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Wow, I had fun!! The car didn't miss a beat all weekend. I reckon I put 80 litres of fuel through it, and I certainly did a fair bit of driving: Cruising: The best bit of the weekend, this is the chance you don’t get on the street to flog the crap out of your car, and get away with it. I had most fun doing power skids out of the chicanes, and racing other entrants… Burnout Comp: I went in it twice. Saturday I wanted to have a go at qualifying. I put my girlfriend CC in the passenger seat and ripped it up. Made heaps of smoke and wrecked tyres, but they didn't blow before the 1 minute limit, so I missed out on 10 points because of that. I had a ball though!! On Sunday I wanted to have another go as my Saturday effort wasn't enough to qualify. So I lined up early - about 10th in line - only to find out that I had to wait until all the entrants who hadn't been yet had their go, before I could. And also that my skid is ineligible to qualify as I had a go on Saturday. Who cares, I just wanted to have fun, and to be able to get some good pics of the old HG Prem. I reckon my skid was worthy of a finals place as I threw the car around very stupidly and blew both tyres. Oh well, I still had a ball! Go to Whoa: I lined up and just wanted to see how far the old girl could smoke the tyres for without applying the brakes. I let rip and smoked them the entire length - I had to get off the throttle to whack the brakes on. I skidded straight past the line. Again, who cares, I was still having a ball!! Street Drags: Some extremely serious cars lining up this year. Numerous 9 second cars with tubs, slicks, and blue bottles in the boot. I had no chance. My first race was against a yellow VK Commodore. I had a sneaky look in his engine bay, and saw NOS solenoids on the Holden V8. I only had my old trusty N/A 406 Chevy pushing 1600kg through 205 tyres. I took off at the lights as easy as I could to limit wheelspin. This worked ok as I was ahead of the VK in 1st gear. At the top of 1st I decided to lean on it a bit. I could feel the wheels spinning, but not too much. Then as I went into 2nd I planted it and kept ahead of the VK all the way. I won. I had a happy feeling for a bit, until I lined up my next opponent. It was a silver Ford Capri with the plates NORULS. He had tubs and slicks and a serious sounding SBC under the bonnet. (Real street car, I don’t think so! but that is another debate). I again took off easy to limit wheelspin, but by the time I had gone about 5 metres, he was about 50metres past me! So I just planted it and smoked the tyres as far as I could just for a crowd pleaser!!!! The burnout finals were pretty good. Dave came 8th overall in his SBC powered blue Gemini. As per usual the judging leaves a little bit to be desired as some of the higher placed entrants clearly didn't perform at their best and broke some of the rules clearly stated in black and white in the entrants kit. Eg. one of the top 3 cars only went for 25 seconds. The rules stated all burnouts must go for at least 70% of the allocated time. I'll hop down off my high horse now. In the Go-To-Whoa, Paul Dickson came 2nd overall in his RX7 – well done!! A great event - my favourite of the year. A real driver’s event…… - Mark Wear |