Life aint such a drag... written by: Lee Richmond posted on: 16 April 2010
This is something I have been meaning to blog about for a while now. In March I took a trip with some friends to Santa Pod Raceway in Northampton for an RWYB (Run What You Brung) day, put simply this is where you drive your car down there spend the day drag racing in your own car (or bike, there were tons of bikers there too) and then drive said vehicle home again. I already know what a lot of people reading this will be thinking "Oh dear! another boy racer" and I would like to dispell this myth, not everyone who drives a fast car is a boy racer. As anyone who has already had a look around my site knows I am a big petrol head I've loved cars for as long as I can remember and for me this day was more about setting a benchmark with my car still as standard as it possibly could be, with the intention of making modifications to it afterwards to see how much of an improvement I can make, so anyway back to what I was originally saying...
The day started at 6am when me and my girlfriend met up with some of our friends to convoy down, the drive down was pretty uneventful. Once we arrived at the track we paid our entry fee and found somewhere near the track to park up, we were eventually joined by other members of the MR2 owners club. It wasn't long before we were watching others taking their first runs of the day down the track, there were all kinds of vehicles in attendance ranging from standard road going vehicles to specially modified drag vehicles (including a huge Dodge pickup which blitzed the 1/4 mile in 12 seconds!)
After watching for a while (and getting some breakfast) we decided it was time to take the plunge, so we went to the signing on booth to give our details and pay our sign on fee, then we returned to our cars to remove any unnecessary weight this included spare wheels, jacks, CD's jackets, basically anything that would add even the slightest bit of weight to the car and finally giving our engines a quick once over just ot make sure everything was okay. Once we had finished doing this there was only one thing left to do join the queues, the drag strip has two lanes so as you can imagine ther were two queues, one for each lane, however as there were only three of us from my group of friends that were racing, so sadly my first run I was on my own. While sitting in the queue I could feel the nerves starting to take hold any slight noise from any of the other cars I was worrying it was mine, the closer I got to being the next down the strip the more the tension mounted,until finally it was my turn. Will I stall on the start line? Will I get a good time? What if my car suddenly dies in a cloud of smoke half way down the track? all of these questions running through my head but I couldnt back out now I'd pad my dues and was on the line ready to go! So I sat with baited breathe with one foot on the accelerator holding the rev's at 3,500 rpm, the other holding the clutch ready to release, 1st gear selected and steering was held straight to aid a decent take off, as I sat waiting for the green light I remember thinking "this is it!" suddenly the green light lit and I was off and before I knew it I was passing the finish line adrenaline surging through every inch of my body. This is where you are all probably thinking "but you didn't race anyone so what was the point?" well contrary to popular belief while it is fun to have someone to go up against to spur you on and even to see if you can beat them, drag racing isn't about beating the other person its about setting a time and doing your best to improve on that time, there are two times that are tracked the first is your response time (this is the time it takes for you to repsond to the green light and leave the start line) the other is the length of time it takes foryou to finish the run, my first response time of the day was 1.671 secs and my finish time was 18.9 seconds and during the course of thee day these times fluctuated around the 18 mark while my response time reduced dramatically until my second to last run of the day where I finished the run in 17.7 secs with a response time of 0.347 secs.
All in all it was a brilliant day out and I would urge anyone who is even remotely interested in cars or motorsport to give it a try at least once, I personally will be doing it again as I now have my benchmark on which to improve and here are some photos from the day taken by Pete Thronton:
