I have often professed my love of Santa Pod Raceway, the famed English drag strip that I have never actually been to. It’s been the site of some great history and it serves as the European version of Pomona in many ways hosting the opening and closing stanzas of the FIA drag racing championship. When it was announced that the track would undergo some major surgery, I was excited. When I was able to watch this time lapse of Santa Pod’s complete concrete resurfacing job, I was ecstatic. Why? You’ll know when you watch it for yourself but the scope of this job was huge both in manpower and financial investment.
Santa Pod was the quickest asphalt drag strip in the world and we don’t know how long that mark will stand but it’ll never been in contention to defend itself in that realm because from the starting line all the way down to the end, the place is concrete from here on out. Watching the time lapse, there were a few things that struck me as super interesting. The first was the process of removing the old track, the second was how the base of the track was laid, how many layers, and the third was when the work had to stop because of the snow! Yes, it was done over the winter in England and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that they get all kinds of weather in Jolly Ol’ and while it may have slightly hampered the schedule of the construction crew, it did no hamper the schedule of the track as they’ll be open for business soon enough.
The doom and gloomers want you to believe all the tracks are closing. They are full of it. THIS is stuff worth celebrating.
I helped build Santa Pod back in the late 1960s and in the very early days we were running on the old WWII runway surface. Back then the start line was roughly where the finish line is now. This is great to see.
You Kerri and the “da boys” will be my quests at Santa Pod….if I ever win Powerball. 🙂
I first went to the Pod in 76 as a 12 year old with my brother Ollie. Happy days ! I will always have great memories of the weekends we spent there. Very happy to see it\’s still going and still one of the best drag strips in the world.
It’s the only place I go to get my whiff of Nitromethane. I’ve even run one of my cars down there (not an ET worth posting) but it is a great place. Plenty of wind though!