We’re a UK-based Drag Racing team and we race our Blown Alcohol Slingshot Dragster, Dorris Dormouse, in the UK National Drag Race Championships. We are looking for help and support in racing our dragster this year.

Our goals

We aim to improve upon our personal best during this season, to do reasonably well in the National Championship, to put on a great show and also to have a lot of fun!

Long-term? We aim to continue Dorris’ development into the quickest Blown Alcohol Slingshot Dragster built in the UK. This record is currently held by Norm Wheeldon and Herb Andrews with the Plan X car and was set at 6.85 seconds over the quarter mile over thirty years ago. There are several other slingshot’s in development that will be able to challenge for this achievement.

Who we are

The founding members of our team have had a passion for Drag Racing since attending our first meeting in 1993. At that point our owner-driver, Dave Nelson, was around 11 years old and was literally blown off his feat by a Top Fuel Dragster – drag racing has been a big part of his life ever since.

In the early 2000’s Dave started to race, initially with a 998cc Mini at RWYB meetings before Dave and his dad John bought an unfinished slingshot dragster and completed it while Dave was at university. The car was raced with minor success for a year before it was retired and a new car build was initiated at the end of the 2005 season.

Building Dorris Dormouse

Dave continued to race in a variety of cars until mid-2007 when the slingshot dragster – Dorris Dormouse MK1 – was completed. The car went on to run a personal best of 8.443 @ 157.55mph with its 9 litre alcohol injected engine. In 2012 the team decided to build its dream car, a new lightweight slingshot dragster powered by a Supercharged Alcohol Big Block Chevrolet engine with around 1200 hp that could be developed into the fastest ever built in Britain.

The realisation of this dream took around a year. It was a hard year with a lot of time, money, blood, sweat and tears spilled and a huge amount of time in the garage by John, Dave and the team.

Since then the team has debuted the car and started working on its development, with a few new car blues and, due to budget, not as much track time as we have needed. The car has visited several shows, including static displays at Coventry Motofest (due to bring 200000 motoring enthusiasts to Coventry) and Atherstone Car Show – at which it has drawn big crowds, been filmed and photographed and even been on the radio. The car has also previously taken part in 0-60 sprints at Trax and Ford Fair shows at Silverstone – with 18,000 motoring enthusiasts attending each event.

It has also completed a fire burnout, with video footage becoming an online hit around the world. The team has been featured in online magazines and photos of the car have made several car magazines. We have fans from all over the world including Scandinavia and America.

Why Dorris needs you

Running a car like this is no mean feat and requires alot of time and money by the team who are currently completely self-funded. Running the car at shows and races is a costly business with fuel and oil costs at about £250 for one weekend’s racing, without any of the additional costs such as basic maintenance (a set of connecting rods, for example, has to be replaced every 150 runs at a cost of around £1,000), getting the car and team to the track (around £100 per meeting) and also tyres (a pair of rear tyres costs over £600), and £150-£200 in entry fees and electric for every event.

We’re hoping that we can find supporters and potential advertising partners who can help us keep the car on track and allow us more track time so that we may continue to develop her towards our end goal.

What Dorris can do for you

Dorris’ attention grabbing nature draws large crowds of people at each event we attend, which makes her a great advertising platform. See below anticipated attendance figures for some of the meetings we hope to attend at Santa Pod during the year.

There are many other possibilities for sponsorship above and beyond the packages shown here. Contact Dave at [email protected] to discuss.

This could include Prominent Car Sponsorship with possibilities for the car to appear at your event, advertising signs around the car in the pits or at events, or possible hospitality at events at Santa Pod.

Thanks for reading Dorris Dormouse’s story. Just doing that and spreading the word is big help, but we’d love to have you on board as a paid-up supporter too. Check out the rewards on the right.

Santa Pod anticipated attendance:

• Festival of Power – 18,000
• FIA The Main Event – 25,000
• Dragstalgia – 9,000
• FIA Euro Finals – 30,000
• Flame & Thunder – 20,000