Booking Opens For 2026 BDRHoF Gala Dinner
New Venue
New Format for the Stuart Bradbury Juniors Awards
Booking is now open for 2026’s British Drag Racing Hall of Fame Gala Awards Dinner. The black-tie occasion takes place on Saturday 21st November at our new venue, Chesford Grange Hotel at Kenilworth, near Coventry, CV8 2LD.Our Online Gala Booking System, designed and executed by Peter Walters Race Design, carries full information on the occasion, with price details and payment methods. The three-course Gala Dinner offers three menu choices for each course, including vegetarian, with food allergy and intolerance exceptions.
Please click HERE to begin.
If you wish to reserve a room for the Gala weekend, visit the hotel’s website www.chesfordgrange.com where rooms per night are currently available online from £135 (double – Advance saver with Breakfast) or visit your favourite hotel booking website. Rooms are subject to ‘dynamic pricing’ therefore we recommend booking early to avoid a price increase. The agreed ceiling rate is £150 for a double room including breakfast. Or please telephone Chesford Grange Hotel – 0330 107 1599 quoting British Drag Racing Hall of Fame Dinner.
Four individuals, one team and one organisation have been selected for induction as new Members of the Hall of Fame: Syd McDonald, former Santa Pod Race Director and SPRC club steward; Team Triple R, led by Robin Read, which has made Daimler power a force to be reckoned with in drag racing; Phil Baimbridge, distinguished Top Fuel Bike racer and builder; Andy Willsheer, veteran drag race photojournalist; Motorsport UK, the governing body of motorsport in Britain; and Tony Betts, a racer since the 1970s now leading the way with Historic Funny Cars.
A fresh format has been introduced for the Stuart Bradbury Junior Drag Racing Awards. Bradbury trophies and cheques will …
Joan Cookson
You can read the Cookson Family members profile page HERE.
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Rod Pallant
You can read Rod & Anne Pallant’s members profile page HERE.
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MEMBER OBITUARY NOTICE – Joan Cookson
MEMBER OBITUARY NOTICE
August 2026
Member: Joan Cookson
Inducted: 2018
We are saddened to hear that Joan Cookson has passed away. Joan very ably supported her husband Gerald (Gerry) Cookson during his 40 years of competitive Drag Racing, following a family visit to the 1965 Dragfest. To anyone who came into contact with her at any track, but especially at Long Marston/Shakespeare County Raceway, they would have encountered her cheerful nature whilst focussing on her important role. Our condolences to Jerry and Ali.
The Cookson Family were inducted into the British Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 2018 https://britishdragracinghof.co.uk/the-cookson-family/
20th Anniversary BDRHoF T-Shirts
Did you miss out? Well, now is your chance to get one, or two, while you can.
These T-Shirts featuring the BDRHoF 20th Anniversary logo were only available at Dragstalgia and proved to be popular, but we do have some left over. A couple the sizes are quite low but if you let Colin Theobald know on his Facebook page by click HERE if you would like one and he’ll check available sizes for you. Colin has also said that he’ll be able to bring them to the Mopar EuroNationals next weekend at Santa Pod, Greenlight Nationals and the European Finals to save on postage.
Sizes are Small to 3XL and are £25 each with all profits going to British Drag Racing Hall of Fame Limited which honours those who built the sport and is a non-profit organisation. We also have some children’s sizes, £15 each. If you cannot get to Santa Pod let Colin know & he will arrange next day delivery at a cost of £5.00 per shipment (not per shirt) U.K. Only.
As it’s a special year for the Hall of Fame, we had some special 20th Anniversary stickers produced and for the first 10 people that get back to Colin, he’ll include one of these stickers with each order as a special memento.
BDRHoF Chair, Lesley Wright, will also have some shirts available in the Venom pit at the Eurofinals this September.
In addition, we will have some available at Melbourne Raceway’s shop for the next three meetings left on the calendar.
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MEMBER OBITUARY NOTICE – Rod Pallant
MEMBER OBITUARY NOTICE
July 2026
Member: Rod Pallant
Inducted: 2023
We are saddened to hear that BDRHoF Member, Rod Pallant, has recently passed away. Our sincerest condolences to his friends & family. Rod & Anne Pallant were inducted into the British Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 2023 and their citation can be read HERE
BDRHoF Member and Selector, Keith Lee, has written the following tribute to his friend & legend of the sport.
The Drag Racing community lost a memorable bike racer, when Rod Pallant sadly passed on Monday. He was a standout character in the pits, and especially so on track, with a series of crowd-pleasing machinery, which he always rode like he stole it.
In 1974, Rod started a Harley Davidson dealership, and bought a Harley race bike from Jerry Mitchell, which they ran together. This was soon followed by Rod’s first experience of a twin-engined bike. He bought the 1000cc supercharged Triumph from Barry Townsend, who also joined Rod in his small race team.
His LA Hooker bike name was christened in 1978, when Rod debuted his next twin, powered by a pair of supercharged Kawasaki motors. Not happy with the performance, the blower was ditched for a Hilborn injection system, and this bike was raced for three years. Rod then wrestled with a V8 Rover powered monster – ‘Heavy Metal’. The unforgettable unblown, black heavyweight contender had some nitro tipped in the tank for the first Transatlantic International meeting at Long Marston, and Rod guided the huge bike into the 8 second zone. There was to be a rear-engined version – but while the bike was having bodywork built, the engine and running gear were stolen!
Twin-engined bikes were Rod’s racing passion, He was Inspired by Carl Ahlfeldt’s Orange Crush, and Rod threw everything into …
Dragstalgia Grand Auction & Sale Results
The directors of the British Drag Racing Hall of Fame are pleased to announce that the Grand Auction & Sale held during Santa Pod’s recent Dragstalgia meeting raised £4,200 which will be donated to the coffers of the BDRHOF Benevolent Fund.
The directors thank those who so generously provided artefacts and memorabilia items to be auctioned or sold, to those who placed bids and bought items and to those individuals who gave their time (in heatwave conditions) to help conduct the event.
This total includes a generous amount of £400 raised by Mark & Lynne Coulsell who sold some of father Ian’s collection of memorabilia from their pit. It was a very emotional weekend for them. Congratulations to Harley on his win and to the whole Coulsell family for being awarded the Santa Pod Spirit of Dragstalgia award – truly deserved.
Thanks are due to Max Frost and the Santa Pod Raceway team for the provision of the facilities and the permission to use them for fund-raising purposes.
The BDRHOF Benevolent Fund is an independent charitable entity intended to offer assistance to members of the sport’s community who encounter life difficulties. The Hall of Fame’s Honorary Chair, Lesley Wright, said: “We are so pleased that our Hall of Fame activities can help support the Benevolent Fund in maintaining its aims and purpose. It was gratifying that several people over the weekend took the trouble to come up and thank the Benevolent Fund for the support it had given them in recent trying times.”…
Triple R Racing
When Edward Turner designed the hemi-head Daimler 2.5 litre, (152 cubic inch) engine in 1959, never in his wildest dreams could he have envisaged that the modest 140 horsepower it produced would be increased by Team Triple R to approaching 2,000 horsepower, with world-breaking performances to match. It was used in the Daimler SP250; more about that later.
‘Team Triple R, the epitome of a shed built, British engine racecar team’
Team Triple R (Robin Read Racing) has been together for more than 44 years and includes Robin Read, Ella Chapman, Mark Evans, Bertie Hopkinson, Bill Mears and Damian Burke.
Mark Evans’s role is crew chief; he’s been involved since 1982 and aside from running his own successful company his contribution to the team, both in commitment and helping financially, has been significant.
Ella has been mixing nitro and packing parachutes since 1990. It’s a responsible job and yet is carried out without drama, hence she is called the ‘fuel and chute fairy’ because if you blink you’ve missed it!
Bertie is proudly an old school ‘handle-winding’ machinist, making bespoke parts without the luxury of Computer Numerical Control machining programs or equipment. ‘Billet Bertie’ at one time made most of the connecting rods used in Top Fuel motorcycles around the world. He also machined the first generation of billet cylinder heads for a Daimler, no mean feat!
Bill, for many years a start line marshal and area rep for BDR …
Motorsport UK
How times have changed. Sixty-five years ago, the first encounter between the Royal Automobile Club and the emerging American sport known as Drag Racing was awkward. Then, the RAC governed the UK’s four-wheeled motorsport and had rules and regulations for everything with which it was familiar. In America, Drag Racing, with its principal sanctioning body the National Hot Rod Association, was barely a decade old as an organised sport. To the RAC, it was an alien interloper when it arrived on Britain’s shores in 1961.
Drag Racing’s first public manifestation here was a dragster built by Sydney Allard, the London sportscar manufacturer and entrepreneur. Allard had raced at Le Mans and had twice won the Monte Carlo Rally, the only driver to do so in a vehicle of his own manufacture. Latterly, he had developed an interest in sprinting (for which the RAC had rules) and thought one of those new-fangled American dragsters might help further that interest. To comply with the RAC’s sprinting rules, Allard was obliged to fit an engine cover (a ‘bonnet’) and front-wheel brakes, which explains why the car, now housed in the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, appears not to resemble the American dragsters on which it was based. Moreover, its design was culled from a 1959 American magazine and was already two years out of date compared to its transatlantic counterparts in the fast-developing sport.
By 1964, Drag Racing had overtaken sprinting as Allard’s prime interest and he collaborated with NHRA’s president, Wally Parks, to import America’s leading drag race stars to race on a selection of British airfields. RAC rules at that time did not countenance advertising on competition cars, and the RAC scrutineer at the opening event at Blackbushe in Surrey refused to allow the American cars to run while still adorned …
Phil Baimbridge
Phil Baimbridge’s upbringing saw his father pursuing grass track and speedway sidecar racing, as both mechanic and passenger, before moving onto four wheels in Hot Rod racing. For Phil, it was motorcycles that he enjoyed. His street bikes included a 3-cylinder Triumph Trident, and it would be triples that held a special fascination for him.
In 1983, Phil and a couple of friends bought a blown 500 Triumph competition bike and had a try at sprinting. That quickly led to Phil acquiring a Laverda engine, and he modified a chassis to suit the Italian 1,200cc, 3-cylinder motor. Initially run in the Top Gas class, when Phil first tried out drag racing at Long Marston, the bike was soon fitted with a nitrous kit to give it some more urge. This resulted in high 10-second times, running in Competition Bike, under the bike name of Bolognese Sauce. A blown Triumph was then bought and led Phil to experiment with nitro – which proved to be an explosive introduction, with the bike aptly called Tribulation.
The sport had made a move to Japanese motors, and Phil had planned to build a new bike, using Kawasaki power. However, when Eamon Hurley’s bike came up for sale, he saw it as a better way to make the initial transition. This provided him with two years of competition, and running a quickest time of 8.2sec. He also scored a victory at Drachten in The Netherlands. To progress, a new John Clift chassis was specified. At this time, Pete Davies was working on the first Puma billet bottom end, and Phil was among the first three racers to …