The pictures on this page were taken by readers of
The Acceleration Archive who have kindly agreed to share them with us.

(CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO SEE A LARGER VERSION)

The first five pictures on this page are courtesy of Chris Pretty who campaigned a Jag-powered Model T altered appropriately called Pretty Thing.
First up is this pit shot of Bootsie Herridge's Gladiator funny car taken at Santa Pod.

Rune Fjeld is best known as a multiple top fuel dragster owner but this is how he spent his weekends back in the 1980s.
Here he is driving the beautiful ex-'Aluminium' Al Bergler Motown Shaker funny car. 

In the 1980s drag racing legend Don Prudhomme was winning just about everything there was to win in his Army sponsored funny car.  This is his car being maneouvred in the pits at a sunny Santa Pod.

The beautiful Tre Kronor funny car driven by Harlan Thompson.

The last of Chris' pictures for the time being is the front cover of the programme for the NDRC meeting held at Snetterton on 9 and 10 September 1978.
The pictures are (more or less from top to bottom) the Page Brothers' Panic, 2 shots of Malcolm Olley's Pink Panther jet-powered car, the Liquidator Ford Pop, John Hobbs on board The Hobbitt, Henk Vink on one of his many Big Spender machines, and Dennis Priddle in his JWR sponsored Monza funny car.

And now for 11 pictures kindly submitted by Clive Rooms starting with some taken at Orange County International Raceway in the good old US of A.
This is the famous Pollution Packer rocket powered dragster owned by Tony Fox and driven by Dave Anderson.  This was the first car to run a 4 and exceed 300mph over the quarter mile - and all of that back in 1973!

Two pictures of the Walton, Cerny & Moody top fuel entry which was driven by Don Moody.
Compare the slicks in these shots.

This top fuel dragster was owned by Brent Cannon and driven by Phil Soares from Hawaii, it later became part of UK drag racing history when Peter Crane re-named it Stormbringer and clocked the first official 5 second run outside the USA.  Oh, and he also beat the great Don Garlits while he was at it.

John Whitmore and his potent four pot Drag'n'Fly slingshot pictured in the shutdown area at Santa Pod.

Chicken Coupe was purchased from the well known cartoonist the late Pete Millar by John Woolfe Racing.  Its 354 Chrysler engine was removed and installed in their Quartermaster top fuel dragster.  The car was later campaigned by Mike Treutlein and Keith Dancey.

John Hobbs performs a rolling burn out on his double engined Olympus II machine at Santa Pod.
This bike was state of the art at the time but doesn't it look tiny compared to the monsters of today?

This is Swede Gunne Back's Chevrolet Corvette which he called Frighten Chicken.  Its signature launch style is well portrayed in this shot, lots of rearward weight transfer and the front wheels tucking under.

Another of Clive's shutdown area shots taken whilst he was a fire marshall at Santa Pod.
On the left the Sneaky T blown fuel altered of Phil Elson has got there in front of Bruce Brown's injected Age Machine dragster.

Mike Derry and Roland Pratt were known as the Hillbillies team, their Transcontinental funny car was one of the first of the breed in the UK.  It was unfortunately destroyed in a crash before its full potential could be explored, luckily without injury to the driver Roland Pratt.

John Siggery turns onto the strip in Geronimo.  The Santa Pod start line looks a little different nowadays.

The final shots on this page are from my fellow Dartford resident Pete Smith who drives a blown 'Vette (I'm a Mondeo man myself . . . )
He got a great snap of Roy Phelps up and running in the famous Wheelie Stingray.

These shots show Alan Ritmeisters in his Rain for Rent top fuel dragster racing Owen Hayward in the Houndog funny car on 24 April 1984.  Shortly after these pictures were taken Alan's car pulled to the left before moving violently to the right and colliding with the guard rail.  Alan tragically lost his life in this accident which led to improvements being made to the crash barriers at Santa Pod.
I am grateful to Alan's brother John Ritmeisters for providing me
with his account of this terrible day in the history of the sport.

Bill Sherratt wasn't always a leading light in the Showtime funny car team, here he is in the hot seat of the Cannonball funny car. 

This car was built by Dennis Priddle and then passed to the Page team and was known as Panic!  it was also driven at that time by Showtime funny car team boss Bob Jarrett.
The car then passed to the team of Mark Newby and Terry Revill who ran it during 1988 and '89 with Mark doing most of the driving.

Mark Newby very kindly got in touch to give me some of the details of the team.  Mark is in to land speed record breaking these days and if this interests you then have a look at his site by clicking here. 

This was the first small block powered competition altered into the eights outside the USA.  Magnum Force was the name and Herb Andrews was the driver.

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