My Partner, David Knight, and I were walking around a minor meeting at Santa Pod. We always like to have a close look at the originality and workmanship that goes into the many cars and bikes that are somebody’s pride and joy.

There were two guys working on a drab little old dragster that was well past its sell-by date. It was what was going on in the bit where the engine should be that caught our attention. Lots of high-pressure bottles and hoses and a straight bit, about a metre long, that was mysterious in its function. “What’s that?” we asked, pointing to the mysterious bit.
“A rocket”
“What does it run on?”
“Plastic and laughing gas”

We were hooked.

David has been involved in drag racing since Santa Pod started. He knows all the people, and all the history, having worked on many of the famous cars. Stories of ‘Slammin Sammy Miller’ are his favourites. Sammy was the rocket car man. Anybody messing around with rockets got our approval and support.

On one test day, at a ‘Run What Yer Brung’ the Public address commentator at the track was wondering out loud what the car was, as we pushed it to the line. Then the car went.
“F Hell it’s a rocket. The guy’s strapped a rocket to his arse and took off!!”
Forgive the expletive undeleted, but that’s exactly what he said over the loudspeakers.

The crowd loved it.

I gradually got to know Charles Berg, the man behind the project. I helped out here and there, finding a few much-needed chassis parts, and being the odd-job person on the crew. The little car was spectacular – lots of noise and a huge white-hot flame coming out of the back.

It wasn’t really that quick, but every time it ran, Charles seemed to get a bit more out of this strange rocket motor. My first suggestion was to put a two-tube motor in. But the chassis simply wasn’t up to it. Charles finally broke into the 12-second bracket in August 2003.

At the time, I was doing a lot of work with Knut Soderquist, one of the top men in ‘top fuel’ drag racing in Europe. We both agreed that a bigger car with more and bigger rockets, with professional engineering standars, would be a great thing to build. Knut and I started on building a chassis that was up to the job. We rapidly realized that we needed four, more powerful, rockets to get to that magic 300mph that all truly fast dragsters do.

While the build was going on, my partner, David Knight was diagnosed with a nasty brain-tumour. Over that year, David had seven brain operations and did his very best to die several times. I kept sane by staying busy building the car.

David didn’t die –he’s just not that easy to kill! As he recovered we pressed on, experimenting, testing, making changes, inventing new systems, until. Late in 2007 we got the car to run reliably at full power.