Diamond anniversary is not all that Dragstalgia has to offer

DRAGSTALGIA

Santa Pod Raceway
Fri.5 – Sun.7 July 2024
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Now 60 years since 1964’s 1st International Drag Festival kick-started the motorsport known as drag racing in Britain, the diamond anniversary of this archetypal event will be a focal point when Dragstalgia takes place at Santa Pod early next month. Yet that’s not all that Dragstalgia has to offer. Europe’s biggest historic drag race celebration embraces many ingredients harking back to the sport’s ‘golden age’ – vintage racing machinery in abundance, of course, on two wheels as well as on four, but vintage music, fashion and style too. It’s a party weekend for all – you don’t have to be of ‘a certain age’ to enjoy the full flavour.

The arrival of two dragsters from America – Mooneyes and Dos Palmas, reflecting the drag race tradition of naming rather than numbering cars – will be an anniversary focus, but they are not the only vehicles crossing the Atlantic.

Fuel Altereds – rather like Can-Am cars in circuit racing – enjoyed a brief 1960s flowering before the mainstream moved on but are nowadays a popular and revered staple of the historic racing scene. A rematch between two latter-day FAs, powered by supercharged, nitromethane-burning V8s, will be a Dragstalgia highlight as Randy Bradford’s Fiat Topolino-bodied machine from America takes on Britain’s Nick Davies and his Austin Bantam, Havoc. Bradford last competed at Santa Pod in 2016. In 2017, Davies shipped Havoc to the USA and beat the Americans at their own game, bringing home the season trophy.

Pre-1980 is Dragstalgia’s order of the day. There’ll be a loud and lairy concoction of Nostalgia Funny Cars, Fuel Altereds and Front-Engined Dragsters, on methanol and nitro, mixing it up in a ‘cannonball’ format, while throwback racing groups such as Outlaw Anglias, the Gasser Circus, Supercharged Outlaws, the Wild Bunch and the Willys Wars enjoy their weekend in the limelight. While entries continue to roll in, the list already boasts 68 Nostalgia Superstockers. Who knew the UK had so much vintage American iron race-ready and raring to go?

On two wheels, expect a healthy turnout as the National Sprint Association corrals its finest and fastest old-school bikers, while the legendary US machine Hogslayer – the twin-Norton mount of TC Christenson famous for scourging the Harley-Davidson ‘hogs’ on dragstrips across America in the 1970s – will emerge from its latter-day retirement home, Solihull’s National Motorcycle Museum, to bark down the strip once more some half a century after its formidable heyday.

Also of rarity value, Martin Hill brings out his seldom-seen FireForce 2 Jet Funny Car to light up the show.

Alongside the track will be an array of distinguished drag race machinery on static display – Commuter, Tudor Rose, Motovation: names calculated to bring a tear to the eye of anyone old enough to have watched them in their prime (and not just from the nitro fumes) – together with some ‘cracklefest’ fire-ups.

Of particular note will be the three known surviving Allard dragsters. The Allard Chrysler, the machine credited as Britain’s first dragster constructed by Sydney Allard in 1961, will be on weekend leave from its home at Beaulieu’s National Motor Museum, flanked by the last remaining pair of Allard Dragons, the machines built by the Allard Motor Company in the mid-1960s and each now privately owned.

The British Drag Racing Hall of Fame’s annual Grand Auction brings a host of rare artefacts and memorabilia from Europe and America into the public eye. There are club displays, and the Autoglym Show & Shine competition burnishes the pinnacle of automotive finery. If more thrills are called for, seek out the classic Ken Fox Wall of Death motorcycle show.

Come for a day and you’ll get an outstanding programme of events on and off the track, with live music in the Vintage Hub featuring bands and DJs. Come for two or even all three days and you’ll experience the full festive atmosphere. Bring your tent, your van or your motorhome and your overnight stays are free with multi-day tickets, with The Ultimate Classic Rock Show and the Dragstalgia Beer & Cider Festival all part of the bargain among the attractions vying for your attention.

Dragstalgia 2024 takes place at Santa Pod Raceway, near Wellingborough NN29 7XA, from Friday 5th to Sunday 7th July. For full event information and to book tickets, visit https://santapod.co.uk/dragstalgia.php or telephone 01234 782828. As ever, access to the pits is free for a close-up view of Dragstalgia’s unparalleled array of historic racing machinery.

Photos attached:
1. Fuel Altereds: Randy Bradford versus Nick Davies, Dragstalgia 2016.
2. Nick Davies, Havoc.
3. Randy Bradford.
4. Striking car, striking view.
[ Photos: Santa Pod Raceway ]

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It is Diamond Anniversary time for British drag racing. When Europe’s premier historic drag race, Dragstalgia, takes place at Santa Pod Raceway in July, its focus will fall on the events which gave birth to the sport in Britain six decades earlier.

Two American dragsters which featured prominently in those nascent years are being shipped once more across the Atlantic. Reflecting the drag race tradition of naming rather than numbering cars, Mooneyes and Dos Palmas will enjoy starring roles at Dragstalgia.

The American pair will be joined by Sydney Allard’s original British dragster, the Allard-Chrysler, on a rare outing from its present home, the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, for a unique reunion of cars that were truly ‘in at the birth’.

In 1964, the British sportscar manufacturer, racer and rally driver Sydney Allard had joined forces with Wally Parks, president of America’s National Hot Rod Association, to bring leading US drag racing stars to race on airfield sites across Britain. Blessed with fine weather, the 1st British International Drag Festival was a resounding success and drew plentiful crowds.

One year earlier, word had reached America that Allard had built a dragster, Britain’s first. A Las Vegas speed shop owner and racer known as ‘Dante’ Duce challenged Allard to a race on British soil. An industrialist, Dean Moon, offered Duce the use of his dragster, and Mooneyes was shipped to Britain to undertake the challenge. A second American, Mickey Thompson, arrived unexpectedly and the trio competed at the Brighton Speed Trials and on airfield runways. The venture’s success impelled the Allard-Parks partnership to create the 1964 Festival.

2024’s Mooneyes is a faithful replica of the 1963 original, now housed in a US museum. Its methanol-burning engine is a 350-cubic-inch/5.7-litre Chevrolet V8 boosted by a front-mounted Potvin supercharger, a relic of the era. The car’s 96-inch-wheelbase chassis was built by Dode Martin of the Dragmaster company who constructed the original model. It’s expected that Mooneyes will be fired up during Dragstalgia and may perform burnouts. Today the Mooneyes Speed Equipment & Custom Accessories company is headquartered in Tokyo and Los Angeles and owners Shige Suganuma and Chico Kodama will attend Dragstalgia.

Dos Palmas, on the other hand, is the original vehicle. The Goodnight/Keith/Williamson Dos Palmas Machine Special has a chassis built by early drag racing legend Tommy Ivo and was brought to England for both the 1964 and 1965 Festivals and driven by Bob Keith. Bought thereafter by a British consortium, the car was then acquired by a US Air Force serviceman, Bill Weichelt, who campaigned it at Santa Pod during the early 1970s under a new name, Asmodeus. Posted back to the USA, Weichelt took the car with him and it vanished from sight for 40 years.

Another figure of recent legend, the championship-winning NASCAR crew chief Ray Evernham, found the car and restored it to perfect working condition under its original name before selling it to a fresh British consortium under whose auspices Dos Palmas will take pride of place at Dragstalgia.

1965’s 2nd Drag Festival was beset by rain and 1964’s profits were washed away, yet these two events had kick-started the sport of drag racing on this side of the Atlantic. Santa Pod Raceway opened on Easter Monday 1966 as Europe’s first permanent dragstrip and Sydney Allard, stricken with cancer, died the very next day, never to know the legacy his pioneering ventures had bequeathed.

Dragstalgia’s display of distinguished American iron is not restricted to the four-wheeled classes. This year’s star turn among a host of vintage two-wheelers is a bike known as Hogslayer. Propelled by dual Norton engines on nitromethane, the mount of owner-rider TC Christenson, a native of Wisconsin, was the scourge of the US Top Fuel Motorcycle scene 50 years ago. Norton were so impressed by Christenson’s achievements that they shipped him and his bike to race in England no fewer than three times, and with a tip to the bike’s British mechanical heritage, Hogslayer nowadays resides at Solihull’s National Motorcycle Museum. ‘Hog’ is a nickname given to one of Wisconsin’s most famous industrial products, the Harley-Davidson motorcycle – hence Hogslayer, the Norton-powered slayer of Harleys on dragstrips across America.

On temporary release from its static spot in the museum, Hogslayer is being prepared for action once more. At Dragstalgia, the bark of twin Nortons on nitro will resound across the countryside for the first time in half a century.

Dragstalgia 2024 takes place at Santa Pod Raceway, near Wellingborough NN29 7XA, from Friday 5th to Sunday 7th July. For full event information and to book tickets, visit https://santapod.co.uk/dragstalgia.php or telephone 01234 782828. As ever, access to the pits is free for a close-up view of Dragstalgia’s unparalleled array of historic racing machinery.