Member Inducted 2006
Tony Densham
History
Tony Densham was involved in drag racing from the very early
days racing in the 1963 Drag Fests in his 1500 ford dragster
The Worden. In 1964 in ran a best of 11.32 in the same car
at RAF Kemble and he continued to race the car at events on
temporary tracks across Britain. With the opening of Santa Pod in
1966 British drag racers had a permanent track to race on and Tony
won the Top Eliminator class in his blown 1500 cc dragster with a
12.32/122 at the opening event.
At the August event Tony drove a new car, the Golden Hind,
a seven-litre Ford powered dragster which was originally the
Harvey Aluminium Special which was driven by American
Mickey Thompson. In 1963 the car would later evolve into the famous
Commuter. In 1967 Tony slowly got to grips with the car's
power, and at the Records Weekend at Evington set a new two-way
average record of 8.915. He also took the standing 500 metre record
with a two-way average of 11.20.
At the Santa Pod Easter meeting in 1968 Tony set a new low ET mark
with a 9.052, and then ran the first eight second pass at the
August event at Santa Pod with an 8.891/173 and later at the same
event ran a fantastic 8.459 to become the quickest racer in Europe.
Also in the same year at Santa Pod he raced Rex Sluggett in the
first side-by-side nine-second race in Britain. In May 1969 Tony
lowered the record to 8.228 at Santa Pod.
Tony ran a disputed 205 mph pass in Commuter at Santa Pod
in September 1970, the first 200 run by a British car. The dragster
was set up with bigger tyres and gear ratio for an attempt on the
flying kilometre record at Elvington the following weekend. This
attempt was successful as he set the record at 207 mph.
In 1971 Tony became the second drag racer to be awarded the RAC
Malcolm Campbell trophy and in the same year drove the new
Firefly front-engined Top Fuel car which was not only
stunning to look at but was alleged to be the most powerful car
outside the USA. Tony's driving career came to an end in 1972 when
he announced his retirement from driving Firefly which was
handed over to Allan Herridge.