All of the pictures on this page
were taken by ex-Pro Comp funny car
pilot
Timo Aartomaa who has very kindly allowed me to reproduce them
here.
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Click on any image to get the bigger picture |
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Allan 'Bootsie' Herridge RIP There is
an excellent 'Hall of Fame' entry for Allan Herridge on the Trakbytes
site. The following words are taken from the site by kind permission of Chris
Dossett the Webmaster. |
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Enough of the sad stuff. Let's have a look at Bootsie Herridge doing what he loved to do. Here he is burning out at Santa Pod Raceway in his Trans Am bodied Gladiator fuel funny car. |
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Really close in on the action now and none of those pesky photographers in the way! |
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Bootsie does a real leaving job on Owen Hayward driving the Houndog funny car. |
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Don't try this at home! |
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This shot was taken a very short period of time after the last one when Bootsie actually hit the guard rail in front of Timo. Timo says he did the same thing himself at Motopark in Finland and at Santa Pod in 1987. The file for this shot is entitled 'Bootsie that was close.jpg' - a bit of an understatement I think! |
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And now for a dramatic series of pictures showing another of the hazards of drag racing - fire. Gladiator has come to a halt with engine problems and the fire crew have wasted no time in getting there. |
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The body of the car is raised as the fire begins to take hold because oil and nitro from the shattered engine block have made contact with the extremely hot exhaust headers. Fortunately this happened on a burn out and the fire crew were quickly on the scene. When such accidents occur at very high speed they are far more dangerous. Fuel funny car driver Lee Anders Hasselstrom sadly lost his life in such a fire at Piteå in Sweden in 1988. |
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The last few finishing touches and . . . |
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. . . job done. |
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This is Bootsie's pit and as you can see the engine is right out of the car. |
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Oh dear! I don't know a lot about engines but this Keith Black block looks more than a bit crook to me. Timo tells me that this damage would have been repairable by welding in new pieces and machining. Such 'windows' in engine blocks are caused when connecting rods break by over-revving, bad bearings or perhaps because the rod was just too old. |
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A fine selection of pistons and rods. |
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Krister Johansson burning out at a small airfield in Norway up in the mountains between Oslo and Bergen in 1981 or 1982. |
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This was the first car to run an eight second lap in Finland. It was built by Tapio 'Tipi' Tuori and was owned and driven by Ahti Virtanen. It ran a best of 8.66 using a 433" Chevy coupled to a Lenco and a Ford 9" rear end. |
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The Canon-sponsored fuel funny car of Roland Larsson and Ake Ryman burning out at Mantorp Park. |
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These pictures are of one of the first Pro Stock-type bikes dating from the late 1970s or early ' 80s. It was built by Pekka Rouvinen using a Russ Collins prepped 970cc Honda 4 with a self-built air shifter.
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We started this page with one of the greats of European drag racing, well here's another one - Anders Lantz. This picture was taken at Räyskälä. |
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All material on this site is copyright and should not be reproduced without permission |
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