Drag

[This section was written in 2003].
Dragsters are the fastest accelerating vehicles on this planet. Large engines, superchargers and special tyres which you have to grow before you can accelerate on the big ones. Jet powered dragsters are also loud and impressive, unless you stand behind one. And then for the ultimate you have Rockets - motorbikes as well as cars. Slammin' Sammy's rocket car can hit over 100mph in under 0.5 seconds from a standing start. They have parachutes to stop them. Several dragstrips are to be found in UK and Europe together with the American strips.

The following videos are courtesy of Bob and Anni who produced the

drag racing website (where have they gone?, please email me if you have any details).
Click on the pictures to play the videos.


Vanishing Point in the pits at Santa Pod	Slammin' Sammy Miller doing a test run	Countdown 5,4,3,2,1, whoosh and it's gone!
Slammin' Sammy Miller in his rocket powered Vanishing Point is the fastest accelerating car in the world so far. It goes from a standstill to 100mph in less than half a second.

www.feel-the-noise.com was an excellent place to see galleries of pictures and videos covering drag racing.

I had seen Vanishing Point and Sammy Miller at Santa Pod several times but that was a few years ago. The memories had slipped into that 'tall story' mentality that happens over time and it couldn't have been that fast. With The Goodwood Festival of Speed came the reminder in the form of The Sunday Times Driving supplement which included a 16 page guide on the Festival. A couple of pages into the supplement and there it was, a large picture of the Vanishing Point car above the caption 'The ultimate speed league'. The article was good for me, it provided strength to my mind, I didn't exaggerate, it was as crazy as I thought. The last time I saw the car was with Georgia at Santa Pod, one second we were looking at the car, the next recovering from the noise of the rocket engine and looking at an empty piece of tarmac where the car had been. By then the run was over and it was half way up the strip. We did not see it move! Tall story you may think, but Sammy and Vanishing Point did the fastest drag run in history. How fast?)/ 0 to 60 in 0.2.

Some of you may say that it's not possible, laws of physics, etc. Well, as I said earlier we didn't see it move on the run at Santa Pod, so maybe it was Time Travel.

The 3.58 second pass that Sammy ran in 1984 is still the fastest recorded anywhere on the planet so far. You thought he was crazy? Oh No! Now we have Eric Teboul, a long time drag racer from France. Not content with Nitro-Methanol, or 'Top Fuel', as it is known he has gone one further and got a rocket. Yes, the fastest ever recorded two wheel drag run over the 1/8th mile was recorded by Eric on his rocket powered motorbike in the last couple of months at Santa Pod. I need to see it! I will find it, picture it, and upload it.

What more could you want than to be remembered in the History books for something special? For my part I did not know of his demise until the start of writing this paragraph. I was researching the facts and figures for this section. I had not read The Time's Supplement at Goodwood. I saw a picture of the car, I noticed the times and speeds, in my euphoria at seeing a picture of Vanishing Point I missed the bigger picture and the rest of the text about the late Sammy Miller. I eagerly wanted to see him again. This has been an emotive paragraph for me. .

Rockets are the fastest dragsters but after that we have 6,000bhp nitro methanol 'Top Fuelers'. There are 2 cars in a drag race so that means 12,000bhp is unleashed on the line. On the spectator bank your chest and diaphragm rattle, you put your fingers in your ears, you get stung by the Nitro from the engines but I promise you that you will never forget the spectacle of of a side by side Top Fuel race.


Top Fuel Dragster	Top Fuel Funny Car	Top Fuel Motorbike
Top Fuel Dragster performance. 0 - 300+mph in under 5 seconds in a quarter of a mile. 0 - 100mph in under a second.

And then there comes Top Alcohol or Top Methanol as it is called now in these politically (over) correct times.


Top Methanol Dragsters are very similar to the Top Fuelers but they run on the less potent Methanol not the explosive Nitro-Methanol mix found in the bigger ones.
Approximately 3,000bhp drives the cars to around 250mph in under 5.5 seconds

Thanks again to Bob and Anni of www.feel-the-noise.com for the above content for this section.

There is plenty more to come. I used to pretend I was a press photographer with my Sony Handycam years ago at Santa Pod to get better shots from behind the startline. I have never had a use for the footage till now. The old Sony 8mm camera was recently replaced with another Sony, but this time a Digital 8mm version. I can now use my old 8mm tapes in the new camera and do digital editing on the computer. The playback quality is better than from the original camera they were taken on. Working with digital video on a computer is a delight but requires a fast PC but even more importantly a large amount of fast hard disk storage. For now here is a clip of some jets doing flame shows - Jets Video Clip

Early Santa Pod clip small 6Mb large 15Mb Old Sony 8mm video and early videoing ! Download and watch.