Easter Thunderball at Santa Pod Raceway

Words and photos by Ivan Sansom & Rose Hughes

The 2012 edition of the British Drag Racing Championships got off to a somewhat inauspicious start at the Easter Thunderball at Santa Pod, with cold and damp conditions impacting on qualifying and the Bank Holiday Monday proving to be a washout thanks to the blanket of rain that descended across the country.

MSA Pro Modified

The eight car MSA Pro Modified field represented a healthy turnout for the start of the season, and Roger Moore ended up on top of the qualifying sheets with a final session 6.7251s/207.95mph run from the Shakespeare Engineering nitrous injected Dodge Viper that just nipped ahead of 2011 championship winner Graham Ellis’s best from day one by a mere two-thousands of second.

Andy Frost was perhaps the happiest of the bunch, carding the first six second pass by a street legal car in Europe from the turbocharged VXR Red Victor 3 Vauxhall to come in at third on the ladder with an impressive 6.9995/218.14 mph. "This is the beginning of the development of what we know will become the quickest street legal car in the world. We are now already the fastest [219mph being clocked on an earlier pass]. A huge thanks to the whole team of people who are solidly behind this effort." And all this with only second gear launches!