The Santa Pod Raceway’s Festival of Power will see 55 females take to the track, amongst the 312 drivers and riders confirmed for the long weekend. Drag racing has a heightened gender-equality profile, applying across all classes Junior Dragster and Dragbike competitors right up to the stars of Top Fuel.

The Top Fuel Dragster match race heading the Festival of Power programme is a prime example – female versus male, head-to-head in ground-shaking, 300mph racing machines. Sweden’s Susanne Callin and Britain’s Liam Jones will limber up for the FIA European Championship which starts in May in a tussle for early-season primacy.

Once Europe’s first 300mph teenager, Callin returned to the track in 2019. Her daughters step up from the Junior Dragster ranks this season. All compete under Santa Pod’s Slick Tricks Racing banner.

Jones, Britain’s foremost Top Fuel racer of the past decade, returns to action after a break piloting a car sporting the livery of Bro Joe, a new coffee brand. The Yorkshireman and his Norwegian partner, Maja Udtian, are a unique couple: both are 3-second, 300mph Top Fuel stars, and former rivals on the track. Indeed, Maja’s career-best figures, 3.806sec/316.55mph, are marginally quicker and faster than her partner’s, a gap he’ll no doubt want to close early on.

By contrast, the opening round of the Funny Car Cup is an all-male affair. ‘Funny Car’ is a misnomer: there is nothing amusing about these machines. They share the same nitro-burning, 10,000-horsepower engines – notoriously hard to handle. A pair of Texans take on a British duo, one a seasoned Funny Car handler, the other an accomplished dragbike racer making his four-wheeled debut.

Keeping up the decibels, though of a different timbre, the Jet Car Challenge is a smoke-flame-thunder annual favourite at the Festival of Power, while uproarious Pro Mods launch 2025’s Motorsport UK British Drag Racing Championship.

The Festival of Power takes place over Easter weekend, from Friday 18 to Sunday 20 April.

Motorsport UK is committed to increasing female participation within the sport, as a competitor, volunteer or within the industry by raising awareness of the huge range of opportunities available to women and promoting gender equality in motorsport to the general public.

From the recent launch of our Girls Karting Academy to joining our established Girls on Track community, or even trying out HillClimbing with the British Women Racing Driver’s Club, find out more here.