The long summer break is over, we have 3 rounds left in the UK Championship; it’s a close championship this year with Scott Hauser leading the way on 1880 points, Brad is in 2^nd place on 1850 points , John Pryzbyl on 1670 points, Brian Pateman on 1420 and Brad’s stable mate and last year’s champion Chris Parker on 1380.

There is a 100 points available for every round win so it will be an exciting end to this year’s championship and Wayne predicts a last round nail biter at the National Finals at Santa Pod at the end of September.

This weekend brings the Open Sports Nationals at Shakespeare County Raceway at Stratford upon Avon, Brad has won the Super Pro Championship for the last 2 years running but is currently lying 3^rd in this championship behind multiple champion Scott Hauser and last year’s champion Chris Parker, it will be an interesting meeting and will lay the foundations for the rest of the season.

Two weeks after the Open sports Nationals are the European Finals at Santa Pod and Brad will be hoping for a repeat of last year’s win, two weeks after that are the National Finals at Santa Pod so it will be a hectic next 6 weeks but as you are aware Drag Racing produces many twists and turns and unexpected curve balls, this is why we love the sport so much?

Bradjacksonracing.com will have a live Twitter feed on from Saturday for the 3 day meeting so you can check out his progress.

Well that’s it, short and sweet and I will send a newsletter after the event, have a great bank holiday weekend !

Brad Jackson Racing have teamed up with HRX and Brad will be wearing his new custom suit and custom boots at Shakespeare County Raceway, the suit is a super light triple layer suit as worn in F1 and Le Mans, and the boots are super soft leather custom boots, if you fancy a new suit or boots, pop along to the Super Pro pits and Brad will be happy to show you his new attire.

Brad will no longer wear his old suit so I have attached my favourite photo of Brad in the old suit, Black & White photo’s somehow are more evocative than Colour !

Q1 the car launched well but a cold track with poor grip resulted in Brad being 7 tenths of a second off our dial in, other drivers had the same issues and we still ended up in 7th position from 18 cars.

Everything was fine on the car, we just had a little bit of oil going into the catch can, this is normal following and engine rebuild until the piston rings bed in.

Q2 saw 21 cars make the field and by the time Brad made his run we had slipped to 13th place, a good solid second run at 1 tenth of a second of dial in saw Brad back in 7th place from the 21 cars that qualified, that was is for today so 2 more runs and the first round of eliminations tomorrow.

Q3 didn’t see any improvement so our Q2 time still stood and we now dropped to 11th place, this was not an ideal place meaning if nothing changed we would be facing the No1 qualifier in the first round.

Q4 brought another car into the field, Brad’s Nick good Motorsport team mate Chris Parker went to No1 with a time 3 thousandths of a second off his dial in, we had tried a little bit too hard, we dialled a time of 7.83 and ran 7.824 breaking out by 6 thousands of a second leaving Brad in 12th place and facing our team mate Chris Parker in round 1.

This is always a difficult situation for the team, we always prepare the cars identically and we also share a huge amount of data between the 2 cars, it was going to be an interesting 1st round, Chris has the No 1 on his car as the reigning Super Pro champion, Brad would need to be at the very top of his game.
As you would expect from these 2 high calibre contenders it was a very close race with Brad taking the win by 2 hundredths of a second.
Because Brad had beaten the No1 qualifier Brad had a bye run in round 2 so we were pleased to have an easy but well earned bye run.

Round 3 of eliminations Brad was drawn against an extremely competitive Gordon Northway who had been running bang on his times all weekend, once again Brad needed a flawless performance if he was to take the win, Brad cut an 0.0414 light to Gordon’s 0.0793 so it was going to be close, Brad ran a 7.862 0n a 7.85 dial in to Gordon’s 8.521 on a 8.51 dial in, giving Brad the victory by 3 hundredths of a second.
In the semi final Brad again ran very close to his dial in and beat Alan Didwell to see Brad in the final of the first meeting of the year, facing a strong contender from the Netherlands , John Gerritsen in a brand new 55 Chevy running in the 6 second bracket.

In the final Brad cut a great 0.071 light to John’s .165 so Brad had the lead, but with a car almost 2 seconds quicker than Brad’s it would be all on the dial in’s !

We had a great first meeting and bagged a valuable haul of championship points finishing the weekend as the runner up, we do it all again in 2 weeks time at Shakespeare County Raceway where Brad is the current APIRA Super Pro Champion and is looking forward to defend his title, it is also Brad’s 21st Birthday that weekend so let’s hope it will be a very Happy Birthday !

Aaron Fensome
New Lucas Oil Driver

It was great to see the new Lucas Oil backed driver Aaron Fensome take the runner up spot in the Lucas Oil Junior Dragster Championship, Aaron felt great in the car in his new bespoke HRX suit from  www.racewearonline.com

I would like to say a big thank you to all our sponsors, Lucas Oil both in the UK and the USA, Pentagon Corporate Fleet, D & S signs, Martin Williams Hull, HRX ,Racewearonline,  our associates Pete Walters race design last but not least Six B Apparel in the USA.

We would like to thank all our sponsors and crew because without everyone’s support we couldn’t achieve this level of competition and success, thank you to everyone for being involved in this team

Some of the Images used with the kind permission of the original photographer tog@Eurodragster.com unless stated, Thank you.