A huge thanks from all of us here at the VWDRC to Santa Pod and Brian Burrows for making Big Bang 2008 such a great weekend.

Things started well with great weather for the Run What Ya Brung and after a great day the MSA approving an evening qualifying session on Saturday evening. What a session it was! We ended Saturday's evening session with Donald Harvey, Chris Bray and Spencer Tramm sitting at number one in VW Pro, VW Sportsman and VW Alternate Engine respectively.

As Sunday morning dawned we saw something we hadn't seen for such a long time at Santa Pod, a dry track!

The action was underway immediately and after a couple of unfortunate oil downs early on we were soon into the swing of things! We had a number of excellent runs during the morning qualifying, Russ Fellows started turning up the wick in his silver Beetle managing a personal best down into the 9.80's, we also saw James Hodson run 10.65 in his Golf to take number one in VW Pro, Chris and Spencer kept the top spot in VW Sportsman and VW Alternate Engine. Unbelievably the top five in VW Sportsman were ALL less that 0.01 seconds from their dial-in!

Eliminations were as exciting as ever, unfortunately after a number of breakages during qualifying there was a larger than usual number of bye runs but we still saw some absolutely stunning runs! James Hodsons's new Personal best of 10.61 was of particular note, it's a little while since James lost his "Quickest Front Wheel Drive in Europe" crown, but with performances like this it's sure not gonna be long before he wins it back!!

A special mention has to go to Paul Herbert and team Fantom, running his gray roofchopped Beetle in Pro for the first time Paul managed to run down into the 12.80's with just a 1679cc engine! Awesome work I'm sure everyone will agree.

The finals were as close as ever and after a short wait we saw Paul and James take to the track, watching from the finish line it was close but Paul's Beetle that took the stripe and the win in his first meeting in VW Pro.

VW Sportsman was just as close as Easter Thunderball finalist Russ Weir faced up to Paul Day in his new yellow Beetle. Once again it was a close run and Russ had to settle for second in his second meeting too as Paul took the victory.

VW Alternate Engine wasn't quite so close as Mark Skeen had problems with his nitrous system and Spencer caught up with him mid-track and took the victory with relative ease although it wasn't all good for Spencer since he got knocked out by his protege Adrian Wigley in the first round of VW Sportsman!!

The only other trophy to be decided this weekend was the RNJ Motorsport "Car of the Meeting" award, as voted by the racers at the event. This was presented to Russ Fellows, who decided to celebrate the award by taking the car out for a practice run, only to break it in the burn out!! We hope it's nothing serious and that you manage to fix it relatively easily Russ!

All in all a fantastic weekends racing was had by all, here's hoping it's the first of many this year!