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Open Sports Nationals 2017

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Open Sports Nationals
Shakespeare County Raceway
Stratford Upon Avon.

At last the long summer break was over and we headed for Shakespeare County Raceway, the weather forecast was outstanding for the 3 day event and in fact the weather was the best we have seen for years in the UK for Drag Racing with clear Blue skies and the temperature reached 91 degrees F on Monday.
Brad has been the Super Pro Champion for the last 2 years running in the APIRA championship and we were hoping to make it 3 in a row.
Brad is having a good year, 2nd in the UK National Championship, 2nd in the Santa Pod Racers Championship and 3rd in the APIRA Championship.
In the 1st round of qualifications Brad got a lot of wheel spin of the line and put him in a lowly 8th place , in the 2nd round  Brad ran a 7.784 on a 7.78 dial, this time of 4 thousands of a second over dial put Brad in 2nd place, this was a very good time and we would be unlikely to improve on 4 thousands of a second over dial in.

This turned out to be correct and over the next 5 qualifying sessions Brad couldn’t improve this time, 2 other drivers did though leaving Brad in 4th place when qualifying was finished. The  first 5 times are below showing how tight and competitive Drag Racing is.

1st John Atkinson  0.00188 ( 1 thousands of a second )
2nd Brian Pateman 0.00224 ( 2 thousands of a second)
3rd Rick Cooke 0.00326 ( 3 thousands of a second )
4th Brad Jackson 0.00499 ( 4 thousands of a second )
5th Scott Hauser 0.01154 ( 1 hundredth of a second )

Monday brought the hottest day with the weather station peaking at 91 degrees Fahrenheit, in round 1 Brad was drawn against Ian Brown, Ian has a new car which the crew have been working hard to get the car consistent since the back end of last season, however at this event they were really on form and had set a new personal best in qualifying.

When the lights went down Brad had an uncharacteristic poor light of 0.14239 ( 1.4 tenths of a second ) and Ian pulled a 0.06762 ( 6 hundredths ) and the race was already over, Brad never caught Ian with this deficit, although he almost caught Ian at the line just losing the race by 0.01993.
This was a serious blow to Brad’s championship hopes, the Shakespeare championship (APIRA) was now lost, however good fortune did help Brad, Scott Hauser red lit, Brian Pateman red lit and Chris Parker lost his race, this meant the first 4 in the UK championship had lost , so this was a good result from a bad position.

The standings following the Open Sports National are ;-

With 2 meetings left in the UK Championship the result of the European finals meeting at Santa Pod next week will be crucial, look out on bradjacksonracing.com for live updates on Twitter and Facebook with live updates on the home page from Thursday 7th September.

Summer Break is Over!

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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 2nd 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 3rd 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 !

Santa Pod Raceway 26th – 29th May 2017

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Santa Pod Raceway 26th – 29th May 2017

FIA / FIM Main Event

We arrived on Thursday to set up for the weekend, we were full of anticipation for a great weekend and with Brad currently leading the UK championship the team were in a buoyant mood.
Friday morning was a beautiful sunny day and we went down for our first qualifying run,  Wayne dialled a 7.74 based on the previous meetings data at Shakespeare County Raceway, we ran a 7.79 seconds run and this was good enough for 4th place,  this got us very firmly into the 32 car field.

There were 40 cars from  many European countries and 8 teams were going to be disappointed and not make the field, the level of competition was extremely high.
On our second run Wayne dialled a 7.73 but we ran too quickly and broke out on a 7.69 run (fouled).
On our third run we found some inconsistency with the car and traced this to a fuel injection issue, Cristiann and Nick worked hard all event to cure the issue but to no avail. When we say an issue we are talking about a 1 tenth of a second issue but with the bump spot likely to be around 400th’s of a second a tenth of a second is an age in the Super Pro Class. Brad and the crew worked hard all weekend but by the time the end of qualifying came on Sunday we had run 8 times but never improved on our first run and ended up 25th in the 32 car field

In our first round of Eliminations we met Gordon Northway, Gordon is very competent and this was a tough race, Brad won the race by just 200’ths of a second, this was a great relief to the team because 16 cars were eliminated and we were now in the second round and had recovered the poor qualifying position.
In the second round we raced Mick Howling and Brad cut a great light (reaction time ) 0f 0.07 of a second to Mick’s 0.138 reaction and Brad had the upper hand, unfortunately Brad broke out ( fouled ) and our weekend was over.
We packed away and stayed the night in the RV before heading home on Monday morning. We woke to find there had been some rain overnight and the weather forecast was poor for the rest of the day, we do not wish to be bad sportsmen but the rain could save our weekend.
We drove home continually looking at the event on Eurodragster.com and the Super Pro class didn’t run again, this saved our troublesome weekend because the points accrued at the point of the meeting being abandoned stand.
So we came away from a bad weekend only dropping to second spot in the championship 120 points behind Scott Hauser, this could have been a much more damaging weekend and there is a rumour that Wayne’s rain dance help to contribute to the downpour !
We have sent the data from the car to the injection company in the USA and can hopefully resolve the issue before the Summer Nationals at Santa Pod on the 24th-25th June!

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