Tooren takes British Drag Racing victory in bizarre circumstances at Santa Pod

For all its orderly precision, drag racing retains a capacity for the occasional weird outcome. Round four of Motorsport UK’s British Drag Racing Championship produced a finish as strange as any. The Pro Mods were an extracurricular attraction at Santa Pod’s giant Volkswagen festival, Bug Jam 38, last weekend and three European heavyweights – Estonia’s Andres Arnover and Dutchmen Michel Tooren and David Vegter – had come to take on Britain’s best.

All three reached the semi-finals in Sunday’s eliminations. Owing to an odd-numbered field, Arnover and Tooren were matched together while Vegter was gifted a bye run straight to the final.

Yet in winning their previous matches, Arnover and Vegter had each sustained race-ending mechanical damage. Back in the pits, Arnover’s crew had found oil pressure problems in the mighty turbo Mustang, Europe’s quickest-ever Pro Mod, while a fuel pump issue stymied Vegter’s supercharged Camaro. Neither impairment could be fixed in time.

Thus Tooren found himself the lone surviving competitor, with still two rounds of racing to go. First, he ‘took the green’ to win the semi-final – the rules allow a racer simply to break the start line beams in an uncontested match – then reversed and staged again.

This time he launched on a full-tilt solo pass, 5.860s at 245.03mph, to claim the oddest final-round victory of his career. It was a dissatisfying end to a promising race, but good things had happened earlier.

Jon Webster was Britain’s unsung hero. The prolific race car constructor unveiled his turbocharged 1967 Ford Mustang as long ago as 2017 and has eked out small performance gains ever since, when not otherwise engaged.

In Saturday’s first qualifying session, Webster clocked the fastest Pro Mod speed by a UK racer at 249.61mph, then bettered it at 250.98mph with a career-best elapsed time, 5.883s, in the opening elimination round. Unfortunately, Arnover beat him to the finish by barely a hair’s breadth, but till recently the gold-liveried Mustang would not have expected to live in such company.

While Vegter’s 5.797s was the event’s quickest elapsed time, Webster has now secured top speed for the third race in a row.