University and time/money constraints stopped me racing.  I bought a Ducati Elite rolling chassis with the intent of shoe-horning the Triumph motor (unblown) to make an exotic road bike.  However, I married not long after and emigrated to New Zealand in 1975.  At that stage, the motor resided in the shed of an old friend who was an engineer with Cosworth.  We lost touch and I have no idea where it went after that.
"That might have been the end of it all, but two years ago, Peter Miller tracked me down in NZ and sent me the three attached photographs which he took at Santa Pod, probably in 1969.  The photo of me in the pits is with a buckled push rod.  I made push rods out of titanium tube following that!  It was an absolute delight to hear from Pete again and to receive the photos.  I still ride a road bike at 60 years of age (a Honda Blackbird)."

The next set of pictures were taken by Haydn Tunnicliffe.
To start Haydn's collection here are two shots of the late Allan 'Bootsie' Herridge driving the Asphalt Alleygator Top Fuel Dragster.  In the right hand shot Allan is racing Owen Haywood in the Houndog 10 funny car.

There are several pictures on the site of the shocking accident when Mickey Naylor pulled a tremendous wheelie in his Medicine Man Top Fuel Dragster resulting in it rolling over and the complete destruction of the car.
Fortunately Mickey emerged relatively unscathed although he never drove in competition again.
These pictures are as good as any I have seen of this incident.

The mystery car has been identified by no less authorities than Tog from Eurodragster, Norm Wheeldon and Tim Read as being Krister Johansson's injected Pro Comp rail.
Mystery solved.

US visitor Gene Snow burning out in his Snowman Plymouth Arrow-bodied flopper,

Gerry Andrews getting the job done in the Stones team's Hemi Hunter II Pro Comp entry.

This is Owen Haywood driving Nobby Hills' Houndog 10 funny car.

I am not sure which of the Page brothers was in the seat when Haydn snapped this picture but he had certainly just had what you might call 'a bit of a moment'.

These two shots were taken by Ian Bunker and submitted on his behalf by Ivor Hawkins. My thanks to Nick Pettitt for providing information for the captions.
Both pictures were taken at the last round of the 1964 Dragfests held at Blackbushe on 4 October.
This shot shows Derek Metcalf's Triumph dragster which conforms that it was definitely the last round as that was the only round where Derek had his dragster entered.

This picture shows Sydney Allard's V8 Chrysler-powered car in the foreground with Gerry Belton's Dragon, Derek Metcalf's Triumph dragster, Tony Densham's Worden, Leon Moss's Riley dragster, and you can just make out the blue and yellow front wheel and yellow roll cage on Nobby Hills' Houndog.
These are great pictures, they look as if they were taken yesterday not over 45 years ago.

These two pictures were sent in by Jim Briggs and show the two cars he campaigned called Wild Man.
The Mark I version is on the left, Mark II on the right.

The next series of shots were taken by Pat Jeal.
These two shots are of Derek Penfold and were taken in October 1979.

Bo O'Brochta's Terminal Van Lines' sponsored Top Fuel Bike was wearing the number 1 plate when he competed at Long Marston in 1981.
Sadly visits by top US riders and drivers have become a thing of the past.

This is Mick Butler's Super Cyclops twice Norton-engined bike pictured at one of the meetings organised by the National Drag Racing Club at Silverstone.

Pat Neal has submitted many interesting pictures including one published on Readers' Gallery 12 of the dragster driven by his wife Linda.
Here is Linda with and driving the car at the 2008 Greenfield Summernationals after it had been completely stripped down and was looking extremely Stealth Bomber-ish.  Low eights at 160+ were the norm.

Micke Kägared has had a few exciting moments driving Top Fuel Dragsters over the years and this sequence shows one of the more notable ones.
The venue was Santa Pod and as you can see Micke suffered a huge engine explosion not far from the line . . .

. . . with bits of wing and bodywork going all over the place . . .

. . . finally, both slicks went for a Burton . . .

. . . and then he T-boned the wall.  Nasty!
These super images were captured for us by Steve Hiatt and I think he must take the accolade for the most exciting sequence of shots on the entire site.

All material on this site is copyright and
should not be reproduced without permission

Return to the Site Map    

Navigate
through the
Readers' Galleries