Thanks to Peter Walters from Santa Pod Racers Club and Peter Walters Race Design for sending the first set of Perpetual Awards. For the 2024 season, Santa Pod Racers Club are accepting votes for the prestigious Perpetual Awards. This gives viewers and readers the opportunity to contribute to the selection of award winners, who will be honoured at the SPRC Dinner Dance and Trophy Presentation on 22nd February 2025.

Voting will be conducted on an award-by-award basis, so after casting your vote for the Most Promising Newcomer, you may proceed to vote for other categories such as Best-Appearing Car, Best-Appearing Bike, and so on.

Please be aware that attempts to manipulate the voting process – such as encouraging colleagues, forum participants, or social media connections to vote in large numbers – will be easily detected. Any such votes will be disqualified, as in previous years. Efforts to rig the vote will result in the disqualification of the nominee, regardless of their involvement or awareness.

The next voting category will be Best Appearing Car which will open on 20/12/24.

The dates for the 2025 FIA European Drag Racing championship have been approved by the FIA World Motor Sport Council during the meeting held in Kigali, Rwanda which took place on Wednesday 11th December.

• 23rd-26th May, Santa Pod Raceway (UK)
• 7th-10th August, Tierp Arena (Sweden)
• 29th-31st August, HockenheimRing (Germany)
• 4th-7th September, Santa Pod Raceway (UK)

We were sad to hear of the passing today of Roy Ayton aged 65 years old who raced with his cousin Martin Ayton in the 2004 season.

UK Comp Eliminator racer, Jordan Payne, has been named as an honouree on Drag Illustrated’s prestigious 30 Under 30 list – announced earlier this morning.

Happy belated Birthday to Top Fuel Racer and Malta Motorsports Association President Duncan Micallef. We hope you have a had day Duncan!

Thanks to Santa Pod Raceway's IT/News Media Dave Jones for sending in this annoucement of Santa Pod Raceway's Outstanding Social Media Presence Award, Dave writes:

In the age of social media, publishing video and photo content out on social media has become ubiquitous, but that doesn’t mean to say it is any good. However, when done right, social media content can be thoroughly entertaining to the viewer as well as beneficial to the poster on multiple levels.

A great video posted in the run up to an event, on race day, or in retrospect can entertain fans of the team and the sport of drag racing as a whole. It also serves to promote the team’s sponsors, the track’s sponsors, the sport and not least the event.

Santa Pod Raceway has a marketing department who work fulltime to promote its events, venue and the sport of drag racing through multiple advertising platforms including social media via YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and X. Our efforts can only reach so far though and as event and sporting representatives we are always grateful for the drag racing related content created and posted by race teams.

As such Santa Pod Raceway are proud to sponsor the inaugural “Outstanding Social Media Presence Award”. This award is intended to recognize and reward the efforts race teams go to in helping promote their teams, the events they attend and the sport as a whole.

The winner will be chosen by the SPR marketing team but we would like the drag racing community to nominate contenders for a short list. Who is your favorite drag racing influencer? Who’s TikTok feed do you follow closest? Who’s videos are you most excited to see drop? Let us know by clicking here with links to their best content.

Mark Coulsell from Limited Funz Racing lends us his thoughts from 2024,

Mark Coulsell - BallBreaker - Super Pro ET

2025 will be our 3rd year in Super Pro ET & we are absolutely loving racing in this class. I (Mark) raced with The Wild Bunch for 26 years & enjoyed every moment of it. It's a fantastic class where I achieved some great results, made some lifelong friends, had so many laughs & made many memories. Unfortunately the numbers were dwindling at MSA/MSUK level & we were hungry for a bigger challenge plus with Harley & Ada racing in Junior Dragster, it made more sense & was more cost effective to do the same meetings that the Juniors were invited to so that combination was what made us make the very difficult decision to leave to race with Super Pro ET.

2023 was a fantastic season for BallBreaker with us winning  SPRC Best Appearing Car just to add to the delights. We were all looking forward to 2024 & it started very well. Summer Nationals is where things started to go wrong & we encountered a few issues. Problems didn't got away & Euro Finals & National Finals were both fraught with more issues! The 1st elim at the final meeting of the year was the final straw when I heard a weird noise & felt a strange vibration before even doing the burnout so clicked it off.
We still haven't completely finished stripping everything to see what the full extent of what we're looking at (£$£$) & as I write this, The Chief, Steve Cassisi, is on his way for another day of analysis.

So what 2025 will bring we don't yet know. Obviously we want to race but with the ever rising cost of living & race parts, we may have to sit this one out or rob a bank ;) Fingers crossed things aren't too bad & we can come out & race with Super Pro ET & maybe even improve on our 10th position but only time will tell :)

Ada Cassisi - Cherry Bomb - Junior Dragster JMA

Ada has been loving her time racing in Junior dragster in Cherry Bomb which is one of the LFR family cars, originally Harley Coulsell's first Bandit 1. Ada struggled to find consistency this year due to her almost out growing the car and with it's little engine. She did manage to achieve 10th place in the championship which we as a team were all very pleased about. Ada is very excited about stepping up into Harley's JMA Bandit 1 in 2025. If we can find a new body it will look very similar to the current Cherry Bomb, if not then you will see Bandit 1 out for another year with Ada at the helm.

Photos with thanks to Julian Hunt, Tog & Blackett Photography

Next up is painter and decorator, taxi driver and Ford fan, Terry Newton:

Nathan Hulkes , Mustang driver lends us his thoughts on the season:

Thanks to Paul Martin for this press release for Drag Seen 5 which is Out Now! You can buy this edition by clicking here.

Thanks to Paul Marston for sending in this latest update on Manston Raceway Park and 2025 Dates and Events, Paul writes:  We are very pleased to announce our provisional dates, these are booked dates with Manston Airport and are subject to being granted events licenses by the local council, so still plenty of work to be done.  But it all has to start somewhere.

I would like to personally thank all the people who have contacted us with offers of help in various departments, we still need a lot of equipment, expertise and staff/ volunteers to make this happen.  So if you have not already touched base and can help please do.

We are currently formulating our class structures for the dates that we have available.  This is grass roots No Prep 1/8^th mile racing, most of our classes run will be heads up.  We will be announcing these and the format in which we will be running our events soon.  We do hope to have a timing system in place at some stage during the year.  So we are inviting any organizations/ informal classes who would like to attend one or more dates during the 2025 season.  Now is the time to contact us to discuss your needs and options available to you.  Two maybe three of our dates are already spoken for however that still leaves potential room on the other five dates.

Just contact Paul on 07831 65023 or via our FB page Manston Raceway Park.

We will have more news very soon about the classes we will be running, I can assure you, there will be a few surprises for sure.  Please do bear in mind we are grass roots and what we run will reflect that. 

Once again I would like to thank Santa Pods upper management for their encouragement and vision.  It is places like Manston Raceway Park that will hopefully start new racers on their journey to gravitate to National Event competition someday.  Grass roots tracks are important.

They also won the Springbridge MSUK Challenge Series Cup held over the 3 MSUK events that the Wild Bunch competed in, as well as the SPRC Championship in the Wild Bunch, with that trophy to be presented in February! Well done to them both!!  James Auld also won the Roy Wilding Nostalgia Race Cars Series with his historic rear-engined dragster, now 52 years old!  

There were various presentations made on the night, including gifts and flowers to Secretary Hayley Fyfe, and Race Co-ordinator, Treasurer & General Manager Claire Meaddows for all their hard work. Claire also received a plaque to commemorate her 10 Years as General Manager of the Wild Bunch! Gifts were given to all the lovely ladies attending. These were kindly assembled and sponsored by Hayley Fyfe of The Burnout Boutique.  Thank you to Pete and Rob Brown who sponsored the flowers for Hayley and Claire.

The greatest Wild Bunch accolade of the evening was as always, the Don Garlits ‘Spirit of Drag Racing’ Shield, the most prestigious award in the Wild Bunch, which represents sportsmanship, achievement, perseverance, commitment, presentation and a host of other attributes. 

Last year’s Winner, James Auld, made the presentation of the Don Garlits Shield to our 2024 Winners, The Marras – Pete & Rob Brown, partners Hayley & Natalie and Mum and Dad George & Julie of Team “Wrathchild & Rebel Racing”.  This is the second time this team have won this prestigious award! They really excelled themselves this year, going over and above and persevering through challenges, overcoming them and then putting on an amazing show wherever they went!  They are super passionate about their racing and the Wild Bunch and are great ambassadors for the sport in general!  Very well deserved and a popular win!!

We also held a raffle to raise funds for the club. Many thanks to all who donated some fantastic prizes. There were so many that over two-thirds of those who bought tickets, won prizes, including many repeat winners! The night was made complete with more celebrations, dancing to the brilliant disco provided by Stuart of SOS, loads of chatting and lots of laughs and fun all round.

Each round will have qualifying on Saturday. One-shot or emergency qualifying early Sunday, followed by eliminations on Sunday. 

Once again, American Super Stock is a dial-your-own bracket championship, with a sportsman tree. Participant's four best results count towards the championship, so it's no problem if you have a holiday. 

There is also an event at Melbourne on October 4-5, which we can use if an event was a rain-off for example. 

None of the dates clash with our friends, Nostalgia Super Stock at Santa Pod, the two championships are complementary to one another. 

American Super Stock will run under the same rules as in previous years, which will be available to participants soon. 

Melbourne Raceway will have a brand new state-of-the-art timing system from the first event. Although unlikely, should there be any unsolvable teething problems at this event, we'll throw in a wildcard and run this round as a 'heads-up' round.

Round 3, June 14-15, is Street Weekend. Saturday will be busy, but most SW participants will head off after lunch, so there will be plenty of opportunity to put in some qualifying runs on Saturday. 

Thanks to the American Super Stock Tactical Division for thrashing this out, and to Trevor Duckworth and the Straightiners Crew for building, investing and supporting drag racing.

Follow us on Facebook and we’ll see y'all at the track!

Nikki Marshall from the BDRHoF Benevolent Fund has been in touch to say a huge Thank you to everyone who purchased raffle tickets at the BDRHoF Gala Dinner which took place on the 23rd November.

The raffle raised a total of £2,712, which is an amazing boost for the Benevolent Fund.  Once again Thank you to everyone who donated prizes and there were some great comments from people on what could be won. We could not have done it without the valued support. 

Thank you also to Kathy Taylor for her help on the day selling tickets. 

The money raised will go to help those involved with drag racing, including racers, marshals and others,  where situations have placed them in financial difficulty.

Happy Birthday for today to Norwegian Super Comp racer Mari Udtian, Top Fuel bike racer Jiri Lukes, former Top Methanol Dragster racer Tony Dönges and VW Pro racer Andy Voce. We hope you are all having a great day.

In detail. In the late afternoon the guests arrived. At around 6.30 p.m. there was a very tasty buffet and the drinks were already flowing. Traditionally, DRU chairman Jonny Niesner presented a small thank you gift for organizing the celebration at the beginning of the trophy ceremony. Rosti from the Knight Riders MC was happy to accept it. Like the trophies and the DRU throne, it was made by the custom artist Wild Jack.

In the traditional “Practice Tree Shootout”, each team registered in a challenge could nominate a representative who had to go through qualifications and eliminations. This year the winner received a €555 voucher from “Hoosier Rennreifen”, a “Snap On Tools” goodie bag for the second place and a Hoosier backpack for the third place. Armin Widmann, who unfortunately didn't drive at all this year, won, Frank Römer came second and Oliver Krautberger came third.   

Now there were trophies. First for Supro ET. A very close season lies behind us. Angel Romero wins ahead of Frank Römer and Robert Gassner, Alain Dürr and Alex Halter.

A similar picture in Pro ET. A very close season brought Ronnie Mercer the title, Thomas Bublitz, Niek de Kruif, Janine Petzold and Til Schöninger followed. Ronnie Mercer and his wife Annette were unable to attend in person, but were joined via video call by Anne Catrin from Team Bublitz and were able to watch the ceremony from their home in the Lake District, northern England. That was a very beautiful thing.

The evening traditionally ended with drinks, conversations and good music from the rock n roll duo “Mr and Mrs Curtis” until early in the morning.

A special thank you goes to all the sponsors and supporters who made it possible with small and large amounts to hand over a total of €12,000 in prize money for the two challenges this year. The winners each received €2,400.

Thank you all for coming along, supporting and celebrating. The DRU is already working on next season.

Pictures by Christian Heuer.

Rob Carter is first out the gates in this issue:

Must apologise in advance writing is not my strong point. 2024 had its ups and downs. The ups were completing all 6 rounds in Street Eliminator and VWPro, wining Street Weekendand runner up in Doorslamers. The best result by far and most fun was finishing Swedish Drag Week, what a country and people and also great company from the English contingency that I went out with. Downs, struggled all year with my new LS long block, kept having to swap my old engine in for various reasons. Also a niggly electrical problem that kept cutting the engine out randomly. 

Next off the startlne is Motorsport UK Pro Mod Champion for 2024, and veteran of the lanes, Andy Robinson, the teams thoughts are shared by Stefani Kate Fisher:

The 2024 season for the Anger Management Pro Modified Team was full of highs but not without its struggles. 

It started with Andy and the team being very unsure we’d even make the first meeting. Over the winter months the team made the decision to change the location of the motor and drivetrain in an effort to improve static weight distribution. Our team was noticeably missing from the original entry list because there just simply was not enough time to complete the chassis modifications, however with the weather being so unkind again and the date of the Festival of Power moving by 6 weeks, there was a bit of hope so the work pressed on and we were able to get 1 run in which we were pleased with. To put this into perspective the car was still on the jig on Thursday afternoon while qualifying started Friday morning. 

The Doorslammers and Main Event were both fairly successful with some solid 5 second passes, a new speed PB, and qualifying in the top 3 at both meetings, however we exited in round 2 at both events and suffered from a bit of engine damage which was frustrating.

At The Summer Nationals our season really came together, a new ET PB with a 5.82 and a win was a great achievement. This started a 4-event final round appearance streak, only stopped by the unfortunate rain off at the National Finals.