Festival of Power at Santa Pod Raceway

The MSA Season Starts

Words and photos by Ivan Sansom & Rose Hughes
Thanks to TSI Timers (Europe) for access to the timing data

Colin Felstead (Ivan Sansom photo)

It was a cold and often wet start to the 2016 MSA Drag Racing Championship over the course of the Easter weekend, with rain truncating qualifying on the Saturday whilst eliminations on the Sunday were severely limited by somewhat cool conditions, the occasional incident on track and ultimately by one of the torrential downpours that swept across the country.

MSA Pro Modified featured nine event entries, two of whom were trying to secure licensing during the course of the meeting. The Dutch duo of Michel Tooren and Marck Harteveld were both restricted by conditions and mechanical glitches, while class ‘veterans’ Chris Isaacs and Mick Payne succumbed during qualification to turbo damage and transmission failure respectively.

Andy Robinson (Rose Hughes photo)

It wasn’t straightforward for the rest of the class, perhaps best illustrated by Andy Robinson after a flaming bang from the NGK backed supercharged 1969 Camaro on his opening attempt to make the field came at the expense of two torched heads and an overnight thrash to put a time on the board. Down to the last shot and Robinson ended up topping the field with a 6.3752/225.88 mph, followed by Bert Englefield (6.7895), the aforementioned Isaacs (6.9355) and Jean Dulamon (6.9560). Reigning class champion Kev Slyfield (7.0721), Payne (7.9380) and Wayne Nicholson (18.6165) rounded out the rest of the qualified field.