York Raceway – UK Spring Nationals

Although I’m at York Raceway, England, I could be in the USA right now. It’s a seriously hot day with some seriously nice muscle cars. There’s not a cloud in the sky and only the occasional patch of funny-smelling fog wafts past us. Wait, that’s not fog! It’s a heavily tuned 1960s Chevrolet Chevelle warming up its tyres. Ahh, the joy. I love the smell of burning rubber in the morning.

I’m all set and feeling Americanised for the day ahead. Hamburger for breakfast, toxic burnt rubber smoke in my lungs and my black ‘Crossville, (Tennessee) Pawn & Guns Shop’ cap on. Great stuff.

There’s a good turnout today and there’s dozens of beautiful classics lined up ready for the run down the quarter mile. It’s the 25th of May and the 3rd round of the American Super Stock and the pressure is on to get some good times in. And they certainly rose to the challenge!

Okay, so not all of the cars here are insanely tuned with twin nitrous tanks, roll cages and tyres as wide as an elephant, but they’re still putting in decent times of 12 and 13 seconds. Some though, are getting high 9’s and 10’s. Impressive.

I think that the majority of car fans, no matter what your preference or choice of vehicle is, enjoy the sound of a tuned V8. Warming up their tyres, the engine roars so loud that the ground literally shakes, and I’m finding it hard to hold the camera still when I’m kneeling to take the shot only 15 feet from the car. Thank goodness for the anti-shake function on it.

After the tyres are suitably warmed up, the drivers come off the gas and roll their car forward. At this point, the engine sounds like it has cut out, but then you hear it splutter and cough back into that slow tick over. It’s a beautiful sound, and you feel as if you can almost hear the individual pistons punching their way up and down inside their chambers.

One of the highlights of the day was seeing a jet car fire itself, down the quarter mile in around 6 seconds in a wall of searing noise and flame. I believe he didn’t have the throttle fully open either.

I also had the pleasure of meeting the deputy editor of Classic American magazine, Andy Craig, who willingly showed us around his lovely Pontiac GTO. He definitely knows his way around classic Yank cars and rightfully so, as he works for one of the UKs biggest American car mags.

The day at York Raceway was excellent, the atmosphere between the drivers was friendly, even if they were in competition with one another and I’m looking forward to seeing some of the day’s heat winners again at the MOPAR Nationals at Santa Pod in July.

If you love cars, you would really struggle to find a better way of spending the mere £10 entrance fee that York Raceway charges.

York Raceway holds many quarter-mile shootout events throughout the year, which a huge variety of different cars attend. For more information on these and York Raceway itself check out their website here.Thanks to all York Raceway’s staff for being so friendly, helpful and accommodating.

All photos taken with a Nikon D90 DSLR

To see more high quality photographs from the race day visit our Flickr photostream here