Of 312 drivers and riders entered for Santa Pod Raceway’s Easter weekend Festival of Power, 55 are women and girls. Drag racing’s gender-equality profile distinguishes it from other forms of motorsport, which struggle to field female participants, and the profile applies to all classes on the track, from Junior Dragster and Dragbike competitors right up to the stars of Top Fuel.
The Top Fuel dragster match race heading the Festival of Power program is a prime example – female versus male, head-to-head in ground-shaking, 300 mph racing machines. Sweden’s Susanne Callin and Britain’s Liam Jones will limber up for the FIA European Championship, which starts in May in a tussle for early-season primacy.
Callin was once Europe’s first 300 mph teenager, then spent 14 years away pursuing family life before returning to the track in 2019. Her daughters will step up from the Junior Dragster ranks this season. All compete under Santa Pod’s Slick Tricks Racing banner.
Jones, Britain’s foremost Top Fuel racer of the past decade, returns to action after a break piloting a car sporting the livery of Bro Joe, a new coffee brand. The Yorkshireman and his Norwegian partner, Maja Udtian, are a unique couple: both are 3-second, 300 mph Top Fuel stars and former rivals on the track. Indeed, Maja’s career-best figures, 3.806 at 316.55 mph, are marginally quicker and faster than her partner’s, a gap he’ll no doubt want to close early on.
By contrast, the opening round of the Funny Car Cup is an all-male affair. “Funny Car” is a misnomer: there is nothing amusing about these machines. They share the same nitro-burning, 10,000-horsepower engines as their Top Fuel counterparts, but crammed into a short wheelbase beneath a lightweight, replica body. They are notoriously hard to handle. A pair of Texans take on a British duo, one a seasoned Funny Car handler, the other an accomplished dragbike racer making his four-wheeled debut.
Last year, Texan Terry Haddock tuned a Swedish driver to Europe’s first 300 mph Funny Car speed achieved over today’s 1,000-foot racing distance. Now the Swedish car has a new British owner, and Haddock will drive as well as tune it, as he does at home in America’s NHRA series.
Fellow Texan John Hale drives a colorful machine dubbed One Bad Texan (they love their car names, not numbers, in drag racing). Steve Ashdown flies the flag for Britain in The Undertaker, having won the Funny Car Cup in 2022. The Funny Car novice, Dale Leeks, is a British dragbiker with an American championship under his belt, earned last year in the Xtreme Dragbike Association’s Pro Xtreme division.
Keeping up the decibels, though of a different timbre, the Jet Car Challenge is a smoke-flame-thunder annual favorite at the Festival of Power, while uproarious Pro Mods launch 2025’s Motorsport UK British Drag Racing Championship. Supporting the programme are full UK national championship rounds for cars and motorcycles. Paddock access is free and open – a close-up view of the pitside action is all part of the show.
The Festival of Power is an event for all the family – championship drag racing on the track and all manner of entertainment alongside. The Festival takes place over Easter weekend, from Friday, April 18th to Sunday, April 20th (not Easter Monday).
Tickets are bookable only online or by phone – visit https://santapodtickets.com/ or telephone the Box Office at 01234 782828. Full event information can be found at https://santapod.co.uk/festival-of-power.php.
This story was originally published on April 9, 2025. 
