Sunday 27th March
Every time someone claims the modified car scene is dead, something like this happens, and it’s clear it’s bigger than ever. The Marangoni Fast Show at Santa Pod Raceway broke all records in 2011. It was the biggest Fast Show since the event started. In fact, it was the biggest 1-day event in Santa Pod’s history! Read the report below and view more photos on the 2011 Gallery page.
The weekend started with the Saturday Run What Ya Brung day, and plenty of people took the opportunity to come up a day early, get settled in, hit the track and of course experience a night in the Ministry of Sound-hosted Pod Palais! The tunes went on until late and as things hotted up in the club, the chill of the night air was forgotten about.
Sunday morning broke unexpectedly, as the clocks changed and everyone lost an hour of precious sleep. But a hit of caffeine later and the Marangoni Fast Show was go! Thousands of cars flooded in through the gates, filling the club display areas and a huge part of the main parking field. This was gonna be a biggie!
By 9.30am, the track was open to Run What Ya Brung’ers. Things stayed hectic on the track all day, with some great times set. Most notably, our non-road-legal class winner was driving a normally-aspirated car, which is believed to be the quickest ever FWD n/a car in the UK after this outing. Also of note was Jo Elliot’s 9-second run on his Buell, which is believed to be a world record for that type of machine. The RWYB competition ran all day Saturday, and until late on Sunday, and so it was only after an arduous battle that the following winners rose to the top:
In addition to the above winners, we also had an Eibach prize-draw winner who won a sweet suspension kit for his Mazda RX8. Congratulations to Adam Lister!
By 10am on Sunday, the Show & Shine area was full too. We’re sorry we had to turn away so many great cars, but we just ran out of space too quickly!
However, the following cars were worthy winners:
Best Of Show - Tony Nelson
Ford Fiesta Zetec S
This comprehensively modded Fiesta has been around for a few years now, and the in-yer-face styling may not be to everyone’s tastes, but this car was looking better than ever, with perfect paint, blended bodywork and very tidy interior. Ambitious mods done to perfection. |
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Top 5 - Nick Brown
Honda Civic Coupe
A stunning whiter-than-white civic, with custom rear subframe, Spoon performance engine, PC install and custom red leather interior. A great looking car and a real contender. |
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Top 5 - Warren Selby
Citroen Saxo VTS
Another comprehensively modded pure show car, with a complex candy orange paint scheme, custom bodywork and great interior. |
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Top 5 - Ben Koracevic
Ford Fiesta MK6
This vinyl-wrapped Fiesta was all about the ICE, with a huge audio install and mad custom interior. |
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Top 5 - Sharon Holmes
Citroen C2
A striking silver and pink paintjob that ran throughout the car also featured detailed airbrushing artwork. A spectacular ICE install finished the interior off. |
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Judges Choice - Chris Antcliffe
Austin Metro
The judges loved the audacity of this car. Whilst most Metros have been neglected, scrapped or left to rot, this little stunner has been lovingly restored to almost showroom condition. The bright yellow paint was two-fingers-up to the haters! |
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The lovely Nuts girls combined with the energetic Richie Don to make a great combo on the Nuts stage, but that all moved aside at 2pm for the Miss Fast Show competition. 18 stunning girls took to the stage, but only one would walk away victorious. After four gruelling rounds of swearing, sock-pulling, box-biting and sausage-riding, we found our winner, and as luck would have it, she was bloody beautiful too. Congratulations go to Jeavon Gill from Peterborough.
Back on track, there was the serious business of the Euro Sports Compact drag series to contend with. These are the quickest modified cars of their type in Europe, and new personal bests made a great start to the season. A full race report will be made available shortly, but in the meantime, congratulations to the following winners:
Thanks go out to Marangoni for supporting the show and therefore the whole modified car scene. They were there with all their latest tyres, buddies from Kwik-Fit and also some beautiful girls with lovely big space-hoppers. Brave contestants who wanted to take on the big bouncers took to the mini-dragstrip and had timed runs – whoever went the fastest got a free trip down the real dragstrip in the amazing 170mph twin-seat dragster! Congratulations go out to James Hall who was the lucky prize-winner.
Also at the Marangoni Fast Show was the Live Action Arena, which hosted Drew Thornton driving the thundering Podzilla Monster Truck, the beast from Basildon, along with Terry Grant in his superb stunt show and the gorgeous Chesca Miles making her debut performance with partner Alstar Tompkins. There were a few bumps in the first show but the crowds got behind Chesca and by the 2nd show they put on a flawless performance with a special guest performer all the way from France. The handling track provided some great entertainment for both those that took part and the spectators. It was a fantastic drive from Bradley Foulstone in his Peugeot 106 that took the win with some fantastic handbrake sliding action which resulted in the car being up on 2 wheels at one point. Full leaderboard on the Handling page.
If you were caught in traffic either on your way in or out of the event, we apologise for the delay and thank you for your patience. There are limited exits from the site, and the sheer weight of traffic caused things to slow down considerably. Once again, we apologise and hope this did not spoil an otherwise excellent day at the Pod. See you back at the track soon!
Thanks to everyone who took the time to undertake the long journey to Santa Pod Raceway. You made the Marangoni Fast Show the best yet! Thanks to all the clubs who also supported the show and put on a great display.
View more photos are on the 2011 Gallery page.
The Marangoni Fast Show 2011 will be filmed for TV and a half hour show broadcast on Motor TV on Friday 15th April at 9:30pm and British Eurosport 1 on Saturday 16th April at 3pm.
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