THE planned patriotic flag waving race for the returning Wildside Inc Top Fuel Dragster team turned into a most expensive parts destroying weekend for car owners John and Lesley Wright at Shakespeare County Race-way's holiday drag races.

For driver Darryl Bradford it was a particularly bitter pill to swallow as the young racer wanted to impress against teacher and mentor Smax Smith in the opposing 6000bhp dragster.

The first, and only match up, accrued on Sunday in a rather bizarre starting line muddle.

"I did my usual routine after the burnout of putting my visor down and putting the secondary fuel pump lever on," said a bemused Brad-ford. "When I looked up the lights had stared their sequence before I was ready."

Smax, unbeknown to him, had already staged the 'Purple Loans' sponsored entry ready for his green light and crossed the finishing stripe in 6.874 seconds after hitting tyre shake at half track.

Bradford's tale of woe continued the next morning when, on warm-up in the pits, an intake valve went for a walk inside the expensive nitro fuelled V8 engine destroying pistons and a cylinder head on route.

Aston Cantlow's Nick Stephenson, who campaigns a fuel injected eight-litre Chevrolet Corvette, found himself on route to the Super Pro ET final after a string higheight second flyers.

After burning out the tyres in the final against Wayne Nicholson's similar powered but BMW bodied racer, the local racer found that the braking system wasn't operating properly and decided to sit out the potential 160mph shoot-out.

In the first ever 'kids' Junior Drag Bike final, Worcester's top qualifier Dan Baldwin failed to get his little 125cc Yamaha powered bike to start despite the valiant efforts of the staging lane marshals.

This left 12-year-old Jennifer Hurcombe to take the historic win on her 124cc Kawasaki drag bike.