Auto focus ■ Words and Pics: Keith Lee
This month, Keith recalls the madcap idea behind Santa Pod’s original take on the Cannonball Run
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major highlight of Dragstalgia is the Cannonball event. Now it features nostalgia funny cars, dragsters and altereds in a special aggregated time format over three initial rounds, with the two quickest performers then taking part in a heads-up final clash to determine the overall winner. This particular competition owes its existence to the classic Cannonball Run movie, which was released back in 1981. The Cannonball Run is one of those amusingly mad road movies which few car nuts will not have seen – and probably more than once or twice. It starred Burt Reynolds and Roger Moore, plus many other well known faces, taking part in a 3000-mile car chase across America, from coast to coast. For the Santa Pod July 1981 International race, the promoter came up with the wheeze of just slightly restyling this marathon as a one-mile competition! It needed a real stretch of imagination to link the longest car race on the planet with the shortest one, but it did add a twist to the normal format! Tied in to this event was an offer to competitors and spectators to enjoy free admission to the premiere of the film in Bedford on the Saturday night.
Bill Sherratt pilots the black Plymouth Arrow against Tony Boden in 1982
This first version of the Cannonball Run was billed to feature eight fuel funny cars competing over four rounds of competition, with the aggregated times over the first three rounds deciding which two drivers would shoot out for the overall win. Just to make it complicated, there would be bonus time for a round win, the fastest round win and coming in as a substitute. Penalties were applied for a red light, crossing the centre line and, among others, for destroying the finish line mirrors! That made for quite some calculations along the way, which were handled in the tower by my better half, Annie. That year, 1981, was when the character that is John Price joined myself in the commentary box – and went on to unleash Captain Chaos on an unsuspecting crowd at the event. Quite apt, really, as the final runoff was indeed total chaos on the track! Even before the first leg took place on Sunday, there was carnage galore in the engine department during Saturday’s practice sessions. As a foretaste of the madcap day to follow, Owen Hayward ended up reversing the Houndog funny car into the surprised doctor sat in his car,
when his blown nitro engine would not shut off while reversing! It could not have been better scripted that a funny car called Cannonball, which was unveiled especially for this event, ran out as the winner. Driven by ‘Wild’ Bill Sherratt, the black Arrow was none other than the car Don Prudhomme raced at Santa Pod the previous year. The manner of his victory was unreal, and funnily enough a piece of video I shot from the tower seems to have been shared around a lot on Facebook recently. Bill, along with Allan Herridge in Gladiator, were the top two runners, but on the final burnout Allan left a fairly enormous oil slick on the track in his wake – and the motor belched fire as its body was raised! Meanwhile, Owen Hayward had fired up in Houndog, and was planning to come in as substitute. Gladiator was pushed back and Owen was left with a narrow portion of the left lane to run on, between the oil slick and the edge of the track! Bill stormed off for a mid six second win, as Houndog predictably went up in smoke on a valiant attempt on the dirty part of the lane.
56 CUSTOM CAR OCTOBER 2022
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