Dragstalgia, Santa Pod Raceway, England

Words and photos Ivan Sansom and Rose Hughes

After last year’s edition of Dragstalgia we’d mused that perhaps the biggest concern about the highlight of the UK Nostalgia season was keeping it growing whilst maintaining the enjoyment factor. Well this year it was spectacular, both on and off track. We’ll come to the on track action shortly, but the B17 flyover, a great static car show including rods, customs and competition vehicles of yore and some hints of things to come on display in the pits were entertainment enough in their own right. However, the track action was probably as good as many events at Santa Pod with many of the headlines grabbed by the appearance of Rat Trap and Pure Hell.

Those Awful Awful Altereds

After spending a number of years burning out around the hillclimb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed (which usually clashed with any opportunity to get them to a UK drag strip), Santa Pod and US Automotive finally got Ron Hope’s Rat Trap and Rick Guasco’s Pure Hell for Dragstalgia and boy was it fun. Wayward, bouncing, foam block destroying low seven to high six second action was a feature of pretty much all of the match races between father and son duo Ron and Brian Hope, behind the tillers of Rat Trap and Pure Hell respectively, that were cheered to the rafters. Unfortunately, Rat Trap was unable to contest the final pairing (we’ll come onto this shortly), but the overwhelming reception they received has already planted a few seeds for an expanded show in the future.