Update

It was touch and go whether we’d make it to Dragstalgia, with our To Do list growing bigger by the day! Finally we set off on Friday and arrived at Santa Pod just in time for rain to start.

It rained all morning Saturday, which for us turned out to be a godsend as we had bits to finish and tyres to fit. We spent all of Saturday working on being ready, but unfortunately missed the call for the NFAA’s first round. We fired Freddy up about 45 minutes after they towed down, and were happy with the results with just one leak to look at.

We got up on Sunday with butterflies playing havoc in our tummies, as today would be the first time in 15 months we’d taken Freddy down the fire up road. We spent the morning doing final tweaks, and with the 1 hour warning from Santa Pod got Freddy fired up.

We towed down with the rest of the NFAA who were running their Eliminations 1st round. Our plan was a 100ft squirt and we were launching in 2nd gear. Finally, for the first time in nearly 3 years, everything went ok! We headed back to the pits with the hope to take her to 300ft in the afternoon when the NFAA ran their final.

The number of people that came to the pit and said how pleased they were to see us back, relieved they were to see Freddy launch ok and how good Freddy looked even in primer was astounding. We are immensely grateful.

We got ready for our 2nd check-out pass, and towed down with Chaos and Motor Psycho who were in the final. Dave did a short burn out, launched in 2nd and ran to approximately 300ft. Everything went smoothly. Our aim for the weekend had been achieved; we were going home in one piece!

If we can find a sponsor we’d love to compete at the National Finals in September, but it is more likely that we will have to sit out the rest of this year, giving us chance to get all the finer perfectionist bits done – paint for Freddy, a tow truck for our usual trailer, etc.. The list goes on.

Huge thanks go to Bob Gleadow and the Motor Psycho team for the various tools and bits we borrowed; Wendy Baker, Paul Stubbings and the Time Warp crew for their help(!) changing the tyres; Mark Skinner for our team photo; Bob Glassup for the loan of a trailer and awning; Tom the welder; Tony Betts and Jason Phelps for the back end of the chassis and much help and advice; Andy and Kate Robinson; Dan Sharp.

Plus our usual supporters, Adam; Huw; Mark; Gordon Northway of Valley Carpets; Cable-Tec.

We are so eternally grateful to all the other racers, fans and friends for their support, help, advice, pictures and much more over the difficult couple of years we’ve had. Without the support network we have around us, I doubt we’d have even attempted to come back out.

Thank you. Run fast and safe. See you in 2013!

 

By Jo Carter

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