Celebrating the 60th birthday of British drag racing’s home

Genial chaps of maturing years will sometimes approach Santa Pod Raceway’s display stand at motorsport shows and say, “I used to love coming to Santa Pod in the 1960s and 1970s. What’s it like now? Has it changed?”

“Yes,” comes the reply. “We have flushing toilets.” It always gets a wry laugh.

As Santa Pod navigates its 60th anniversary season, its criminal latrines mercifully banished to distant memory, what other recollections might linger in our genial chaps’ minds?

They would certainly have seen Harold Bull in action. On Easter Monday 1966, Bull, a local precision engineer, piloted a tiny dragster he had built down a bumpy, disused airfield runway to inaugurate the site’s transformation into Europe’s first dedicated venue for the novel motorsport discipline known as drag racing.

Racers like Harold Bull and John Whitmore would wring impressive performances from 1000cc BMC ‘four-bangers’ installed in dragsters scarcely bigger than today’s Junior Dragsters driven by children

Emboldened by the International Drag Festivals that had brought American drag racers to compete on other British airfield sites in the previous two years, a business syndicate chose a war-surplus airfield near the Bedfordshire-Northamptonshire border to locate their new venture.

In search of a distinctive name, the founders dreamt up a canny amalgam of the historic and the local. Southern California was the cradle of drag racing and the first commercial drag race was held there in 1950 on Santa Ana airfield. Meanwhile the location for the syndicate’s new facility was Podington aerodrome – hence, Santa Pod.

In Santa Pod’s early years, the American V8 was not yet ubiquitous and homegrown machinery was much in use. Racers like Bull and John Whitmore would wring impressive performances from 1000cc BMC ‘four-bangers’ installed in dragsters scarcely bigger than today’s Junior Dragsters driven by children, and spectators would run to watch as they were push-started down the fire-up road. Straight-six Jaguars were another popular choice.

Garlits’ battle with Crane in 1976 made national news headlines

Photo by: Roger Gorringe

A glance through a 1968 Santa Pod programme reveals an entry list of 94 cars spread among classes still governed by sprinting orthodoxy. The list numbers 32 American V8s, 13 Jaguars and a Daimler, 31 sub-two-litre motors and 12 sub-one-litres, plus others. Besides BMC and Jaguar, brand names included Ford, Triumph, Commer, Rootes, Lotus, Coventry Climax, Vauxhall, a pair of VWs and an Austin-Healey.

Using a supercharged and injected Austin A35 motor, Bull ended the year with best figures of 10.14s/133mph over the quarter-mile. Today, Bull’s and Whitmore’s small-capacity spiritual successors take on big-inch American iron in the thriving Competition Eliminator driving very different machinery. Kevin Jenkins’s GM-powered Ford Escort and Ahmed Jamshaid’s front-wheel-drive Honda Civic, for example, crank out mid-7s performances at upwards of 180mph from just two litres.

Drag racing originated in the USA and Americans were quick to arrive on the Santa Pod scene. A team calling themselves the American Commandos appeared as soon as summer 1966 and again in 1967, but it was in the 1970s that the influx of nitro stars took off. Don Schumacher and Paula Murphy displayed the first full-tilt American Funny Cars in 1973. Marking Santa Pod’s 10th anniversary at Easter 1976, Don Garlits was given the headline sports story on the Daily Mail’s back page and parked cars lined every inch of the approach roads more than two miles away, so great was the spectator crush to get in.

The 1970s and 1980s were a bonus period for British fans to see American stars without needing to cross the pond

In one of UK drag racing’s banner moments, Garlits – battling mechanical gremlins – redlit in the opening round against British opponent Peter Crane, whose winning 5.97s elapsed time was the first sub-6s clocking recorded outside America. Sometimes overlooked in the tumult, Clive Skilton beat Crane in the semi-final and went on to win the race. Garlits returned a year later, this time with less fanfare, gremlin-free and was successful.

The 1970s and 1980s were a bonus period for British fans to see American stars without needing to cross the pond. Raymond Beadle, Gene Snow, Don Prudhomme, Tom Hoover, Harlan Thompson, Al Segrini and Frank Hawley were among those to make the Santa Pod trip. Shirley Muldowney was coming, but injured herself severely crashing in Canada. Tragically, Darrell Gwynn, the young pretender to National Hot Rod Association’s Top Fuel throne, was left paralysed after his car’s chassis broke at Santa Pod’s mid-track.

The last to make a grand entrance, years after the transatlantic trend had ended, was Melanie Troxel, NHRA’s only winner in Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Mod. Troxel arrived in 2010 to drive a Pro Mod at Santa Pod and Hockenheim at the whim of her wealthy American team owner who fancied a punt at the European scene.

Female racers like Berstad (l) and Jacobsen have starred at the venue

Photo by: Colin Donisthorpe

Drag racing is certainly a form of motorsport in which women race men on equal terms. While Muldowney was blazing her trail in America in the 1970s, Roz Prior and Liz Burn were driving dragsters in Britain. In the following decades, Nordic Top Fuel racers such as Monica Oberg, Liv Berstad, Oyvor Jacobsen and Viveca Averstedt became Santa Pod favourites.

In 2019, Finland’s Anita Makela retired after winning her fourth FIA Top Fuel championship at Santa Pod’s European Finals and was inducted into the British Drag Racing Hall of Fame. Ida Zetterstrom holds Santa Pod’s elapsed time mark at 3.773s (over today’s Top Fuel/Funny Car racing distance of 1000 feet) as well as clocking a speed record of 321.01mph at the same May 2023 event.

The boys get a look-in too. Priddle versus Skilton was a rivalry that, above all else, defined Santa Pod’s first decade. Dennis Priddle was a Westland helicopter engineer from Somerset, Clive Skilton a Hertfordshire car dealer. Both stepped up from smaller machinery to drive Top Fuel Dragsters and, later, Funny Cars. Priddle, indeed, built many of his own entries.

Sheavills didn’t merely clip the 300mph barrier, he punched it aside with speed to spare, clocking 304.71mph

They were not alone. There was plenty of competition in both classes, but their head-to-head confrontations had an epic quality that resonates today. For a rivalry that left such an imprint, it was surprisingly short-lived, ending abruptly in 1976 when Skilton left for America, where he lives still. Priddle raced on until 1985 and died in 2021.

A more recent Top Fuel rivalry made its own impact on the sport’s history: Barry Sheavills and Andy Carter. In 2002, it had been 10 long years since Kenny Bernstein had cracked the 300mph barrier in America. The quest for Europe’s first 300 followed the London bus principle of nothing for ages then two arriving at once.

As the late Queen was celebrating her Golden Jubilee in London, Sheavills and Carter lined up for a Top Fuel qualifying pass at Santa Pod, still running over the classic quarter-mile. Sheavills didn’t merely clip the 300mph barrier, he punched it aside with speed to spare, clocking 304.71mph. Carter was just inches behind, stopping the speed clock at 303.07mph. Sheavills already had an FIA European Top Fuel championship to his name. Carter would go on to win four, matching him with Makela’s record haul.

Miller’s rocket-powered Funny Car was so violent that his eyes would bleed

Photo by: Roger Gorringe

The startline from which Bull launched his opening-day pass in 1966 was situated mid-way up the runway, with the pits occupying the area behind it. Seeking a longer, safer ‘shutdown area’, the management moved the start back to its present location, at the head of the runway, in 1968.

Our genial chaps at the Santa Pod stand may not have been around for that but they would certainly have remembered The Barn, a covered terrace sited immediately behind the startline area and affording a wonderful view straight down the track. The Barn was opened in 1970 and demolished in 2007 before it could fall down of its own accord.

“Vacate the Barn at once, please, the jet cars are coming,” the commentator would instruct, whereupon anyone not already inside would hurry to pile in, eager to be scorched, deafened and choked with smoke as the jets ran through their exhibition routines. Drag racing claims to offer the most sensory spectator experience in motorsport, exemplified here in extremis.

Along came Graham Sykes, an innovative Yorkshire engineer whose steam-powered motorbike (yes, steam!) is as spectacular as it sounds unlikely, and is quicker to 60 feet than a Top Fuel Dragster

Exhibition vehicles hark back to the sport’s earliest days in America, when truly anything went before rules and regulations began to separate the go from the show. In 1971 Arnold Sundqvist brought a jet-engined conveyance from Sweden, surely the most boring vehicle ever to trundle down Santa Pod’s quarter-mile. Yet plumb in an afterburner, as Sundqvist’s successors did, and suddenly it’s showtime.

The most renowned Santa Pod showman of all was an American named Sammy Miller. ‘Slam’n Sammy’ brought over his Vanishing Point Funny Car, powered by a hydrogen peroxide rocket motor, in 1978 after rocket power had been banned for safety reasons in America. So violent was the car’s acceleration that Miller’s eyes would bleed. In 1984 he clocked a 3.58s elapsed time that still ranks as the quickest dragstrip quarter-mile accomplished anywhere, ever.

Miller’s spiritual successor was the French biker Eric Teboul – known astutely as ‘The Crazy Frenchman’ – and his hydrogen peroxide rocket motorcycle. On his farewell Santa Pod demo pass in 2022, Teboul clocked 4.976s, 290.51mph, the quickest, fastest quarter-mile ever run on two wheels. No sooner had Teboul retired from the scene than along came Graham Sykes, an innovative Yorkshire engineer whose steam-powered motorbike (yes, steam!) is as spectacular as it sounds unlikely, and is quicker to 60 feet than a Top Fuel Dragster. What is it with Yorkshiremen and offbeat devices? Jet car drivers Martin Hill and Roger Goring also hail from the county.

Characters like Miller attracted and embraced the large UK crowds

Photo by: Roger Gorringe

For fully half its existence, Santa Pod has been owned and operated by Keith Bartlett, a one-time racer and team owner who bought the property in 1996. Beyond better sanitation, what else might our genial chaps find different now? Santa Pod today might best be described as an open-air entertainment venue with a dragstrip at its heart.

Its annual calendar of more than 60 events contains just a dozen ‘conventional’ championship drag races, interspersed with car-culture festivals, modified car shows, specialist and family events and public trackdays. A vast, paved paddock can pit 350 race teams and doubles as a popular drifting venue while accommodating music stages and funfairs for the festivals.

In 2018 a concrete dragstrip was installed after a major excavation that dug down through accumulated layers of asphalt and even the wartime runway itself, which was broken up to provide hardcore for the new construction.

The online following is global: last year, streamed events on YouTube gathered 3.5million views and Facebook registered 79.8million impressions

Some 400,000 people a year pass through Santa Pod’s gates, their access eased by a multi-gate layout and a digitised ticketing system – so no more of the crush that bedevilled spectators at the Garlits race in 1976.

A vigorous IT department draws in those modern necessities, influencers and content creators, and the online following is global: last year, streamed events on YouTube gathered 3.5million views and Facebook registered 79.8million impressions.

Roy Phelps, the last of the original Santa Pod founders, recalls someone telling him on opening day in 1966, “You’re wasting your time. This won’t last.” Of course, one cannot know what timeframe the pessimist had in mind, but it was likely shorter than 60 years.

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