Ah yes. Burnt tyre smoke in my eyes and lungs, the smell of un-burnt fuel wafting past. It’s back to the track again to watch some more seriously powerful and equally seriously cool US muscle cars racing down that quarter mile strip of tarmac.
I arrived on the last day, Sunday, of the three day event at the end of July at Santa Pod Raceway in the south of England. The July weather had been been terrible, with high winds and lashing rain every other day. Fortunately the bad weather held off and it was merely a horribly dull and cloudy day.
Since I attended this event last in 2007, the atmosphere seemed to have changed. There were considerably less cars racing, and the crowd was a lot smaller and frankly, not an enthusiastic one. The most excitement out of them was when the Santa Pod Jet Car posted a sub 7 second time. I put the lower number of cars down to the recession and the slightly dull atmosphere of the crowd down to the not-exactly-Californian-weather. Maybe people were expecting the worst.
All photos taken with a Nikon D90 DSLR
Whatever though, the track was dry and the cars were lining up, ready to be put through their paces. I’ve stated it time and again, but I’m still going to say it, there’s nothing quite like the sound of a tuned V8 muscle car with a straight through exhaust. Lovely. Slick tyres warmed up, they race off down the track, jumping their front wheels into the air, the roar of the engine making the ground shake underneath my feet.
There’s sometimes a bit of a misconception that the classic muscle cars (and pick-ups) can be slow of the mark, sloppy handling beasts that light up the tyres on every given occasion. Okay sure, their handling around corners is not exactly train-like, but for a start, this is not a race circuit, and another point is that most of these cars are fully set up primarily for drag racing. They fly off the start line with not even a hint of shredded tyre, and are arrow straight down the quarter mile.
If you love cars and especially US muscle cars, the day or weekend out is great. Sack off what the weather is like, forget your ‘reserved British’ type attitude and get enthusiastically applauding these guys for bringing their vehicle-from sometimes hundreds of miles away-to race their pride and joys to the limit.
Click here for more information on Santa Pod raceway and the other events held there.
