I was asked by my good pal Ben Lawrence to design a new logo for his drag racing event. It’s pretty much the only air-cooled VW drag racing event in Ireland. The scene over there is refreshingly simple. Basic grass roots racing all weekend, with a show and shine on the Sunday. In it’s third year its growing in numbers and quality every year. The standard of cars and amount of hot VW’s attending this year is looking to be better than ever. What about the men behind the event? Ben and Dave have formed a great friendship and partnership both being hardcore performance addicts. Dave Wheatley is the main man at Bugbitz Performance engineering and campaigns the 200HP Double Cross Race bug. Check out his Facebook page here. Ben I’ve known for nearly 20 years and in that time he’s owned some cool cars. Most notorious probably being the orange twin sliding door, special order (by Lufthansa at Geneva Airport),  21 Window Samba which became the ideal vehicle to tour as ‘DJ Ben’ playing old school funk and house at most of the major VW shows across the continent. I was of course happy enough to be co-pilot on most of these missions leaving a trail of destruction behind us. The bus was ideal as one side door had the speakers kicking and the other was the backstage entrance to the decks. And of course unlimited headroom through the sliding golde sunroof. With thousands of miles under our belts it was time to park the party bus and it was turned back to stock and sold to a collector in The United States. And so we both grew up. Well, slightly anyway. Ben is now resident in Northern Ireland with his beautiful family turning his hand and spare time to a 1956 Oval Bug imported from Sweden. It houses a Bugbitz (and Ben) built 2276cc engine making nearly 200hp on the latest dyno run and regularly runs low 12 second passes at the local race track Bishopscourt.

It’s from regular visits to Bishopscourt that the idea for the Drag Day was born. Started as a one day event it’s now 2 full days of racing with a full line up of entries and some cool exhibition cars too, if you’re based in Ireland or fancy a mission check out the Facebook group for more information. It’s on the 8th and 9th of August at Bishopscourt Airfield Circuit, County Down and is air-cooled only.