Hi everybody!

Here are the results from the ‘Summer Nationals’ at Santa Pod last weekend, 1^st & 2^nd July. This was Spirit of Nostalgia Challenge Round 2, Springbridge MSUK Challenge Round 1 and the 1^st round of the SPRC Championship for Wild Bunch.

The Wild Bunch had a small but excellent field of 3 great teams participating in the event. The weather was dry and mostly cloudy with a bit of a headwind throughout, which affected the ET’s somewhat. We were the last class out on each cycle and we had had qualifiers at 1:45pm and 4:40pm Saturday, with all 3 teams electing to skip the late qualifier around 7:30pm. We had a further qualifier on Sunday at 1pm.  Our first round was the Semi-finals just before 4pm. All eliminations were completed on Sunday by around 5:30pm and we were the last class of the day, to close the show!

The Top 3 winners were:

1st Place:   Phil James in ‘Rampage’ (another fantastic win for Phil!)
2nd Place:  Alan Loten in ‘Paranoia’  (fantastic to see Alan & Steve back out and making good progress!)
3rd Place:  Bob Hawkins in ‘Time Traveller II’ (always great to see a 6-second pass for starters!)

The Spot Prizes were:

#1 Qualifier: Phil James in ‘Rampage’  .026 off

Closest to Dial-in in eliminations: Alan Loten in ‘Paranoia’  .057 off

The full line-up was:

WB 2 Phil James was running his fantastic “Rampage” funny car. Phil was joined by his crew, friends Matt and Andy and sister Alison. For his first round, he dialled in at 9.59, and posted a 9.684 at 134.86mph to open his account. He raised the Dial to 9.64 for the second run, and recorded a breakout 9.625 at 136.46mph. He lowered the dial again, to 9.62 and ran 9.646 at 136.05mph in the last round to finish as #1 Qualifier. Well done, Phil, great stuff!

WB 69 It was brilliant to see Alan Loten and Steve Williams back out with the iconic “Paranoia” altered!  They had made several updates since last year, including an all new simplified nitrous system. Alan began with a Dial-in of 9.57. His first run was somewhat of a checkout pass at 10.545 at 131.04mph, but still it was great he made a full pull!  He modified the Dial for the second round to 9.97 and ran an improved 10.265 at 131.79. For the last qualifier on Sunday, he kept the same dial and ran 10.355 at 130.68mph. He qualified in 3^rd place overall.

WB 91 Bob Hawkins had made a few updates to his nitro-powered “Time Traveller II” slingshot, including some brand new pistons! So he was looking forward to seeing how the car would run! Bob started with a 6.70 Dial-in. He recorded a good 6.906 at 192.22mph with more to come.  He did some tuning between rounds and kept that same Dial, but had ferocious tyre shake off the line, slowing to an 8.884 at 110.43mph.  He did not go out for the last qualifier on Sunday, but qualified in 2^nd place.

At the end of qualifying that day there was a very touching tribute to hugely missed Wild Bunch member and hardworking marshal Dave Rowlands. Angie had been trying to arrange this for a couple of years that a racecar would release Dave’s ashes from the parachute at the end of the run.  The “Wicked Lady” team had volunteered for this and Darren Law took the last run of the day, giving Dave a very fitting send off when he also recorded a PB 8.824 @ 149.13 mph!  Race in Peace Dave. 

Semi-finals  These took place just before 4pm. Phil had earned the Bye run and put up a Dial-in o 9.62. He brok out with a 9.595 at 136.79mph, but this did not matter. In the only pairing it was Alan against Bob. Alan dialled in at 10.27 and Bob at 6.75.  Alan recorded the ‘Closest to Dial-in’ run of the day with just .057 off, running 10.327 at 131.41mph to take the win.  Bob had a tenth advantage on reaction time, but ran a slower 7.077 at 189.79mph.

Final   We were the last Final of the day at around 5:30pm! Phil modified his Dial-in to 9.58 and Alan kept his 10.27. Alan had his best run of the weekend, with a 10.128 at 132.97mph! The breakout handed the win to Phil, who posted a 9.714 at 136.46mph. Well done Phil!

Highlights of the weekend were getting 3 qualifiers and completing both rounds of eliminations and a small but excellent group of cars and teams! Well done to all and huge thanks to all 3 teams for supporting the event!  Really hope to see several more Wild Bunch teams joining in with our next MSUK round on 19^th & 20^th August for the ‘Green Light Nationals’!

Massive thanks to everyone at Santa Pod for all their hard work as always! So very much appreciated as always!! We are now really looking forward to Dragstalgia next weekend, where we have a fantastic field of 34 entries! Wow! Should be a brilliant weekend!!