So you find shopping a bit of a drag?

Saturday will be a real drag at Lakeside, but not the boring kind. Two of the fastest cars in the world will be on display on the stage on level one in the shopping centre, from 8am to 7pm.

There will also be a chance to enter a draw, with some lucky shoppers winning tickets to attend the Main Event at the Santa Pod Raceway in Bedfordshire on May 29 to 31, the bank holiday weekend.

Drag racing is the fastest motorsport in the world. The cars on display on Saturday are called funny cars, a name that came into being when the cars -- which can only be entered via the roof -- were decorated with bizarre add-ons.

The decorations were toned down after rules insisted that welding a lawnmower to the fender might not be the safest form of decoration, but the name stuck.

They might be funny by name, but clocking up speeds of 260mph leaves nobody laughing at them.

At the Santa Pod Raceway Britain's Barry Sheavills will be hoping to defend his title of Europe's fastest man, when he takes part in the FIA European Drag Racing Championships.

They will be joined by hundreds of top European drivers vying for prizes in this three-day knock-out event.

With a 5500bhp engine a top driver reaches 100mph in 0.9 seconds on the quarter-mile drag strip. Barry broke the European record last year with 4.96 seconds and has every hope of breaking it again this year.

Burning rubber -- a dragster puts his foot down

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.