THERE was plenty of activity at Stratford-upon-Avon's Shake-speare County Raceway last weekend when hundreds of hot rodding enthusiasts desc-ended on the Long Marston venue for the NSRA's annual Hot Rod Drags.

Everywhere you looked, reproduced look-a-likes, restored originals and fascinating new cars were all mixed and matched to recreate drag racing as it was in days gone by.

From the many passes made on the Warwickshire quarter-mile, the quickest of the weekend was the Wirral's Pete Radcliffe and his Burn-ing Desire Model T altered dragster.

Powered by a monstrous seven-litre supercharged V8 Pete, along with his 18-year-old daughter Faye who maintains the engine, pounded the track in 8.284 seconds.

Quickest Gasser was Jimmy Hibberd's 1933 Willys Coupe called the 'Boston Brawler with a weekend's best of 9.975 seconds at 132 mph.

Swindon's Pete Ash-worth was also overjoyed with the weekend when he pushed his seven-litre Chevy V8 engined 1948 Ford Popular through its paces with an awarding 8.91 second elapsed time at 149 mph.

Even the kids are allo-wed to get involved with miniature versions of classic hot rods.

Powered by tiny Honda bike engines, Ryan Stacey and his very photogenic orange 'Pro Mod' roadster ran quarter-mile time of 26 seconds at 50 mph.