Steve Horn
Steve Horn first entered Santa Pod Raceway courtesy of his Dad’s friendship with one of the gate staff back in the early ‘70’s. He’d just started an apprenticeship in Electronic Engineering at RAE Bedford and soon became known for helping to fix various track equipment, which he saw as pay back for the free entry he’d gained.
At RAE Bedford he was involved in Research & Development of the Harrier Jump Jet and at Santa Pod joined the ‘Jet Set’ as the bunch of young lads who hung out with the Scorpion Jet Car, began to be known.
By the Blue Thunder Jet Nationals, held at Santa Pod in August 1983, Steve was driving Hellbender and won the Cannonball style shootout against 4 other jets with consistent 7.20’s at 220 mphm, the eventual winner being indicated by the arrow win light manually lighting up in the lane he stood in after the race was over.
When the Midnight Cowboy Jet Funny Car was being developed, Steve would drive the few miles to Santa Pod in his lunch hour so that he could sit in the pilot’s seat, whilst Allan Herridge was trying to sort out the afterburner, then he would go back to work for the afternoon! The sad events later that year made Steve hang up his helmet and fire suit for good but he continued to crew for the jet cars.
He had a lot of interest in the original timing system (DRAGS Mk2) developed by Peter Billinton, but the most significant development was the purchase of the TSI system from the USA in 1991. Since then he has overseen the track re-wiring 4 times. With the TSI system, Drag Racing had reaction times, 60ft, 330 ft, 1/8th mile ET & MPH, as well as 1000 ft …
The Cookson Family
Gerry Cookson first became aware of drag racing when his brother in law David bought Hot Rod Magazine and showed it to him in the early 1960s. They, and Gerry’s wife Joan and son Jeremy, travelled together from their home in Sutton Coldfield to the 1965 Dragfest.
Enthused by the spectacle they saw, Gerry decided to build a slingshot dragster powered by a Morris Minor engine. The car was almost ready for the track at the same time that Santa Pod opened in 1966. Tuition in welding the chassis came from Ken Cooper, and Gerry did all his own work on the car. The slingshot, first known as Minor Leaguer, evolved into Trouble Shooter after new bodywork, engine and chassis changes to enhance performance.
In 1969 when wife Joan was pushing the car down the fire up road, the dragster’s push bar collapsed, resulting in the car going into the guardrail and rolling. Undeterred, Gerry built a new chassis as he had previously done. By 1973, using a 1071cc Mini Cooper engine with a Godfrey cabin blower on methanol, the car was recording times in the mid 10 second zone and had many wins in the Junior Dragster class. Gerry then built a Berkeley Sports and entered it in the Modified Street division. By the early 1990s he was racing a MG Midget which he won the Four Pot challenge with, and, in the early 2000s, ran at RWYBs at Shakespeare County Raceway forty years after his track debut.
Whilst Jeremy helped his dad prepare his car for racing, he soon joined the junior section of the Midlands Drag Racing Association and helped Gerry edit the club magazine, the original Fire -Up. Jeremy was soon writing race reports for various motorsport and drag racing publications. A job at a local …
Peter Lantz
Peter Lantz Racing fired a shot heard around Europe on 16th August 1997 when Kent Persson drove the PLR Top Fuel Dragster to Europe’s first-ever four-second pass, a 4.987/472.87 kmh (293.83 mph) at the NitrOlympX at Hockenheim. Although rightly remembered as a crowning moment, it was one of many achievements in Peter’s career.
Peter Lantz’s first race car was a Volvo-powered Competition Eliminator dragster built with two friends in 1979. The rail gave way to a Keith Black-powered dragster which was campaigned for two years before Peter ordered a Pro Comp dragster from the Kjellin brothers. Whilst that car was being built some of Peter’s running gear was placed in Jonny Nilsson’s Pro Comp Funny Car, which was driven by Kent Persson and which came out on top of a sixteen-car combined Pro Fuel and Pro Comp eliminator at Pite Dragway. The car won the Swedish Championship and set a European record before being campaigned in the USA. During this time Peter also crewed with Bjorn Ardin and Torsten Dahl to learn about alcohol tuning.
Peter drove the Pro Comp dragster from 1986 until 1989 and then built his own dragster which he campaigned until 1991, when he also took the seat of the ABC Top Fuel Dragster and started to work with tuner Morgan Svensson who became a firm friend and with whom Peter credits all of his subsequent performances and successes. Peter took over the ABC Top Fuel Dragster in 1992 and then built his own Top Fueller in 1994. With backing from Optima Batteries Peter won the ETFA Championship in 1994, running Europe’s quickest ET of 5.11 seconds. After a successful weekend at Mantorp Park in July 1997 Peter was invited by promoter Rico Anthes to the NitrOlympX where history was made.
The PLR dragster was equipped …
Andy Robinson
Andy Robinson is the MSA British Drag Racing Champion six times over. That distinction alone might warrant his induction into the British Drag Racing Hall of Fame, but it is only part of the story of the UK’s long-serving ‘Mr. Pro Mod’.
The MSA Championship class since 2007, Pro Modified had emerged in Britain in the late 1980s. By then, Andy Robinson had already been involved in drag racing for over a decade. In 1974, during an engineering apprenticeship, a college lecturer had suggested he try marshalling circuit races as a pastime. Marshalling at nearby Blackbushe, he found himself attracted to the Run What Ya Brung activities of local hot rod and custom car clubs, something not available in the circuit racing world. A home-built, high-riding Ford Zephyr was his first serious racing machine and won him his first title, the NDRC Allcomers Street Championship at Long Marston in 1981.
A Chevy Monza followed, and then a Ford Sierra Sapphire, Andy’s first venture into the burgeoning Pro Mod scene to take on leading contenders of the day such as Tim Cook, Dave Mingay, Dave Warne and Dave Pollen. In 1991, a new house with space for a custom-built workshop launched Andy’s career as a professional racing car constructor. On the track, an innovative Rover 800 coupe dominated the Pro Mod scene, winning national championships in 1997 and ’98, and was replaced by Andy’s best-known car, the purple, flamed Studebaker Commander, first in unblown nitrous form, then adopting the supercharged methanol power the team employs to this day. The Studebaker won three MSA Championships. Its replacement, a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro debuted in 2013, has notched three more and is chasing its fourth in 2018.
Racing cars are a full-time, Robinson family occupation. The company, Andy Robinson Race Cars (ARRC), finds Andy …
Team Pegasus
When one considers which were the iconic machines during the history of Drag Bike racing in Europe, one of the names to achieve legendary status is that of Pegasus. The name is synonymous with the show and go aspect of the sport, as one of the first show quality machines to grace the strips.
Team Pegasus was the eventual result of three friends from the Bedford area coming together to have a crack at sprinting and drag racing in 1967. The three young lads in question were Derek Chinn, Mick Butler and Ian Messenger. Their initial venture into racing was with an old 600cc single cylinder Panther powered bike, which was aptly named Long Rod, and served them up with times in the 13 second bracket. This bike, which still survives today, whetted their appetites for something quicker, in order to challenge the top racers of the day, who mainly used vee-twin motors.
The first incarnation of Pegasus was an unblown 998cc Vincent, that first appeared in 1968. They all took it in turns to ride the bike, and quickly saw the elapsed times improve. However, a blower was soon considered essential if they were to challenge the quickest riders, so a Shorrock supercharger was fitted for 1969 – and the bike started to fly. Pegasus was one of the first bikes to travel to Sweden to race in that same year, at a time prior to bikes actually being raced in that country. Mick Butler rode the bike to its first British Drag Bike Championship win, defeating John Hobbs in the final.
A real highlight came in 1970, when the beautifully prepared Vincent was one of two British bikes to make another historic first trip, to race at the NHRA Indy Nationals. Transportation delays precluded any possibility of the …