Hi everyone! 

Here are the results from the NSRA ‘Nostalgia Nationals’ at Santa Pod on 1^st - 3^rd  May. This event was Wild Bunch Series Round 1, Spirit of Nostalgia Challenge Round 1 and Roy Wilding Nostalgia Race Cars Round 1. This year sees the 30^th Anniversary Wild Bunch Series, a brilliant milestone celebrated by the large field of Wild Bunch racers in attendance! The weather was mostly good all weekend, much better than expected!!!

Many thanks to Jason Roberts for all his hard work designing the fab new Wild Bunch 30^th Anniversary banner and ordering a last-minute replacement when the originals were delayed!  They feature Roy Wilding in his original Buick-powered slingshot ‘Chariot of Fire’ (the first ever Winner of the Wild Bunch Series!) and the much-missed Alan Loten (in the iconic ‘Paranoia’ Jag-powered altered) are they are amazing!! 

The Wild Bunch welcomed a fantastic field of 32 teams (far surpassing the 20 at this same event last year!!). There were two teams making their debuts in the Wild Bunch this weekend – Mick Sharpe with the ‘Riding Dirty’ altered and Chris Barnes with the ‘Wage Destroyer’ slingshot. A big warm welcome to them!

Also making a special debut was our little granddaughter Phoebe Grace Hartnell, the first baby for our Mark and his lovely partner Sarah. Phoebe was just short of 12 weeks old at her first drag race and took to it straight away taking it all in her stride! Many Congratulations to Mark and Sarah on their lovely daughter and welcome to the Wild Bunch and drag racing world darling Phoebe!!  Another fantastic debut was the first drag race for little Clara Hern, second daughter for Faye & Steve, and nearly 1-year old. Clara took well to drag racing with her wonderful family team and joined big sister Eliza and cousins Owen and Freddie in cheering on both Mum Faye and Uncle Kyle. She is one adorable tough little cookie and it was so lovely to meet her! Lovely to see them at the track as the 3^rd generation in their drag racing families!! Plus of course fab to see Harley Coulsell racing as a 3^rd generation driver in his family!! 

On Friday, there was a general RWYB day again, where 6 WB teams took part. There was then the added bonus of one run for all Race classes on the evening session, so the Wild Bunch had a round at about 6:15pm which 22 drivers took part in.

On Saturday, three practice rounds were scheduled, and two of these took place at around 11:15am and 3:15pm with the third and final session being cancelled due to rain! 

On Sunday we were very pleased to have a dry start to the day, though there were a lot of clouds around at midday! The Wild Bunch had our first round at about 12:20pm where 23 drivers took part, with the second around 2pm with 21 drivers taking part and the 3^rd at about 3:45pm with 19 drivers taking part. 

We ended up getting 3 full rounds of racing in on the Sunday, a great start to the season!! So we were all happy to have had 3 practice sessions available and 3 full rounds of racing during the event!! Overall 25 teams took part in the rounds on Sunday.

Here are the Top 4 at the event with the average difference to Dial-in shown. Many Congratulations to all!

1^st Place:  Ian Armitage in ‘Old Guys Rail’  .0282  (Ian’s first time in the Top 4 and gaining the victory to boot!)

2^nd Place: Mick Sharpe in ‘Riding Dirty’  .0533  (welcome Mick and team! A great Wild Bunch debut getting straight into the Top 4!)

3^rd Place:  Marie Mills in the purple altered  .0692  (a great start to the season in her first ever RWYB event with the Bunch!)

4^th Place:  Joey Childs in ‘Boxo Bomb’ .0999 (2024 Best Newcomers starting well with their 1^st Top 4!)

Many thanks to Ian Wild of ‘Wild’sCat’ racing for donating the prize money for 1^st Place!

Plus the other finishers to complete all 3 rounds without redlights were the following:

5^th – Terry Clifford in ‘Ratcatcher Resurrection’ .1006  (so close Terry!!)

6^th – James Griffen in ‘Kiss My Gas’ .1010 (fantastic weekend of PB’s for James!)

7^th – Phil James in ‘Rampage’ .1195 (ran a solid 9.4 straight off the trailer!)

8^th – Pete & Rob Brown in ‘Rebel’ .1228 (well done to the boys on overcoming some niggly issues!)

9^th – Rob White in ‘Happy Daze’ .1540  (great to see Rob complete all the competition rounds Sunday!)

10^th – Dave Shoemark in ‘The Crewman’ .1946  (steady improvements all weekend, after big effort to get to the event!)

11^th – Kyle Southworth in ‘Big Bro’ .2184 (brilliant weekend for Kyle and team, solving issues and improving to an awesome 8-second run on only his 5^th full pass in the car!!!)

12^th – Rich Butcher in ‘4^th Dimension’ .2889 (improved all weekend and got a great 11-second pass!)

13^th – Chris Barnes in ‘Wage Destroyer’ 1.2915 (fantastic WB debut for Chris and team!! Welcome!)

 

Here are the Spot Prizes that were won. Many Congratulations to all!:

Closest to Dial-In (Series Rounds):  Rich Butcher in ‘4^th Dimension’  .0047 off (Wow! Great stuff!)

Best Reaction (Series Rounds):  Marie Mills in the purple altered     .046  (well done!) 

Fastest MPH:    Harley Coulsell in ‘Ballbreaker’   163.09  mph     (just 3mph short of Mark’s best!)

Best Burnout:   Rob & Pete Brown in ‘Wrathchild’  (brilliant drifting and entertaining burnouts!)

Best Appearing Car:  James Griffen and Team with  ‘Kiss My Gas’     (fantastic team wear, car and performance!!)  

Best Appearing Team: Chris Barnes and Team with ‘Wage Destroyer’ (brilliant crew wear and debut!)

Commentator’s Choice:  the very welcome return of Terry & Ruth Clifford and Team with ‘Ratcatcher Resurrection’ 

Moment of the Weekend: Loz Butcher in ‘Mean Streak’  8.078 (so far!!)

NSRA award for “Quickest Wild Bunch”:  Loz Butcher in ‘Mean Streak’  8.078  (well done Loz!)

And of note the team of Gavin Meanley, Pete Ayres and Damon Taylor won the ‘Fastest Flathead’ award from the NSRA with the ‘Charles Bang Special’ running a great 11.544!

Commiserations to all those who had breakages or issues and breakages. Best Wishes to 3 teams who entered but could not attend: Kev & Louise Osborne and team who were unable to attend purely due to an issue with their lorry!! Also Bobby Wright had some late issues with his altered and the Swiss team of Alex & Petra could not attend with their slingshot due to an injury to Alex (they were both there at the weekend and supported the Wild Bunch at every round!). The Marras had a suspected cracked head in ‘Wrathchild’, Dan Wilson had breakages of a cracked bore, rear main and crank damage in ‘Antique Toy’ after having run his first ever 9-second pass, Philippa and Mark had issues with ‘Bitchcraft’ but still made the rounds, Loz had some issues late in the event with the ‘Mean Streak’ slingshot after running brilliantly so hope nothing serious, the ‘Daddy Cool’ team had problems on Faye’s first run (though they are pretty confident to get the car sorted for next time – it was amazing to see them all back out again!), Andy Jackson had issues with his unique sidewinder engine (it was great to see the team back out after a year off so hope they can fix this and be back out for the next event), the Charlie Bangers had problems with tyres with the ‘Charles Bang Special’ and other issues with the ‘Charlie Banger’ with both doing double duty in the Flathead Meltdown. And also very much missed participating at the event was ‘Crazy’ Chris who is still awaiting a cam for ‘Backdraft’ after the engine blow up last year! He came up to the event on the Saturday to cheer everyone on! Hope all these teams can get their cars fixed and be back out as soon as possible! Best of luck to them all!  

Every team put on a great show and really made an effort! So much so that the Commentators mentioned they had about 6 or 7 choices for ‘Best Appearing Team’!! It was all fantastic to watch as always! Well done everyone!! Here is the full field of fab Wild Bunch participants!!!! There were many PB’s this weekend, and they are shown in this table. Many Congratulations to all!! 

 

WB 1	Rob & Pete Brown	Rebel
WB 3	Pete & Rob Brown	Wrathchild
WB 4	Dan Wilson	Antique Toy	9.826
WB 8	Harley Coulsell	Ballbreaker	8.186 / 163.09
WB 12	Philippa Turton	Bitchcraft
WB 19	Wayne Colliver	Funky Digit	9.082 / 145.30
WB 23	Loz Butcher	Mean Streak	8.078 / 159.61
WB 25	Terry Clifford	Ratcatcher Resurrection
WB 45	Phil James	Rampage
WB 50	James Griffen	Kiss My Gas	8.453 / 153.69
WB 53	Gavin, Pete & Damon	Charles Bang Special	11.544 / 117.47
WB 65	Alan Skipp	Chasin’ Time
WB 72	Dr Faye Hern	Daddy Cool
WB 75	Andy Jackson	Hammerman II
WB 78	Terry Robbins & Mark Houghton	Soultown Shaker
WB 89	Andy Roy	Shawcrank Redemption
WB 97	Mick Taylor	Banshee
WB 98	Rob White	Happy Daze
WB 104	Dave Shoemark	The Crewman	9.675
WB 113	Paul Tarry	Trigger’s Broom
WB 116	Ian Wild	Wild’sCat
WB 130	Joey Childs	Boxo Bomb	10.711
WB 164	Marie Mills	Purple Altered
WB 245	John Sharod	Never Say Never	8.501
WB 297	Damon Taylor, Pete Ayres, Gav Meanley	Charlie Banger
WB 301	Mick Sharpe	Riding Dirty	8.938 / 143.84
WB 358	Pete Whitfield	Rowell Rail
WB 383	Ian Armitage	Old Guys Rail	8.654
WB 450	Rich Butcher	4th Dimension	11.990
WB 526	Allan Schofield	Red Mist
WB 546	Kyle Southworth	Big Bro	8.977 / 147.19
WB 740	Chris Barnes	Wage Destroyer	11.421 / 111.39
32

(There were so many!! So please let me know if I have missed any PBs!)

Highlights include the really big field to start the season with a couple of newcomers joining in and the welcome return of some regulars after a break; Dan running his first 9-second pass, Harley running over 160mph+ in the low 8’s, Wayne getting so close to the 8’s, Loz getting so close to the 7’s, James Griffen’s big improvements, Skippy’s promising runs, Rich’s first 11 (I believe!?), Mick’s first 8’s with his altered, Kyle’s first 8, and newcomer Chris Barnes continuous improvements all weekend, plus a total of 14 teams running PB’s!!  There were so many personal highlights over the event! Plus, of course, better weather than predicted and three rounds completed!!

Thanks again to the NSRA and all the marshals and officials at Santa Pod for all their amazing hard work as always and for looking after all the racers and crew. Well done to all those who put on a brilliant show this weekend! Really looking forward to Dragstalgia now, the 15^th running of the event!!

All the best
Claire

:-) :-) 

PS. Very sorry about the delay to the writeup folks, as I was away for a week right after the event and have had a lot of personal family and job things going on.