Santa Pod June Ultimate Street Car 2001

August 10^th-12^th saw the 200 Plus Club at Santa Pod, for the biggest road car drag race event of the year. Hundreds of cars took part, in various classes, with tickets costing £12 for 5 runs.

Club members met and camped overnight in the club camping area, and all enjoyed a great weekend.  Over 10,000 people attended the event over the 2-½ days. Various traders were in attendance, although not as many as previous years.

I had managed to secure a superb show area for club cars, and Saturday turned into a brilliant display day, with many superb cars on show.

Gary Gooding brought along his newly finished RX7 turbo, which has to be seen to be believed. This car won best modified at the recent Jap Car show, and has been described by a car magazine as possibly the best example in the country. Many other members turned up to show and also to race, and the display attracted hundreds of admirers. Well done to all!

Many members had also come to race, and Friday and Saturday saw some superb racing. Mike Smith managed a superb 11.8s 119mph run in his Skyline R33. This proved to be the time to beat for 4wd cars, and Mike eventually won, without having any more attempts! Many cars tried all weekend to beat this time and failed, and it also turned out to be the best time of the entire event, in the Ultimate streetcar classes. A brilliant result for Mike!

In the 2wd class, Andy Nicholls once again proved to be the master of this event, with some fantastic times in his 300+ bhp Maestro turbo T16. Staring with a 13.2s run, he got down to 12.68s on Friday night. On Saturday he eclipsed this, doing an unbelievable 12.46 116.7mph run!

This is possibly the fastest ever fwd car time at Santa Pod on road legal tyres in the USC event. His car was actually 4^th fastest overall, which is superb when you consider the 4wd and other supercars that ran.  For comparison a Lotus Esprit V8 twin turbo did 12.7s 110mph, and a Lamborghini Diablo managed 12.9s!

Other club members enjoyed the conditions as well, and once again Danny Fennell won the fwd upto 1650cc class with his rapid Renault 5 Turbo, with a superb 12.7s run.

Overall an impressive 3 class wins out of the 3 we had entries in, and fastest car overall of the weekend!

Sunday turned into a downpour, and no racing took place until 3pm. Conditions improved such that the crowd managed to see racing until 5pm, when the event closed.

Here are some photos of what happens to cars when it rains at Santa Pod... well only when you have a play in the field!! (it was too tempting not to ;->)

The three club winners collected a nice trophy from the event organisers, plus a trophy from the 200 Plus club, kindly sponsored by DP Motorsport.

Many thanks once again to all those who took part in a great weekend.

See you same time next year!