When it comes to Nitro Harley racing in Australia, WA’s Mark Drew is the man to beat. There is only one other rider to go within a few thousandths of a second of Drew’s national record and that is Queensland’s Damian Muscat.
Despite being a relative nitro rookie, Muscat has quickly become one of the most dangerous riders in the field with consistent six second performances.
Muscat will take on a classy field that includes three former national champions: Drew, Jay Upton and Ian Ashelford.
“It’s great to race in a big field, it makes everyone work that bit harder and there are some big hitters there who have been around a long time,”he said. “It will be a matter of getting on the tune and hopefully the We haven’t really set any goals for the weekend, we will go out there and do our best and see what we can deliver, put on a good show for the crowd.”
Muscat raced at the Motorplex before, just over 10 years when he purchased a Suzuki drag bike from WA and decided to get in a quick race while he was there.
Since then the racing has become a lot faster and with his switch to nitro last year Muscat has been able to experience the highs and lows of drag racing. The highs came when he went all the way to victory lane at the Winternationals, while on the low side he experienced some mechanical dramas in Sydney just last weekend.
“We had a very troublesome weekend, we were plagued by electrical gremlins and missed the first round,” he said. “We just made it out for the second round, but I was too eager and the heart was still racing from trying to get the bike going, I went into stage and off I went, with a big red light.
“The next round we went to the left really badly and gave the wall a graze, then in the final race we got on and off the throttle and nitro doesn’t like that so we spat a pushrod and bent a valve.”
Muscat was quick to repair the nitro Harley before loading it up for its big trip west.
“Sydney was a one day event so we spent Sunday changing the top end of the motor and rewiring some electrics. We started the motor and it was all cool and I was able to check it was all working.”
The Top Fuel Motorcycle bracket begins with a test session on Friday afternoon before launching into two rounds of championship competition across two nights at the Goldenstates.
