The 2025 Funny Car Cup is a drag racing series comprising four rounds at the world famous Santa Pod Raceway in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.
The championship features a small but select field of racers. Kevin Kent has won the title for the last two years but has missed the first two rounds of 2025.
What is Funny Car
Funny Cars are a type of drag racer that look more like road-going cars than the stereotypical Top Fuel dragsters, but appearances can be deceiving.
The cars feature a light fibreglass or carbon fibre bodyshell, loosely based on a production car, which sits on top of a tube-framed chassis with a hinge at the back that allows the body to be flipped up for easy access to the engine and other mechanical parts.
Funny Cars use the same nitromethane-fulled engines as the Top Fuel dragsters, which can produce upwards of 8,000 horsepower. Funny Cars have a much shorter wheelbase (the distance between the front and rear axles) than Top Fuel, while their engines are placed in front of the driver, as opposed to at the back of the car as with Top Fuel.
This makes the Funny Cars tougher to handle - even on the straight drag racing track.
Races are run either solo or head-to-head and are a pure test of acceleration. From a standing start, the cars blast away down a quarter-mile straight track. A good run will see the cars reach the finish in under five seconds, by which time they will be travelling at over 300mph.
Events
Drag events at Santa Pod feature several different categories of racing, and four of the biggest meetings in 2025 will include a round of the Funny Car Cup. These are:
Festival of Power- 18th - 20th April 2025
FIA Main Event - 23rd - 26th May 2025
Bug Jam – 25th – 27th July 2025
FIA European Finals - 4th - 7th September 2025
Teams
Five teams are entered for the 2025 Funny Car Cup.
Last year's champion Kevin Kent and his West Ten Motorsport team have missed the first two rounds of the competition but are expected to return later in the year.
New Jersey racer Terry Haddock and his Showtime operation lead the standings after the first round and he will feature in the final of round two up against second-placed Steve Ashdown. The head-to-head was moved from May's FIA Main Event to the Bug Jam in July, due to bad weather.
Ashdown's Undertaker Racing were Funny Car Cup champions in 2022.
Haddock's fellow American John Hale is taking in the full season with his One Bad Texan outfit having made his debut in the series last year.
Finally, renowned drag bike racer Dale Leeks makes the switch to four wheels in the cockpit of Hawk Racing's Beast From the East.
Previous Winners
2024 | Kevin Kent |
2023 | Kevin Kent |
2022 | Steve Ashdown |
2019 | Kevin Chapman |
Records
With speed runs lasting under five seconds, the slightest excess wheelspin or correction of the steering wheel can have a huge effect on a driver's final speed, but when everything comes together some phenomenal times are possible.
In April this year at Santa Pod, Terry Haddock broke the European Funny Car record with a run of 4.124 seconds, clocking 307.88mph at the finish line.
In February, American NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) Funny Car world champion Austin Prock clocked 3.791 seconds over 1,000ft at Bradenton Motorsports Park, breaking the previous record by 0.002 seconds.
The fastest speed ever recorded by a Funny Car was the 341.68mph achieved by Bob Tasca III in the Tasca Racing Nitro Mustang Dark Horse car in February 2024.
This article was written by a partner sports writer via Spotlight Sports Group. All odds displayed on this page were correct at the time of writing and are subject to withdrawal or change at any time.
