Hi everyone! 

Here are the results from the NSRA ‘Nostalgia Nationals’ at Santa Pod on 4th - 6th May. This event was Wild Bunch Series Round 1, Spirit of Nostalgia Challenge Round 1 and Roy Wilding Nostalgia Race Cars Round 1. The weather forecast had been fairly poor for the weekend!! We were all pleasantly surprised when it remained mostly dry!!

The Wild Bunch welcomed back a good field of 20 teams with an additional guest driver, Sean Field joining in with James Griffen’s ‘spare’ Topolino due to his own car having problems. There were a couple of cars and teams making a debut: Wayne Colliver and team had just finished building a superb T-bucket altered called “Funky Digit” (many Congratulations on getting this finished in time and making a good checkout pass, the car looks fantastic!). We welcomed newcomer Bob Main driving his newly acquired ex-Roy & Julian Webb “Spiderman” altered. This was the first time Bob had driven the car and he made a lot of progress on the learning curve! Welcome to the Wild Bunch Bob and team! It was also fantastic to see the “American Pie” team of driver Dan with Paul & Mark back after a 2 ½ year absence!

A format change saw Saturday move from an open RWYB to a day with all the Race classes and RWYB sessions having scheduled time slots like the rest of the weekend. The Bunch got all 3 rounds in at around noon, 3pm and 6:15pm.

On Sunday, we had two more practice rounds at 11am and 2:30pm. Due to the poor forecast for Monday, we had earlier decided to run our first round on the third scheduled session of the day. Most of the other classes also took this route, with the biggest, Nostalgia Superstock having 2 rounds. Our first round of competition began at around 5:50.  

On Monday we were again very pleased to have a dry start to the day, so were hopeful of getting at least one more round in!  Drivers were allowed to change their Dial-ins just the once for the day. Due to many people going home (probably having seen the dire forecast! Or being eliminated), the numbers were getting quite thin on the ground, so our first round was about an hour earlier than expected, at around 10:30am! It was great to get this in with loads of clouds around! The second round was also brought forward to before the scheduled lunch break and took place around 12:15pm.  While getting ready for this round we had been told the weather radar showed incoming rain imminently, so we were thrilled to get this additional round.  As it then turned out, the clouds were holding at bay and we could have possibly got another round in, but the decision had already been made that this had been the last round, due to the probability of heavy rain, and with a view to folks packing up in the dry.  Everyone was pretty pleased with this decision, and overall extremely happy to have had 5 practice sessions and 3 full rounds of racing over the weekend!! Very lucky too!!

Here are the Top 4 at the event after the 3 rounds of competition, with the average difference to Dial-in shown. Many Congratulations to all!

1^st Place: Dan Wilson in ‘Antique Toy’  .0332 (picking up right where he left off!)

2^nd Place: Andy Roy in ‘Shawcrank Redemption’  .1002  (great to see Andy with a strong Top 4 result!)

3^rd Place: James Auld in ‘Little Fauss’ .1024    (also picking up right where he left off!)

4^th Place: James Griffen in ‘Kiss My Gas’ .1140  (well done to him on his first Top 4 placing!)

Plus the other finishers to complete all 3 rounds without redlights were the following:

5^th - Ruaridh Hart .1401

6^th - Rob & Pete Brown “Rebel” .1765

7^th – Ian Wild .2029

8^th – Dave Shoemark .4183

9^th - Dan & Elliott Jones .4698

 

Here are the Spot Prizes that were won. Many Congratulations to all!:

Closest to Dial-In (Series Rounds):  Dan Wilson    “Antique Toy”    .0008 off

Best Reaction (Series Rounds):  James Auld   “Little Fauss”     .070     

Fastest MPH:   Bob Hawkins   “Time Traveller II”   206.81 mph 

Best Burnout:    Alan Skipp    “Chasin’ Time”

Best Appearing Car:   James Griffen   “Kiss My Gas”

Best Appearing Team:  James Auld & Team “Little Fauss”  

Commentator’s Choice:  Bob Hawkins   “Time Traveller II” 

(For a superb pair of 6.4’s including the new Wild Bunch E.T. record!!)

(and also a mammoth 4 ½ hour thrash in the pits after tyre shake on one run caused some damage)         

NSRA award for “Quickest Wild Bunch”:  Bob Hawkins   “Time Traveller II”   6.436 !  PB and WB record!

Commiserations to all those who had breakages or issues: Andy Jackson, who had made a couple of great 11-second passes, only to suffer some engine damage! Bob Main who had a hopefully small issue on his last run, Rob White who had some hopefully minor leakage issues had to sit out the last rounds, and Pete Rowell who had a major smokeout on a run with suspected head damage.  Hope you can all get the cars fixed real soon and be back out for Dragstalgia!!

Every team put on a great show and it was fantastic to watch as always! Well done everyone!! Here is the full field of great Wild Bunch participants!!!! There were several PB’s this weekend, shown in this table. Congrats folks!! 

 

WB  1 Dan Wilson “Antique Toy”

WB  2 Pete & Rob Brown “Rebel”

WB  3 James Auld “Little Fauss”

WB  19 Wayne Colliver “Funky Digit” PB 19.849 / 78.03 Debut

WB  20 Rob & Pete Brown “Wrathchild”

WB  50 James Griffen “Kiss my Gas”  PB 9.087

WB  65 Alan Skipp “Chasin’ Time” PB 8.789/157.39(1^st  150’s)

WB  75 Andy Jackson “Hammerman 2”

WB  79 Bob Main “Spiderman” PB 11.523 / 119.51 Debut

WB  89 Andy Roy “Shawcrank Redemption”  PB  10.037 / 133.63 mph

WB  91 Bob Hawkins “Time Traveller II” PB & *WB Record*  6.4368

WB  98 Rob White “Happy Daze”

WB 104 Dave Shoemark “The Crewman” PB  134.42 mph

WB 113 Paul Tarry “Trigger’s Broom”

WB 115 Dan Boone “American Pie”

WB 116 Ian Wild “WildScat” PB  11.471

WB 132 Dan & Elliott Jones “Ragin’ Cajun”

WB 358 Pete Whitfield “Rowell Rail” PB  11.106

WB 450 Vinny Butcher “4orth Dimension”

WB 1969 Ruaridh Hart “Bravehart” PB 10.537 / 125.26

GWB501 Guest Sean Field “Hold Fast”

(Please let me know if I have missed any PBs!)

Highlights include a great field to start the season, a fab new car, a fab new team and a fab returning team, 8 teams running PB’s including Skippy’s first 150’s, Andy's first 130's, Ruaridh’s first 120’s and the stellar 6.436 Wild Bunch E.T. Record by Bob Hawkins, backed up by a 6.469!! Plus, of course, the brilliant Santa Pod track crew and marshals, and much better weather than anticipated!!

Thanks again to the NSRA and all the marshals and officials at Santa Pod for all their hard work as always. Well done to all those who put on a great show this weekend! Looking forward to the next event already!!

All the best
Claire