Rain only affected play late on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, thankfully this did not affect proceedings too much and a good weekend’s worth of racing was able to take place.
Racing was fast and close all weekend at one point only 0.014 of a second separated the top 5 of the Super Pro ET field.
Things really heated up when Steve Woollatt on the Purple Princess came out in the second Top Fuel Bike qualifying session and set the place alight with a 6.487 / 228.74
The Top Fuel bikes were having fun all weekend. First time out, all the bikes in the field struggled to find traction resulting in slower than expected passes.
This trend of slow passes was to be quashed in the second qualifier as Steve Woollatt had a super run to give him the first half of a possible ACU UK Speed record.
Rene van den Berg also ran a PB of 7.819/165.59.
Sunday saw Ian Turburville get the bike down the track and qualify 3rd with a 9.847/159.95. It also gave Steve Woollatt his first chance to back up the ACU Speed record however a snapped throttle cable forced Steve to shut it off at the lights.
Monday saw eliminations, first up was Steve Carey in the left lane against Steve Woollatt in the right. Everything was set for Steve Woollatt to have a good shot at backing up the speed record.
Unfortunately it wasn’t to be as Steve Woollatt’s blower belt came off giving Steve Carey the bye.
Four o’clock saw the final with Rene van den Berg lining up against Steve Carey. The lights dropped and Steve got away first with a 0.299 to a 0.425 but the bike squatted down as it crossed onto the asphalt and started moving to the right, this forced Steve to feather the throttle.
Meanwhile in the left lane Rene had yet another straight run putting him through the back door to his first ever event win.
Normaly the National Fuel Altered Association put on a stunning show this weekend was no diffrent.
After a series of very quick runs all weekend the Chaos car came out for the 2 o’clock qualifying session on the Monday up against Tony Betts. Both cars left the line hard Tony Betts ran through for a lazy 9.264/146.29 however life wasn’t so easy in the left hand land for the Chaos Crew.
After leaving the line hard John Wright in the Chaos car drifted to the right encroaching on the center line, whilst wrestling the car back towards the middle of the track the rear right slick lost traction turning the car hard left. John continued to fight the car however all was lost as the slicks dug in and rolled the altered.
From there on John was in for the ride as the car rear ended the guard rail and flipped again before coming to a rest at the 1200ft mark.
Thankfully John walked away having only damaged team owner Lawrie Gatehouse’s wallet.
Joe Bond was primed ready to go behind the burn out box in the left hand lane as John rolled.
With the best seat in the house Joe saw everything, not want you want before you’re about to race. Joe said that “sitting there strapped in it was horrific to watch a fellow racer crash like that. My primary concern was if he was OK as we didn’t hear anything for a long time.”
Joe ended up taking a bye as Dave Grabham in the right lane had a starter motor failure. Joe, equipped with some of the fastest reaction times in the series saw him leave on a 0.067 reaction.
The car pulled well to the sixty foot mark where it started pulling right, A trend that has been common with the left lane all weekend, as it got near the guardrail the car started to bounce forcing Joe to pedal. Unfortunately as he got back on it the 3rd member broke causing the engine to zing, rightly so Joe shut the car off and coasted through to a 10.134/85.25
The final saw Dave Grabham go up against Nick Davies. Good runs were put in by both drivers however Dave Grabham took the round win with a 7.350/190.03 to a loosing 7.346/199.84
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