Wallace tops Andy & Bobby show as Robinson takes title
The STP National Finals became the Andy & Bobby show – Andy Robinson carried off 2022’s Motorsport UK British Drag Racing Championship while Bobby Wallace scored his maiden race victory.
Robinson has raced Pro Modifieds for longer than Wallace has lived, having arrived on the scene when Pro Mod first materialised in the late 1980s. In the 16 years since the British series adopted Pro Mod as its designated class, Robinson has worn the championship crown eight times. As a measure of his ascendancy, twice-champion Kevin Slyfield is the only other competitor to have donned it more than once.
Robinson opened his National Finals account with a blistering 5.903s/245.15mph qualifier, which secured top speed of the event and promised to snare low elapsed time, too. Wallace struggled, qualifying only sixth with a pair of sevensecond ETS. Wallace had arrived fresh from finishing runner-up at the European Finals a fortnight earlier as the family-based
Wallace Motorsport team continues extracting impressive performance gains from the unblown, nitrous oxide-boosted, 14.8-litre behemoth crammed beneath the 2017 Camaro’s bonnet.
Eliminations were a different matter, however. Wallace first beat Dutch entrant Michel Tooren, 5.948s/240mph to Tooren’s 5.977s/242mph. Slyfield’s crew then thrashed to repair engine damage before facing Wallace in a semi-final that would determine second place in the championship, but came up short. Wallace’s tyre-shaking, swerving 6.158s effort would have left him vulnerable to a full-tilt Slyfield but Slyfield shook even harder, ushering Wallace to his second consecutive final round.
Two weeks earlier, Wallace had misjudged the tune-up against newly crowned FIA
European champion Jan Ericsson and slowed to defeat. This time his opponent was newly crowned British champion Robinson, whom Wallace had narrowly beaten on the way to that European final.
Mindful, perhaps, that his young rival is now a match for any racer in Europe, Robinson unusually red-lit, triggering instant disqualification. Assured of victory, Wallace could have eased to the finish, but instead unleashed a 5.882s pass at 242mph, not only lowest elapsed time of the event but a career-best clocking too. We now wait until Easter for the Andy & Bobby show’s next episode.