We turned up at 9.15am. After some time spent shooting the breeze with some other Westie drivers we went to sign on. While signing on our friend James Dudfield turned up in his SEiGHT, signed on, and made 2 passes before we even got back to our cars. He banged in a couple of mid-high twelves and things were looking good. There would be 5 V8 Westfields running (me, James, Stuart, Phil and Jon) with power ranging from 281HP to 333HP. Keith and I joined the short queue and Keith commented how it would be nice to have some easy opposition for the first run. I lined up next to a Honda Prelude. Keith had a Honda Civic, or Sucdic as the SDMC Chat Forum members know them. Not wishing to embarrass myself I just did a short wheelspin to clean the tyres on the way to the line. As I waited for the Honda to stage I held the engine at 2500rpm and wondered how fast he would be. One thing you soon learn at a RWYB is never to underestimate the other cars! The ambers came on and I dropped the clutch. There was quite lot of wheelspin all the way through 2^nd gear (in which I start) and most of the way through 3^rd. I watched the Honda in my side mirror as it shrunk rapidly even though it was running faster than an Escort Cosworth. I queued up for another run straight away and then went to collect my ticket. Probably about 13 seconds I thought. You can imagine my surprise when the ticket showed my first ever sub 2.0 second 60ft and a ¼ mile time just 0.1 seconds off my PB! Keith had run a low 13 second pass compared to his PB of 13.0/110. This was it. I knew that we would be getting some PBs today.

By lunchtime things were looking interesting. 3 of the V8 Westfields and Keith had all recorded PBs. I had a 12.3/113 in the bag, but James also had a 12.3 PB, only his was 0.004 seconds quicker than mine! Keith’s rear tyres had been at 28psi as a tyre centre had recently refitted them, so he lowered them to 23psi as he felt there was a bit too much wheelspin over the first 60ft. He then managed an incredible 12.7/112 and blew off one of the Westies on A032Rs in a side by side race – and he was using list 1A tyres on the Ginetta!

At lunchtime a few more V8 Westfields turned up to spectate. James Lambert wouldn’t be running as he was halfway through installing a nitrous oxide kit to his car in order to add another 150HP to the existing 250HP. David Northey had a veritable mini bar strapped to his spare wheel – Pimms, gin, red or white wine, lemonade, coke and soft drinks. James’ fiancé came along with enough food to feed an army. This was fun with a capital F. After lunch it was back to business. An interesting point was that even after a few glasses of red wine my reaction times were no different to the morning!

Half way through the afternoon Keith went to take some photos of me on the strip. In order to get a good photo I did a really long burnout until the tyres were smoking like a bonfire. Up to the line, 2400rpm, drop the clutch on the ambers and after just a few car lengths I felt the tyres hook. I immediately went to full throttle and the car just took off like a rocket with hardly any wheelspin. Shifting to 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th right at peak revs I glanced at the rev counter as I went through the line. 5400rpm was my highest through the finish so far. I knew this would be good. The start was my best and the finish speed was my best. As I queued up for the next run Keith came over. Bad news - he had missed my smoking burnout with the camera. Good news – I had just done a 12.1! He ran over to get my ticket and it showed a ballistic 1.8 second 60ft time and nearly 114 mph over the line. With a time so close to the exclusive 11 second club I was severely tempted to remove the windscreen and see if I could find the last few tenths, however there was only an hour or so left and I would only get about 2 tries so I decided it was too much hassle – maybe next time…

During the afternoon Stuart also managed a PB. The final scores on the doors looked like this:

Apart from Jon’s poor 60ft time I think his engine must have been off as he has previously managed 116 mph through the lights albeit with a 13.2 second time.

The day wasn’t entirely incident free for these ultra-reliable kit-cars(!). I suffered a broken fan relay early in the day, which took a while to rewire. James lost 2 fan belts and his ECU came loose in its socket. Stuart, spurred on by his PB, pressed so hard on the throttle on his next run that he snapped it off at the top of the pedal! He had to drive 50 miles home with only a brake and clutch! This was accomplished by setting the idle speed to 3000rpm.

As usual there were a bunch of interesting cars there. There was a standard BMW M3 like Colin Rodger’s which was doing mid 14s, a standard looking Metro GTa complete with rusty rear arches that was faster than a Sierra Cosworth and a Mark III Cortina with around 2000HP that was running 9.1s even when cruising over the second 1/8^th. There was an immaculate Audi S4 that looked outwardly standard, but had no interior at all and was running high 12s at about 110 mph. And, as usual, there were dozens of Renault 5 turbos, Novas and Japanese hatchbacks in various states of tune.

If this has whetted your appetite then there are still some RWYBs left this year in September and October – have a look at www.santapod.com .