"The entire Kirk Motorsport team were more than encouraged by their improved performances at last weekends Springspeed Festival at Shakespeare County Raceway.

Team owner Andy Kirk, wife Barbara, Crew Chief Lee (not at the track but glued to the excellent Eurodragster coverage as well as a mobile phone) as well as stand in crew “Pro Mod” Dave Read, Glenn Walker and Clive Bond (thanks guys, we couldn’t have done it without you) were delighted with a new personal best of 7.612 and the setting of a new class speed record at 181.03 mph.

“Our ETs will have to come down if we are to stand any chance of winning this thing and we are working hard to find the low .50’s that its going to take. We know where we are slow and as soon as we can get Rat Fink™ to 60 feet in some sort of reasonable time then we will be able to run some numbers. Big wheelies and start line antics are fun for the crowd, but they hurt us time wise and you can’t win a championship with a car that goes upwards instead of forwards. However we have some of the best drag racing brains in Europe on the case and I’m sure that it’s only a matter of time and testing.

Power on the other hand is not a problem. Rat Fink™ is not exactly killer in the drag co-efficiency stakes and to run over 181 mph takes plenty of grunt. A combination of an excellent Ultimate Race Cars motor, long hours behind the laptop and the introduction (via Motorshack) of a new fuel adds up to record setting performances. Steve at Motorshack introduced us to the latest VP C23 nitrous fuel from the U.S and we immediately saw a difference. The people at VP specialise in making liquid horsepower and for our 509 nitrous motor to set records we wouldn’t use anything else”

"See you all at the Summer Nationals"

"P.S. Good luck to Danny Cockerill at the Main Event, let's kick some backsides!"