BADD finale washed out; Johnson wins the title

While members of the Barbados Association of Dragsters and Drifters (BADD) were looking forward to a thrilling climax to the Club’s seventh season last Sunday (November 26), Mother Nature had other ideas. Launch Control 4, the club’s first Championship event to run under Bushy Park’s new all-arena lighting, was just getting into its stride, with 45 drivers recording qualifying times and an eager crowd building . . . just three runs in to the Eliminations, however, torrential rains, which had already tested the skills of competitors and organisers in the final round of the Barbados Rally Club’s (BRC) Championship the previous evening, caused the event to be abandoned.

Nine drivers stood a mathematical chance of winning the 2017 BADD Drivers Championship trophy, to succeed Reigning Champion Jeremy Greenidge, with regular English visitor Dan Johnson in his locally-built electric-powered Westfield ‘MegaWatt’ the leader on 354 points. In terms of points, the fnal was cancelled, as so few races were run before the rains, meaning that Johnson is the new BADD Champion Driver.

Club Chairman Jason Downey said: “I want to say huge thank you to the massive crowd that turned up last night, and to the drivers who came out and shattered entry records. There were 11 cars in the 7-second class and five cars in the 6-second class; 16 cars under 7-seconds is absolutely unheard of. The guys have really upped their game in 2017! It was a real shame the rain came and ended it, but we had still seen some great action during qualifying . . . and those drifters did an awesome job in entertaining the crowd while we built the trees and again after the rain.”

The Club also tested its newly-acquired digital scoreboards. Downey: “We will meet BPCI to work on a safe location to erect the fixtures for the signs, which are wireless and powered by a car battery, making them very portable. We are trying to find a location that they can be seen by both the 4x4 parking and the spectators on the hill”.