The usual cacophony of any race circuit greets you as you stroll across the paddock at Santa Pod. However, there’s a clear distinction here. People of all ages are getting involved within the open awnings where cars are being worked on in preparation for their next run on the quarter mile.
Drag racing appears to be one of the most basic kind of motorsport from the outside. The vehicles are fire-breathing beasts that roar as they race down the track at occasionally unfathomable speeds after banging and popping their way to the starting line. To the unfamiliar, it almost feels frightening. Not a place for families, surely?
However, if you look behind the surface, you’ll find that this is actually one of the most inclusive motorsports available, proving that looks can be misleading. Maybe because of its specialization, the people in the Santa Pod paddock are exceptionally close-knit families, and all of the families constitute a single large union.
“It’s a massively family-oriented sport,” says Andy Robinson, who has been competing since the late 1970s and is now a member of the British Drag Racing Hall of Fame. “You’ve got sons and daughters driving when dad or granddad used to run, so in some families there are three generations racing together. I’m not sure you get that in most forms of motorsport.”
Shelley Pearson, whose dad Tony has been a racer and mechanic since the 1970s and whose partner, Kevin Kent, is a former Fuel Funny Car European record holder, is one of those
in the three-generation category. “My dad now drives a ‘56 Chevy in the classic gasser circuit and he also helps me to run my kids in Junior dragsters,” she explains.
Current reigning British Drag Racing Champion Bobby Wallace is in a similar situation, with his dad, Bob, now working as his crew chief, his mum Sandra, and sister Bonnie, doing the catering, and his other sister Annie, now a vital part of his crew, having recently taken a break from her own racing activities following the birth of her one-year-old daughter Mia.
Meet the Robinsons
Andy Robinson first set his eyes on a drag strip in 1976, when he was invited to marshal at Blackbushe. Despite living nearby, he says, he did not even know what drag racing was about at all. Around the same time, he and his girlfriend, who is now his wife, got involved in the Street Rod and Hot Rod Clubs at Reading University and started going to Santa Pod.
Bitten by the bug, he started racing three years later and it became an ever-increasing part of his life. In fact, he reveals, he even worked it into his wedding. “I got married on the
Saturday and I raced on the Sunday at Santa Pod,” he recalls. “Half the people who were at the reception came up to watch!”
It’s no wonder, then, that drag racing has since become a family affair for the Robinsons. Beginning with the top category of Pro Mods in the late-1980s, Andy has since won the British Drag Racing Championship eight times following its introduction in 2007 – and his wife Kate, son Luke and daughter Stef, have been alongside him almost every step of the way.
“Luke was born in the December and he was with us at the racetrack the following Easter, when he was four months old,” recalls Andy. “It was the same with Stefani. They’ve never
really not been at the racetrack with us – apart from last year when Luke’s own twins arrived and he couldn’t quite make it!”
But even then, he could not switch off from the racing. “It was really hard for him,” recalls his sister Stef. “I can probably count on one hand how many runs I’ve missed over the last 20 years, so I know how it feels. We were in constant communication and I was even sending him data from each run and he was tuning the car remotely!”
Luke began working part-time in the family business when he was in his early teens and by the time that he was 16, he was on the start line, helping prep the car, thanks to Andy’s efforts to convince the organisers to reduce the age of access – a move that has since resulted in a lot of families now doing the same.
In fact, Andy credits Luke, who also now works full-time in the family’s race car fabrication business, as having a “massive input” into his title triumphs and greatly values the close
family ties they all have. “Not everyone gets on with their sons and daughters, but I like to think I get on with mine really well,” he smiles. “We spend enough time together, after all!
“Our business is now the biggest drag race constructor in the UK, probably in Europe, with eight employees and we also do all sorts of track cars. Luke is in the workshop, bending,
welding, fabricating, designing. I’m sure that sometimes Dad’s a bit grumpy with him, and sometimes he’s a bit grumpy with me, but we don’t argue as such, and that’s really nice.”
It was not just Luke who wanted in on the action, though. Once she was old enough, Stef went to Frank Hawley’s drag race school in the US to get her NHRA license then immediately set an 8.6sec quarter-mile time. Her racing was put on pause when her son, now aged 4, and daughter now 1, arrived, but she and her husband Ben Fisher – and their children – are now part of the crew.
Stef explains: “I’ve been coming to the track since I was a few months old and I did not even think twice about bringing along my children when they were born, because it’s just what
we’ve always done, and what other families around the sport do too. Last year, when I was six months pregnant, I was still backing dad up from burnouts at the Euro Finals!”
Andy adds: “It is great to have everyone in the garage at races now. Our son is seriously into it and he always wants to work on the car, so we let him do whatever he can to get involved! I guess it just works because that’s what we’ve always done. And even his sister, at six months old, is there with us! You bring kids along and they just tend to get into it.”
The Wallaces
The Wallace family’s involvement in Drag racing came the opposite way around to that of the Robinsons. Bobby, the son of Bob and Sandra, explains: “It all started when my dad and I went to quite a few American car ‘Show and Shine’ events. He then bought a Chevy truck that needed re-spraying, and we ended up meeting a guy who was racing in Super Comp.
“I was 16 at the time and he asked me if I’d like to come along to help and I really enjoyed it, so dad ended up buying a car and I started racing. We are both mechanically minded, so we had a rough idea, asked people in the paddock and picked things up as we went along, breaking stuff, working out why we broke it and then learning from it!”
They stepped up into the Pro ET class in 2012 when Bobby was 19 and the whole family then started to get more involved, with Bobby’s two younger sisters, Annie and Bonnie, both trying their hand in the Junior classes for 8-17-year-olds, which involve child-sized dragsters running to the 1/8th-mile point and reaching speeds up to 85mph in the eldest category.
“It was very much a family affair when we were in Pro ET,” he recalls. “At the time, I would say about half of the people racing had their families around them, with sons and daughters racing in different categories. Annie and Bonnie raced for a couple of years and both loved it, but in the end only Annie really wanted to keep going and move up the levels.
“There was a Mustang on the circuit that she had always loved and when it came up for sale, we got it. She got her license then won the event on the same weekend! She did really well
and we ended up racing in the same category, but we couldn’t run two cars so we never raced in the same event! It’s a shame – that would have been really good match up!”
As was the case with Stef Robinson, Annie’s racing career went on pause when she had her first child. However, also similarly, that did not keep her away from the paddock for long, and she is now back there working on Bobby’s car, along with Bonnie’s boyfriend, who has also been on the Drag racing scene in Street Eliminator for many years.
Meanwhile, Bonnie has not strayed too far from the scene either. “She’s more interested in the catering side, the same as mum and my wife,” says Bobby. “She’s now got her own coffee trailer which she takes to different events and it’s going really well for her – she even had it at the British Grand Prix this year. So, she’s still in the sport, just in a different way.”
