40th NZDRA Nationals: Paul Stubber, an Aussie whos come over to New Zealand to compete in the Central Muscle Car Series with his Camaro. Paul joined the Kiwis at Eastern Creek for the Aussie Muscle car Masters and then competed against the CMC cars in the Trans Tasman Challenge. We catch up with Paul while competing at Pukekohe last weekend to check out his SS Camaro Muscle car.
Central Muscle Cars: Repairing the 3 CMC cars of Mandy Sinclair, Shane Johnson and Bruce Kett who all but wrote their cars off in a huge crash at the Aussie Muscle car Masters. The team from Moselle Panel and Paint offered to do it for free. This is the result.
NZDRA: The 09/2010 NZDRA Championship series began at Fram Autolight Dragway. We check out a Super Sedan Impala, and talk to Tony Christianson competing in his Altered 355ci,
Drag Race cams: try using racecams on a 250mph top alcohol drag car. If it looks like this, whats John Neilan feeling at the wheel. Also inside Wayne Grimmers Top Street Barracuda and Sam Levine’s Plymouth Duster.

After much debate over the NZDRA Nationals being held at Masterton Motorplex, the lower-North Island venue held a fantastic event

Masterton Motorplex wanted to celebrate its 10th year of being the lower-North Island’s drag racing venue in style, and that it did, by hosting the 40th annual NZDRA Drag Racing Nationals over the weekend of February 2 to 3, 2008.

The main sponsor for this well-run and successful event was Trust House, and as such the event was named the Trust house NZDRA 40th Nationals.

Many racers turned up on Friday afternoon to set up camp for the weekend, and a few beers were had in the stinking hot afternoon sun on Friday, what with temperatures in the high 30s.

Saturday dawned cooler and slightly overcast with the threat of light rain at some time during the day. Luckily, the rain never really amounted to much, unlike some of the performances of the 164 entrants.

The only thing the event actually lacked was a strong Auckland racer contingent, but about 27 hardy racers from north of the Bombays made a showing. The traction was good even on a cool track, and in practice and qualifying on Saturday the fun started with Paul Sattler in his blown FED pulling a huge wheelstand.

The higher-powered cars later in the day had some issues with traction, and Chris Tynan in his Chev Doorslammer had a Fred Flintstone moment and had to really pedal the car to keep it on the straight and narrow. Dean Blackburn, running in Supercharged Outlaw, had a narrow escape in his blown SBC Altered when he came to within centimetres of the wall.

Continuing that theme of trying as hard as they could, Murry Smith ” driving Craig Brown’s Chev ’slammer ” got very sideways in the burnout and had a close look at the wall. Then in his qualifier against Wayne Hussey’s nitrous-snorting Nova, it was Hussey’s turn to pedal. He got very sideways at part track and there was more fishtailing than at a Talley’s factory.

The knife edge of getting the best performance while remaining in control continued with the blown alcohol cars, and Chris Tynan had another crack at walking the fine line. He carried the left front for ages in what looked to be a solid start, then the car got out of shape and it hazed the tyres to eventually spear off the track and take the scenic grass route out in the paddock.

Dave Green’s Corvette had problems first out with what appeared to be magneto issues. The car was worked on Saturday night to return Sunday, only to go bang in spectacular fashion at about three-quarter track. Apparently a bunch of destroyed rods were found in the teardown.

The Top Alcohol rails were really onto their tunes on Saturday, and left in great clouds of clutch dust to ensure they didn’t overpower the track. Their drivers’ ability to tune their cars to the conditions were well rewarded when on a cold track on Saturday Mark Vincent went 6.18 at 223mph (358.8kph) with a 0.989 60-foot time. John Neilan in the Digga Dragster went 6.20 at 228mph (366.9kph) when up against Grant Johnstone in the Harcourts Hawler Dragster.

Rounding out Saturday’s action was another showing of great driver ability by Chris Tynan, when he went 6.51 at 201mph (323kph) in his qualifier against Greeny.

Bert King’s weekend was put paid to on late Saturday when he launched hard and lunched his all-the-bells-and-whistles Powerglide. Later in the pits the trans was out, and once it was in bits it was found to be beyond repair in time for Sunday. So Bert joined the great crowd on Sunday to watch.

MMP had put in grandstands on either side of the track, and on both days those grandstands were full with a good number of people, while spectators also stood a couple deep at the fence. Crowd numbers were in the region of 7000 ” some of the food vendors were so unprepared for the numbers that they were cleaned out by 1pm Sunday.

Sunday’s weather was cracker, a bright, sunny day with good crowds and no clouds. The temperature got into the 30s, and with the track hot and sticky the racing was on.

There were winners and losers, as there always are. Allan Blithe was one of the latter, going out in the semi-final of Modified by running 9.6 on a 9.8 dial-in.

One can only hope the naysayers have been silenced by the MMP team’s great work. The MMP crew really pulled off a top event with a well-prepped track that was very capable of running national records on it. Hopefully the future will see more NZDRA Nationals held at different tracks, and more support from all racers from around the country.

Words: Allan Blithe Pics: Quinn Hamill