Santa Pod - High Speed Training

Unless you are a petrol head you probably think Santa Pod is something that Father Xmas was hatched from. It is in fact a field in the arse end of Northamptonshire with a long strip of tarmac going through the middle of it where people go head to head to see who's car can cover 1/4 mile in the fastest time possible. You've probably seen a variation of this in your local town centre involving some tracksuit wearing tosspots in Citroen Saxos tearing away from the lights with rear spoilers so big you could fit a couple of lesbians on them.

The difference with Santa Pod is that all this behaviour is actually encouraged, (apart from the lesbians on spoilers bit unfortunately). For those of you that have witnessed a Top Fuel dragster reach 300mph in 5 seconds then you'll appreciate how awesome drag racing can be.

On this occasion however we were at a "Run What Ya Brung" day where anyone can turn up and have a go. In performance terms this is the equivalent of chimps playing at Wimbledon. Last time we were here was back in the summer of 2005 in preparation for our Reliants to Russia trip. We were without doubt the slowest vehicles there clocking a time of 21 seconds for a 1/4 mile and a terminal speed of 56 mph much to the annoyance of everyone else waiting in the queue.

This time we'd brought the T80's and were about to redefine "slow". Matt was so confident of a terrible performance he bet £10 (all his sandwich money) that none of us would crack the 30 second barrier. So once Charlie had eventually turned up with the van and bikes having followed his cheapo Sat Nav in to a field somewhere in Yorkshire we could get on with the serious business of drag racing. Make no mistake, drag racing is a dangerous sport and should only be undertaken with the appropriate protective clothing. I don't know whether the marshalls were too embarrassed to check but apparently a Mr Blobby outfit passes all ACU regulations.

So we'd signed on, got kitted out, got the bikes running and were ready to unleash all 6 horsepower on the drag strip, but not before we'd all had a full english and several cups of tea.

So by mid-afternoon we were finally lined up in the queue when suddenly there was a near disaster. One of the more serious competitors had complained to the race officials that Nick's garden allotment represented a danger to other users. This is fair enough because at high speed a stray piece of rhubarb can cause untold damage. A garden gnome failure could have shut the entire event down. Eventually we persuaded them that even at terminal velocity there wouldn't be enough air tubulence to loosen a petal let alone a root vegetable. Obviously Nick could still crash and lose his load all over the track but all parties agreed that would be funny and anyway it was only Nick. We were good to go.

So with eager anticipation we lined up at the famous strip and attempted some burnouts to wow the crowd. Unfortunately the grip of our brand new Continental tyres was too much for the engines to overpower so we had to settle for the other crowd pleaser. Wheelies.

So with all eyes on the starting lights we readied ourselves for the days mission - to take a Yamaha T80 to maximum velocity and back without tragic consequences. It may only have been a 1/4 mile but as some wise old man with a wispy beard once said "even the 18000kms trip on shit mopeds requires the first step". Anyway we're pretty sure thats the first time Santa Pod has witnessed Mr Blobby performing a stand up wheelie. At least 4 people clapped so we were winners even before the timing lights confirmed the unimaginable - we'd broken the 30 second barrier and almost topped 50 mph to boot.



So we were able to walk away with our heads held high knowing that once again we'd set a new record for slow. Memories of setting the slowest ever lap of the Nurburgring came flooding back and all was well with the world until we learned we'd actually been out-crapped by a Volkswagen camper van that had actually managed a worse time. Never mind at least we could take comfort knowing there was no way the guy was going to get all the way home again without breaking down. Come to think of it VW Campers would be perfect banger rally vehicles (bearing in mind crapness comes as standard) if it wasn't for the fact people seem to like paying a lot of money for them. There really are some strange people in the world.