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GTI Spring Festival 2005 @ Santa Pod
After waking up at 6 ‘O’ clock, looking at my clock and working out that no, it wasn’t a work day, and yes I did have to get up, I drew my curtains and was greeted to a clear, not quite blue yet, morning sky, 'perfect' I thought with a smile on my bleary eyed face.
I hastily got washed and dressed, gathered the bits and pieces I would need for the day and made my way out the door up the drive and to my car, after a quick check, the previous days cleaning and polishing had finished in the dark, all was well and so off I set to the meeting point for the convoy up to Santa Pod.
Arriving at the BP garage just outside Kelvedon on the A12 I phoned Tom expecting to be told he was still in bed or something, however to my surprise I was told they were just leaving Marks Tey and would be there in about 5 mins. 'Perfect' I thought.
With the boys arriving just in time for me to finish my cup of coffee we made our way onto the A12 and set off proper.
Next meeting point was the A12/M25 junction, again, on time ... things were going well.
Leaving the services though, Mark, (Minty) got left behind at the lights and after a good 20mins of us caning it up the M25 he finally caught us back up, with a rather annoyed look on his face, god knows how quick he must have had to have gone.
After a couple more joined our convoy, now about 8 strong, we plodded (yea right) up to the Toddington services on the M1, already there was quite a gathering of dubs in the car park, and by the time we left there must have been about 40-50 of us all ready and raring for the fun day ahead.
Most people knew the route to Santa Pod as many had been before, however Tom’s sat nav decided to take some people on a quicker route through the back roads, chaos ensued as some people went one way whilst others went the way they thought we should be going, needless to say we all ended up in the right place, just some sooner than others.
After a small time spent queuing, I handed my dough over and was through the gates, the VR6OC crowd milled around just inside the gates to ensure we all got to our club stand together, and soon we were driving through the crowds down the side of the strip to our parking area.
After lining up it was down to the serious business of the day, I decided not to clean my car, it was still looking nice and shiny with no bugs picked up on the way, so I was free to mill around chat to the familiar faces introduce myself to some new faces and generally soak up the atmosphere.
And what an atmosphere it was too, with the sun shining brightly and only a small wind blowing it was already turning into a great day.
I decided to have a watch of the cars going up the strip, and very impressive it was too, with a large quantity of cars putting in 12-13 second runs, this got me in the mood and we decided to book in for a tear up the strip ourselves, after filling in the appropriate forms and handing over the cash we went back to our cars and joined the queue.
My first run was against a mk2 with a VR6 lump, and my poor old heavy mk3 didn’t stand a chance against its light weight rother, I’m sure he had more under the bonnet than he let on, but I would say that wouldn’t I ... lol
Straight back into the queue then for my second and final run, which was a much healthier 15.698 @ 91.2mph.
I was now getting very very hungry, so after parking my car back in the club stand I went for a bite to eat, and after a very tasty double cheese and bacon burger it was time for a proper look around.
There were plenty of stalls to look at selling all number of lights, grills, exhausts and the like. Also there were quite a few auto jumbles for people to hunt through looking for that special part that they just can’t find anywhere.
It was time to go and look at the cars in the show and shine, and particularly Justin’s (binliner) and Pete’s (pedrox) fine mk3’s, and wow can only be said at this point. In the three months between crashing his last car and getting the new syncro Justin’s efforts are astounding and he quite deservedly won the trophy. There was a constant stream of people with their heads in his engine bay.
Time was getting on, and after watching quite a few more runs up the strip we were deciding that it was about time to make the long trek home.
All of a sudden there was a funny noise and a cloud of white smoke appeared, looking up the strip a white mk2 had decided it didn’t like its radiator fluid anymore and spat it out over the track much to everyone’s annoyance as even with a couple of attempts with the jet heater the track couldn’t be dried properly so only single races were now available.
Once the remaining cars in the queue had had their turn there was just time for the firefox jet car to have one more burst up the strip, getting up to a very respectable 220 something mph and doing the ¼ mile in about 7.5 secs, as well as hurting everyone’s ears in the process.
And that drew the day to a close; the cruise home was just that ... a cruise, which my petrol tank was very glad of, it’s not often that I can watch my miles/gallon meter going up.
I got home and felt absolutely knackered, but 'perfect' I thought.
Show report and pictures by Pituff
Gallery From The GTI Spring Festival 2005 Show >>>
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