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23:00

Good evening and welcome to our summary of today's Run What You Brung brought to you in association with American Car Imports.

It was a dry, sunny and warm day at Santa Pod today but the roster of racers was surprisingly small given the size of the race next weekend.

The first racer to venture out today was Pro ET racer Gino Bernadine. His first pass was a 10.4424/135.67 followed by a 10.0885/136.54. Gino then trailered out after lunch, hopefully no problems. UK National Pro ET Champion Mick Howling put in a 9.6870/137.38 test run in Grumpy's Dodge before giving a brace of passenger rides, the second of which ended prematurely with an electrical failure. Problem cured the passenger had another ride and satisfaction was guaranteed with a high nine-second pass. The wheel of Grumpy's Dodge was then taken by Eurodragster.com Pit reporter Simon; his lesson was curtailed due to time lost to the electrical problem but Simon still managed a best of 14.1709/102.58 on his third gentle familiarisation pass. Simon will be returning for his full-on passes at a later date.

The only Pro racer to run today was Danish Top Methanol FC racer Dan Larsen who was running a stack of new parts including a new block. The first run was quite entertaining from the outside as the tyres were alternately puffing smoke and then gripping and then at the eighth the Stratus turned so far left that from the start line we could read the GTX on its left side. Dan got off the throttle at that point and the pass was 7.7732/113.35. Dan subsequently told us that the computer had not been switched on for that pass. Dan's second of two runs today was much more like it, a visibly conservative tune-up but still a very nice 5.9101/241.12 shut off slightly early.

One of the stars of the show today was Eric Monsenego who brought his stunning Super Pro ET Cuda all the way from France. The Cuda sports a 572 ci naturally-aspirated Keith Black running on C16; the chassis was originally constructed by Andy Robinson Race Cars in 1996 but Eric had to put construction on hold whilst he developed his business. Eric made two runs today, both preceded by storming burnouts from which Eurodragster.com Pit Reporter Kirstie and Honorary Staff member Spencer Tramm saw him back as he was short on crew. And how about this for Super Pro-winning consistency: 8.3052/162.49 and 8.3049/162.48.

Super Street Bike Grahams Balchin and Dance had varying levels of success with their runs. Graham B made four passes of 11.7760/79.00, 9.4643/114.20, 8.8648/163.09, and 15.5766/54.43. Your reporter saw three of Graham's four runs and they were more or less rolling burnouts. Graham D's three passes were 8.8085/154.74, 8.4919/160.19, and 8.4216/164.25. I am not an expert but G's runs sounded and looked effortless and I am guessing they were baseline passes. We did get a whiff of nitro from a bike today, courtesy of John Hunt who usually crews on Rene van den Berg's Top Fuel Bike and whose daughter Rosie contested Junior Dragster. Some very easy-looking passes for John: 9.9062/116.85, 9.4365/146.27 and 9.4312/148.13.

Kev Marshall made a couple of runs on his 8.50 Bike which were 10.6484/124.57 and 9.1511/145.35. Finally on two wheels, Joe Elliott made a total of seven runs on his Supertwin Gas Buell and some of those were pretty consistent with one another: 9.9161/136.94, 9.8572/137.45, 9.8580/137.37, 9.8244/137.38, 10.0523/136.59, 9.7910/138.25, 9.7807/139.07 and 9.7446/138.54

Junior Dragster racer Zak Johnson made five passes: 7.9102/83.47, 8.545/83.78, 7.8858/84.08, 7.9789/83.02 and 7.8365/83.47. The first three runs featured red lights but Zak pulled a nice 0.0155 RT on his fourth pass.

Dave Raper put in four runs in his Super Comp/Super Gas 'Vette, two in each trim, and one of each of the two was pretty close to index: 9.0185/151.16, 9.9196/147.66, 9.8663/148.19 and 8.9566/151.60. Dave looks very confident in the car and I noticed that his team are very well co-ordinated on the start line.

Tomorrow's Peak Performance Day has a much larger entry list of racers and we will be reporting live, so tune back to Eurodragster.com in the morning. You can check out today's thirty-picture Photo Gallery via the Event Index page.