Funny Car Cup

The 2022 season will see the return to track action for the ever-popular Nitro Funny Cars. Competition will take place over 4 rounds at Santa Pod Raceway, we’ve dropped the European element from the previous name and rebranded the series as the Funny Car Cup. Taking part this year will be 4 Brits: Ashdown, Chapman, Phelps, and Kent, with the addition of Swede, Patrick Pers. There is also a surprise for later in the season when West Ten Motorsport field a second car, driver to be confirmed.

2023 Events:

• Festival of Power - 7th - 9th April 2023
• FIA Main Event - 27th - 29th May 2023
• Bug Jam – 21st – 23rd July 2023
• FIA European Finals - 8th - 10th September 2023

2023 Points:

Funny Cars originated in 1960s America when venturesome drag racers began merging nitro-burning dragster powertrains with passenger-car bodies and created an instant sensation. Originally dubbed Factory Experimentals, their altered wheelbases and protruding engine parts made them look ‘kinda funny’, commentators said, and the description stuck. The emphasis lies firmly on ‘funny peculiar’, not ‘funny ha-ha’.

Modern Funny Cars still share the same engines as Top Fuel Dragsters, nitromethane-fuelled powerplants packing an 8,000-horsepower punch. Funny Car bodies sit on tube framed chassis and hinge at the back to allow access to the engine and drivers seat, their composite-material bodies might nowadays bear just a slim resemblance to the production cars on which they are modelled, but production-car bodies are not designed to hit 300mph in five seconds flat from a standing start. Channelling such groundshaking force through a short wheelbase makes a Funny famously hard to handle – the racetrack may be straight but the cars often have other ideas.