The Phelps Family
Without any doubt the Phelps family – Bob and his son Roy, along with Santa Pod’s administrator Eileen Cattley – had a huge impact on British drag racing. They were involved from its very early days of the Drag Fests but really only became main players with the opening of Santa Pod Raceway in 1966 which they continued to run into the 1990s. They were personally involved in building many of the facilities at the track including the tower, barriers, and the famous Barn. Bob and Roy also ran their own stable of race cars. Roy also drove theGloworm Capri Funny Car and the Wheelie Stingray, which is still running today. The number of cars Roy Phelps ran over the years is huge and included the famous Top Fuel cars such asCommuter, Firefly, Asphalt Alleygator, along with Funny Cars Gloworm, Gladiator and Cannonball. The Phelps family not only ran their own cars, but helped many other teams with parts, as well as building their engines for them. They were also had a stable of Jet cars as well as the more traditional cars. Most of these cars were built and driven at some point by Allan ‘Bootsie’ Herridge who had a long association with the Phelps family
Most race fans will remember seeing a string of big name USA drivers coming to the Britain to race at Santa Pod Raceway. All these cars and teams were bought over by the Phelps family, usually with the cars staying here to be raced by British drag racers afterwards. …
Philip Evans
Back in the day it was often said that the future of British Drag Racing depended on the little guys. Even today that statement bares testimony in all forms of the motorsport from the entry level classes upwards. Back in the 1970’s one such classes that was being pushed along by its’ participants was Production: a class for ‘stock and sports’ production cars with minor modifications while keeping their original factory appearance.
One racer who was dedicated to the future running of the Production class was a young enthusiastic Coventry based sales engineer Phil Evans, who began spectating during the early days of Santa Pod Raceway. Between the years of 1967 and 1972 Phil had acquired his late father’s ‘brand new’ 1967 Singer Vogue; a popular choice with rally drivers of that era but how would it fair in an alternative motorsport as a drag car? Having spent 5 years on the road as his daily driver to Brunel University and, of course, Santa Pod, Phil began tinkering with the ole girl before entering his first competitive Santa Pod race meeting in 1972 where upon he was runner up in the Junior Street eliminator at the GUD Filters ‘Big Go’ to Bob Knott’s 19 second Ford Corsair ‘Little Green Henry’.
In the following years Phil won his first ever Production class championship organised by the Midland Drag Racing Association at Long Marston in 1977, as well as the NDRC Midlands championship the following year. Now, looking every inch a quintessential English drag car with its self-applied traditional racing flames across the car’s original Sherwood Green factory paint, the fully race prepared Vogue was winning and setting class records wherever it ran at Santa Pod and Long Marston.
In between his racing endeavours Phil sat on the executive committee of the …
Dennis Priddle
Dennis Priddle is one of the names which immediately springs to mind when you think of British drag racing’s past. Not only did he race Top Fuel Dragsters and Funny Cars, he also built race cars and parts for other racers.
His involvement with Drag racing started with a visit to the 1964 Drag Fests and by 1966 he was driving a 500cc Rudge-powered car. 1968 saw him driving the front-engined Keith Black-powered Tudor Rose. The next two years were spent driving the Top Competition Reliant GTE called The Whistlerbefore the début of the new Quarter Master Top Fuel car and the start of the famous Dennis Priddle v Clive Skilton battles.
1972 saw history made at the Santa Pod Big Go when Dennis powered his car to the first six-second pass outside the USA, 6.995 was the time which gave Dennis his now familiar Mr Six title.
History was again made in 1973 when Dennis and Clive became the first UK drivers to race on a USA drag strip, at the Winternationals in Pomona with Dennis qualifing at number 31 with a 7.32/206mph. Although he didn’t race as the event got rained out after qualifying and was rescheduled for the following weekend by which time he had to be back in the UK. But Dennis did return to the UK with a ‘state of the art’ front-engine Top Fuel car. In October 1973 Dennis also débuted an Avenger-bodied Funny Car.
Dennis continued to race both Funny Cars and Top Fuel Dragsters including the ex-Garlits King Rat Top Fuel car in which he set a new speed record of 230 at the 1977 Easter Springnationals. The same year saw the début of a new Monza Funny Car which Dennis raced with great success all over Europe, setting records …
John Ledster
John Ledster was a big man in every sense of the word. He was of course physically a big man, he was a big family man, he was big hearted and a big friend to many of us, especially in the world of motor sport, and particularly in the sport of drag racing.
John first saw a drag race at Santa Pod some 45 years ago at a time when his main interest was rallying and in fact the first time he drove on the ¼ mile was in an Austin A40 rally car. Later of course he competed in the “Big John” Mustang pro stock car that he drove in the early 1970’s. Incidentally it was a drive in this car that gave radio 1 DJ Dave Lee Travis a taste for drag racing. It was at this time that John joined the executive committee of the British Drag Racing and Hot Rod association under the chairmanship of “Gentleman” Jim Read. It was John who invited me to join that committee in 1972 and it was then that I really got to know him. He was a great committee man, always thoughtful and analytical, able to gather all the various points of view of the club members and eventually sort out a compromise that usually suited everybody. Then drag racing was relatively new in this country and with little money racers would make do and mend with a bewildering variety of engine and vehicle combinations from supercharged 4 cylinder BMC engine powered dragsters to a whole fleet of Jaguar powered altereds, and a lot more in between. British drag racing had a whole style of its own which sometimes made rule making difficult, there were pressures to make rules that suited vested interests and John played an immensely important …
Tony Densham
Tony Densham was involved in Drag Racing from the very early days racing in the 1963 Drag Fests in his 1500 ford dragster The Worden. In 1964 at RAF Kemble he ran a best of 11.32secs in the same car, he also continued to race the car at events on temporary tracks across Britain. With the opening of Santa Pod in 1966 British drag racers had a permanent track to race on and Tony won the Top Eliminator class in his blown 1500 cc dragster with a 12.32/122 at the opening event.
At the August event Tony drove a new car, the Golden Hind, a seven-litre Ford powered dragster which was originally the Harvey Aluminum Special which was driven by American Mickey Thompson in 1963. The car would later evolve into the famous Commuter. In 1967 Tony slowly got to grips with the car’s power and at the Records Weekend at Elvington set a new two-way average record of 8.915secs. He also took the standing 500 metre record with a two-way average of 11.20secs.
At the Santa Pod Easter meeting in 1968 Tony set a new low ET mark with a 9.052, and then ran the first eight second pass at the August event at Santa Pod with an 8.891/173 and later at the same event ran a fantastic 8.459 to become the quickest racer in Europe. Also in the same year at Santa Pod he raced Rex Sluggett in the first side-by-side nine-second race in Britain. In May 1969 Tony lowered the record to 8.228 at Santa Pod.
Tony ran a disputed 205 mph pass in Commuter at Santa Pod in September 1970, the first 200mph run by a British car.
The dragster was set up with bigger tyres and gear ratio for an attempt on the …
Roz Prior
Roz Prior’s first drive was the injected Rat powered slingshot “Age Machine” which husband Dave had bought from Bruce Brown in 1973 with the intention of driving it himself but at the August Blackbushe meeting he found the cockpit too small for him to comfortably drive and the following weekend at Santa Pod Roz was in place behind the butterfly.
She put down an impressive 10.8 at 132m.p.h. first time out and by the end of the day had recorded a 10.21 and was an instant crowd favorite. By the October meeting at the Pod she was running mid 9’s at 155m.p.h. and had the other drivers quivering in their fire proof boots when she took Top Dragster Eliminator shutting down the likes of Tony Anderson and Ray Hoare. 1974 saw Roz back out in “Age Machine” and some exciting duels with “Hemi Hunter” another injected Rat slingshot run by Gerry Andrews.
At the Big Go they met in the final where Roz shaved the green to perfection and won with a slower 8.48/157m.p.h. to Gerry’s 8.29/177m.p.h. Roz wanted to go faster and later in ’74 she moved up to Top Fuel with the purchase of Dennis Priddles “Mr Six” 392 Hemi powered slingshot fueller. It was re-named “Fast Lady” and by the end of the year Roz had run a 7.23 and a new strip speed record at Snetterton with a 208m.p.h. blast.
Roz got some backing from Revell Model Kits in 1975 and she was now known as Miss Revell. At Snetterton in May Roz ran her first six with a 6.98/213m.p.h. run. 1977 saw the ageing slingshot replaced by a new rear-engined Top Fuel Dragster called “Maneater” and powered by a 426 Hemi. At the ’77 Big Go Roz was #1 qualifier and went on to take the …
Dennis Stone
Dennis Stone got hooked on Drag Racing after visiting the 1964 Dragfests at the insistance of his son Dave who had been reading Hot Rod Magazine and building model dragsters for some years. Dennis was involved in circuit racing at the time but the sight and spectacle of the American dragsters convinced him that drag racing was the way to go and he made the first of many visits to Santa Pod when it opened in 1966.
He entered his trusty E-Type Jag which he thought would be unbeatable but was brought back down to earth when he came up against some of the American muscle cars run at the Pod by US Servicemen at the time and decided that for drag racing it had to be a Yank V8. At the end of 1969 Dennis bought the Chevy powered Opus One competition altered and both he and Dave pulled it apart and rebuilt it with a few of their own ideas for the 1970 season.
The extra power Opus One was now producing was having it’s effect on the 98″ wheelbase Opus chassis pulling violent wheelstands off the line so Dennis and Dave made up some wheelie bars. On one occasion at Blackbushe one side of the bars broke sending Dennis onto the grass where it did another wheelstand breaking the other side and sending him back on the track! A new set of wheelie bars were made up this time incorporating shock absorbers.
Dennis and Dave later took it in turns to drive Opus One and after winning the final at Santa Pod Dennis drove back to the start line to receive the trophy from Bob Phelps. Commentator Brian Taylor couldn’t tell if it was Dennis of Dave driving due to the dark full face helmet visor and …
Clive Skilton
Clive began his drag racing career in 1967, and won the Street Eliminator class at the Santa Pod Big Go driving an E Type Jag. In 1968 Clive took over the driving of the Famous Allard dragster setting a new speed record of 163 mph at the Easter meeting.
In 1969 Clive débuted a new look car with a top mounted blower in Sweden and also became the first European to run a seven second pass at an NDRC event at Elvington. The Santa Pod Easter meeting in 1971 saw another new car called Second Revolution and Clive became the first person in the UK to run 200 mph, 1972 was the year Clive ran the UK’s first rear engined Top Fuel car Revolution 3 and the year also saw the first side by side race in the UK Clive was running alongside? Who else but his arch rival Dennis Priddle.
Along with Dennis Priddle, Clive entered the 1973 Winternationals at Pomona, qualified on the bump spot and returned to the UK with the ex-Kuhl and Olson Top Fuel car which was unfortunately badly damaged in a crash at Santa Pod. Like Dennis Priddle, Clive moved into Funny Cars and in 1975 he ran a Vauxhall-bodied car running his first Funny Car six later in the year at Snetterton and again, as in Top Fuel, he had many battles on the track with Dennis Priddle.
At the Easter meeting at Santa Pod in 1976 Clive was back in a Top Fuel car and won the event which featured the legendary Don Garlits amongst its entries.
Clive moved to the USA at the end 1976 season and raced on the US circuit with some success. He now runs one of the largest Chrysler dealerships in the US.
Clive was one of …
Allan Herridge
The legendary Bootsie whose image the Hall of Fame features and after whom the trophy is named. Allan built one of the UK’s first dragsters and in a long and glorious career proved that he could turn his hand to everything from managing a race track to driving race cars and building them before his life was tragically cut short in a top end accident. Allan’s trophy was the first to be awarded, at the joint APIRA/SPRC Dinner Dance in February 2006, and was accepted by his then-partner Lesley Wright who read this tribute:
In 1962 when Allan built his first dragster there was no rule book, no drawings to follow – just pictures in American Hot Rod magazine. In the early days the dragsters were run at National Sprint Association meetings at various RAF and USAF airfields around the country. If there were barriers they were straw bales, the runways had no grip juice and there were no spectators.
In 1966 all that changed when Santa Pod Raceway opened its gates to the public. Allan fully engaged in the development of the sport, helping to form an organising club and writing construction rules for the safety of participants and spectators. Along with John Harrison and Brian Sparrow, Dragster Developments made all their own parts and became renowned for shortening rear axles.
When I met Allan in 1976 what struck me was his happy-go-lucky attitude to life. He would say he was “Just lucky” being in the right place at the right time to be offered the drive of the Santa Pod-owned cars: the Gloworm Funny Car, Commuter, Firefly, Asphalt Alleygator, and the Gladiator Funny Car.
Bob and Roy Phelps popularised the sport by bringing over the top drivers and riders from the States. During the course of a meeting Allan would be helping out other …