Hi everybody!

Here is the news from our ‘Fall Nationals’ at the National Finals at Santa Pod, last weekend, 25^th - 27^th September, a 3-day event with the first two days scheduled for qualifying.  This was Wild Bunch Series Round 5 (Final), Spirit of Nostalgia Challenge Round 7 (Final), Springbridge MSUK Series Round 3 (Final) and the SPRC Championship for Wild Bunch Round 3 (Final). With the amount of entries and the points available, it was confirmed before the start of the event that Marie Mills has WON the ‘Spirit of Nostalgia Challenge’ Series for 2026, her first win of this Series! Many Congratulations to her and the whole team on this achievement! 

The Wild Bunch had a field of 7 great teams competing at the event, with Wayne Colliver making his Motorsport UK debut. Great to see Wayne and the team joining in the MSUK competition!! Welcome!!

The weather forecast was originally pretty good for the whole weekend, though changed to a possibility of showers at times. We were pleased to get all of our 4 scheduled qualifiers in on Friday and Saturday! 

On the first qualifier Friday at about 11am, 4 teams took part, and all safely qualified, with Marie going straight to the top spot with a .035 off Dial. Wayne Colliver got his chassis tagged in the afternoon and joined in on the second qualifier at around 3pm and also qualified. Our 3^rd qualifier on the Saturday was around 9:40am and all 7 teams took part with Chris and Phil qualifying then to make it a full house. Our 4^th and last qualifier was around 3pm, with Allan taking a later re-run due to operational issues. Marie consolidated her #1 Qualifier position with a great .0104 off Dial in during this round.   

Sunday started cloudy, and we were not due to have our first round until 1:15pm. There were a couple of short delays in the morning, and as it rained around 1pm on Sunday before our first round, the Quarter Finals, we were not sure if we were going to get any rounds in at all, as the cloud cover was extensive!! But after a great effort from the track crew, racing resumed after 2:15pm and the weather held out for us to get our Quarter Finals in at around 3:15pm (2 hours after schedule). There were two good races and two Byes with Marie taking her #1 Qualifier Bye and Chris having a Bye due to Frankie having to leave early for work. Great to see Frankie back and running solidly in the 9’s again!! Phil and Wayne matched up and Phil had a better Reaction time and was closer to Dial, so went through. Philippa was matched with Allan and although she was closest to Dial in that round with a great .011 off, Allan’s amazing .004 Reaction time saw him with the holeshot win! So Chris, Phil, Marie and Allan all advanced to our Semi Finals which took place at around 4:30pm! Two great races saw Chris taking on Allan who had an issue off the launch and bogged down, getting going some 5 seconds later. Chris slowed on his 9.88 Dial to a 9.931 to keep the right side of Dial, and made it to his first MSUK final in about 15 years!! Well done ‘Crazy’ Chris!! Marie and Phil also had a great race, with Marie taking the win with an excellent package of a Reaction time of .035 and a difference to Dial of .016 to reach another Final to add to her Win and Runner-up placings for the other two MSUK events! Fair play Marie!!  Another shower at 4:50pm delayed proceedings again, and the awesome track crew worked their socks off to resume racing at about 7:45pm! An incredible effort with two jet dryers in action right up until the last minute before the Gluebird!! Although we were in line for the Finals, due to be run over the 1/8^th mile, time ran out as the curfew fell at 8pm, surely also near the dew point, and only 11 classes managed to complete their Finals. Such a shame for us and the other 10 classes waiting, but all of the track crew and teams at Santa Pod could literally have done no more!!! We thank them for their amazing efforts in trying to get as much racing done as possible!!

Here are our Top 4 winners:

1^st Place: Marie Mills in her purple altered (Very well done to Marie on another great win!)

2^nd Place: Chris Hartnell in ‘Backdraft’ (a very welcome return to the trophy places for ‘Crazy’ Chris!!)

3^rd Place: Phil James in ‘Rampage’  (A great Top 4 place propelled Phil into the Wild Bunch 2026 Top 10!)

4^th Place: Allan Schofield in the ‘Scud’ altered (a great Top 4 in Allan’s last event with the altered!)

[As the Finals were not run due to curfew, the Top 2 places were decided on Closest to Dial-in from the Semi-Final winners: Marie was just .016 off Dial to take the win, whilst Chris was a good .051 off Dial.]

Here are the Spot Prizes that were awarded:-

#1 Qualifier:  Marie Mills in her Purple Altered .0104 off (Brill!)

Best Appearing Car & Team: Allan Schofield and the “Scud” Team (great show again from the whole team!)

Commentator’s Choice: Marie Mills in her Purple Altered (great consistency and overall performance)

We actually held our very small Wild Bunch trophy presentation at about 9:30pm, when the three remaining teams there had loaded their cars in their trailers, with about 10 people there! 

Here is the full field, and although there were no PBs, there was some great close racing:

Many Congratulations to Marie as she has now secured her second ‘Springbridge MSUK Challenge’ title in a row, and also her first ever SPRC Championship Win in Wild Bunch!! Very well done to her and the whole team on these great Series wins!! She has also WON the 30^th Anniversary Wild Bunch Series!! Her first Win in this Series, in fact first time in the Top 4! Another great result for her and the whole team!! Huge Congratulations on these wins and the Spirit of Nostalgia Challenge Series wins!! What a season!!

Highlights of the weekend were the biggest field of MSUK competitors in Wild Bunch for 3 years, completing all 4 qualifiers and 2 out of 3 rounds of eliminations, with thanks to huge efforts from the Santa Pod track crew on Sunday to get us that far!  A great event to finish the season!

Massive thanks to all the Santa Pod marshals and officials, track and safety crews and organisers for all their hard work as always, especially on Sunday when they had to battle two showers and a rapidly approaching curfew and dew point! What stars they are!! Many thanks to all the fantastic team at eurodragster and Colin Theobald on great commentary! Huge thanks again to our Springbridge MSUK and SPRC Championship Title sponsor Bob Hawkins of Springbridge Group! His support is once again very much appreciated in those Series!! We wish him all the very best of health and look forward to seeing him next year!!

Very well done to all 7 of the Wild Bunch teams on a brilliant show!! Huge thanks to each of them for their support of this MSUK round! You all did yourselves proud! We are over the moon to have met the SPRC criteria of having a minimum of 6 participants at each round this year!!  Massive thanks to all 10 MSUK participants this season, as they have collectively enabled us to carry on as a championship class next season in Motorsport UK rounds!!! Your support has been invaluable!!

We believe we have more MSUK participants joining us in 2027 so we look forward to even bigger fields!!

All the best,

Claire

PS. Full final points and Series results will be updated as soon as I can!