Chris Bray's blog

Well we're all back from a weekend of world class racing at Bug Jam 24 and I'm certainly in need of a rest!

What a weekend!

Congratulations to rookie Sam Young in 'Black Current III' car not only for his electrifying (see what I did there) victory over Matt Attwood's V8 powered 'Blacklisted' in VW Pro but for his excellent silent burnout right out to the 60ft mark in qualifying. Anything petrol can do, electric can do too eh guys?!

This is the first time an electric vehicle has ever taken the honors in a UK championship class and the Hungerford VW Club guys really are knocking on the doors of re-setting their own European Record as well as taking a world record off the Americans and we wish them all the luck for the future.

Picture from DarrenW of http://www.retro-motoring.com

Russ Weir continued his progression towards upgrading from Runner Up in last years championship to Winner for 2010 defeating another Rookie Rhonda Calloway in a super close final. Unfortunately Russ's excellent looking Ghia isn't quite finished so he was in his sister Lou's Mk2 Golf GTi, but such a fantastic performance really shows just how great a racer Russ is, it seems he can win in anything!

With all that action over the weekend there's a couple of special mentions too, in no particular order.

Russ Fellows. 10.1 with 'chute out from the 60ft mark first pass out and closing the show with the lowest ET for an aircooled all weekend of 9.21 at 151mph. An awesome performance from a regularly driven street car I'm sure everyone can agree.

Picture from DarrenW of http://www.retro-motoring.com

Wayne Allman. What can we say? Awesome? Amazing? Insane? Probably. Intergalactic? Certainly.

If you didn't see it over the weekend 'Mental Breakdown' is Wayne's latest inspired creation, sporting a Methanol-burning supercharged Keith Black V8 burning five gallons of Methanol per run and capable of over seventeen hundred horsepower Mental Breakdown is truly something special and Wayne has pushed the envelope of not just VW race cars, but race cars worldwide with this creation.

Only on licensing passes this weekend, but he's certainly not holding back!

Picture from DarrenW of http://www.retro-motoring.com

Thanks to everyone that made Bug Jam 24 one of the best ever, I certainly had one of the best weekends ever.

Wow! Big Bang, what a weekend!

There were a few unfortunate breakages but I think it's fair to say we all had a blast, we hope you did too!

Well done to Lucy and Russ in VW Sportsman and Colin and James in VW Pro, huge congratulations to Rich Merriman for winning the RNJ Motorsport Car of the Meeting award

VW Pro

Winner - Colin Jardine

Runner up - James Hodson

VW Sportsman

Winner - Lucy Matthews

Runner up - Russ Weir

RNJ Motorsport Car of the Meeting - Rich Merriman

Look like I'm out for the year :(

Exactly a year and a day after the last one :(

Thanks for a great start to the season, sadly it doesn't look like I'm gonna be at any more races.

Taken from http://www.chrisbray.co.uk

The season is nearly here! The Easter Thunderball deadline for entries at normal price (£150 with single phase electric, £180 with three phase) is TOMORROW (16th March)!

First class post should still arrive tomorrow morning so get your entries posted NOW to get in before the prices go up!

Entry sheets availiable from our Downloads Page or Direct from the SPRC.

Also since it's only three weeks away there may not be time to get your license application (from here or from our downloads page here) returned unless you specify the express option. We've had reports of the MSA taking a little time and having trouble with the production of the new style license so if you intend to race at Easter, and havn't sent your application yet we suggest you use the express service (extra charge applies) to make sure you recieve your license in time.

Only three weeks to go before first race!

Any questions feel free to Contact Us

As part of the celibration of 20 years of VWDRC history the VWDRC are putting together a gallery of pictures from the past 20 years, you can see our progress Here, there's already over 250 pictures!

This is where you guys come in, we've all been thru our own personal collections and found some cool pictures but we're after some more.

Does anyone out there have any good pictures of old race cars from "back in the day"? Outrage? Eightrage? Two Awesome? Bugbear? Air Express? If these are names you remember can you have a look thru your "My Pictures" folder and see if you've got anything cool?

We'll credit you for the photo and we'll host it on our website so you don't need to worry about hosting.

If you could email your pictures to Danny we'd be very grateful.

Just a quick thanks to Eurodragster and Air Cooled Drag Racing Monthly for their links to our new site.

Most appreciated guys :)

They're on our links page now :) Go visit them :)

As reported recenly on Eurodragster and Toyo Tyres website Toyo have offered up £25,000 of contingency sponsorship for UK drag racers, including our own VW Sportsman class!

Toyo are offering £300 to the winner and £150 to the runner-up in all seven rounds of the UK Championships at Santa Pod and Shakespeare County Raceways.

I've spoken to Paul Cowland at Toyo today who confirms that the prize money will be availiable to entrants in VW Sportsman running Toyo decals on (a minimum of) both sides of the car (contact me for details of obtaining these) and using 4 (four) Toyo tyres, DRR slicks or Proxes T1R, T1S or R888 street tyres.

Excellent news I think we all agree :D

Welcome to the official start of the 2007 season!
I know people have been working feaverishly on their race cars over the off-season and some have even managed to make it to Run What Ya Brung events but the club's season proper started today when we had our first committee meeting of 2007, we managed to sort out all of the the required roles for 2007 which are detailed below:

We've also had some ideas on what we'll be aiming for in 2007, new things we want to try and bring in, old things we want to celebrate and existing things we want to continue (yes, we'll be having a members party at Bug Jam).

We feel 2006 was a great year and we're all looking forward to building on the success in 2007, keep your eyes peeled for announcements from the committee on the exciting developments we have planned for the club.

The new website will be officially launched this week, and it will include members own personal racing blogs and a new media section.

Please feel free to contact us with any feedback you have (good AND bad) :)

Chris

Here it is! I promised it a long time ago, but it's finally ready!
Go easy on her for a few days, I'm sure there'll be a few "teething problems" but we'll see how we get on this week, then make the big announcement to Eurodragster etc at the weekend :)

Chris