Santa Pod Raceway’s 60th Anniversary season hits the launch button over the next two weekends.
First comes this weekend’s THE DOORSLAMMERS, featuring full-bodied cars with working doors, sprung chassis, serious intent and a serious prize purse of £100,000!
That’s just the start. Next comes an extended Bank Holiday weekend featuring two race meetings in one. The brand-new Carl Cox Motorsport Series provides the opening salvo on Thursday and Friday. Then, running from Friday to Bank Holiday Monday, The Main Event brings over 300 car and motorcycle teams from 18 countries to contest the first round of the FIA/FIM European Drag Racing Championships.
The multi-disciplinary Carl Cox Motorsport stable includes luminaries such as Isle of Man TT hero Michael Dunlop, but drag racing is the superstar DJ and motorsport entrepreneur’s personal enthusiasm. Hardly have Europe’s fastest door cars – Pro Mods – cooled their motors from their DOORSLAMMERS exertions than they are fired up again to chase a £20,000 bounty placed on the line by Cox in the Carl Cox Motorsport Series.
Cox himself races regularly in the Pro Mod class in Australia and is introducing an Australian-style format, run to a 5.90-second index, for this competition. For drag racing’s most expensive ‘door car’ class, Cox hopes this new series and prize money will help support and grow the Pro Mod category, particularly for teams operating on more limited budgets. Owing to music commitments, the DJ misses this first contest in the three-race series and a respected substitute will drive his US-built car. However, Cox climbs back behind the wheel in the next two races scheduled for July and September.
All manner of cars – door cars, dragsters, altereds, roadsters – and motorcycles too will fill the paddock when The Main Event presents the opening round of 2026’s FIA and FIM European Drag Racing Championships. The entry list currently stands at 305, with 18 countries represented. Machinery ranging from the most powerful two- and four-wheeled vehicles on the planet – Top Fuel Dragsters and Bikes – right down to their miniature Junior Dragster and Dragbike counterparts – drivers and riders starting from age eight – populate a rich and diverse racing programme with an array of entertainment attractions attached.
Europe’s two fastest women drivers headline the 11,000-horsepower Top Fuel Dragster show. Sweden’s Susanne Callin (320.20mph) and Switzerland’s Jndia Erbacher (320.15mph) have wrapped up the past two seasons’ FIA European Championships between them. While Erbacher is the quicker of the two over the 1,000-foot course which, for safety reasons, these behemoth cars nowadays run – a career-best 3.817 seconds to Callin’s 3.840 – the fractional differences in elapsed time and terminal speed count for nothing when it’s winning the race to the finish line that matters. Meanwhile, Colin Millar maintains his quest to be Scotland’s fastest driver. The popular Outlaw Anglia racer has burnished his brand name The Flyin’ Fyfer on the flanks of a Top Fuel Dragster in a bid to earn his Top Fuel licence and run with the fast ladies.
Pro Modified will be a thrill show throughout Saturday’s and Sunday’s qualifying sessions as 20 entries – saloon cars in silhouette but livid, all-out racing machines beneath the skin – fight their way into 16 available spots in Bank Holiday Monday’s eliminations. The Main Event combines two Pro Mod races in one: round one of the FIA European Pro Mod Championship and round two of the FuelTech Motorsport UK British Drag Racing Championship. Finland’s reigning European champion Jere Rantaniemi seeks a hat trick of FIA crowns. Estonia’s Andres Arnover is the 2025 Motorsport UK British champion as well as Europe’s quickest-ever Pro Mod racer, at 5.695sec over the classic quarter-mile, a mark set at Santa Pod last year. Both have 250mph-plus terminal speeds to their credit – so has Santa Pod-local Jon Webster, Britain’s only Pro Mod star to top that magic barrier.
Fields of Top Methanol and Pro Stock cars complete the FIA championship programme. Germany’s past Top Methanol champion, Timo Habermann, makes a notable return after several seasons out.
Ground-pounding nitro Funny Cars head the accompanying on-track programme with a range of UK national championship Sportsman classes in support. Jet Cars are an added attraction.
On two wheels, the FIM European Championship brings entries in Top Fuel Bike, nitro SuperTwin, Pro Stock and Super Street bikes. Sweden’s Top Fuel Bike star Rikard Gustafsson returns with Europe’s quickest, fastest competition motorcycle, 5.638sec/260.65mph, to defend his European title. That’s 0-260 in 5.6 seconds on two wheels.
Round one of the Carl Cox Motorsport Series takes place from Thursday 21st to Friday 22nd May. https://santapod.co.uk/results/carl-cox-motorsport-series/
FIA/FIM The Main Event takes place from Friday 22nd to Monday 25th May. https://santapod.co.uk/main-event.php.
Both races take place at Santa Pod Raceway, near Wellingborough NN29 7XA, with a wide range of off-track entertainments complementing the racing action.Book in advance, online at https://santapodtickets.com/ or by telephoning the Box Office at 01234 782828. Paddock access is free for a close-up view of all the pitside action.
The post Santa Pod’s 60th Anniversary Season Lifts Off With Two Bumper Race Weekends first appeared on Drag Illustrated.
