Cory Abbott and his brother Jeremy will add to the international flavour of the upcoming Honeywell Garrett Brisbane Jamboree presented by Link ECU and Tuners Edge this weekend (August 25/26), having jetted over from New Zealand to contest their turbocharged twin-rotor Mazda RX7 in the Pro Compact class.
The Abbott brothers will join more than 200 racers from all over Australia, New Zealand, the US and even Japan at Willowbank Raceway for what is Australia’s premier sport compact drag racing and car culture event.
Their RX7 is well-known in sport compact circles on both sides of the Tasman, having been embroiled in a record-swapping war with Sydney’s Pac Performance over recent years. Currently, the Kiwi boys are on-top with a 6.82s at 198mph effort set in March of this year seeing them holding the title of quickest 13B/twin-rotor car in Australasia.
“We were the first to run a ‘six second’ pass for this kind of car in the Australasian region – there were a few in the States who did it before us and the Pac Performance guys in Australia and some others were pushing pretty hard to do it too,” Cory explained.
“We were pretty proud to be the first. Later Pac Performance went ahead and beat us, but since then we have gotten in front again.
“We are the ones to beat now I guess and that might not be the case in a few years’ time, so this is the sweet spot for us to get over to Australia! We are happy with the car’s performance so we don’t want to push too hard as far as Elapsed Times but we want to chase the Most Consistent Qualifier Award and of course, get our hands on one of those billet ‘J’ trophies by winning Pro Compact!”
Not only do the Abbott brothers feel the time is right for their Jamboree trip, but it is also the culmination of a long-time love affair with the event.
“We have been spectators at the event for years since 2000. The whole hype around the event and the scene in Australia is really what started our love affair with sport compact drag racing,” the 38 year old builder from Tauranga, New Zealand, said.
“We raced in the event a few years ago when the promoter of NZ’s Rotary Nationals took some class winners over to compete and it was a dream come true. The track and the venue is miles ahead of what we have and it was so great to race a car like ours at an event like that and a venue like that.
“It was quite a big deal for us so we were a bit disappointed when we had a whole lot of bad luck – we went home knowing we had to give it another shot!”
Once in Australia, the brothers plan to take full advantage of having their car on Australian soil.
“We are going to leave the car in Australia for 12 to 18 months so we can race at the Sydney Jamboree and then at next year’s Brisbane Jamboree as well as some meetings in between,” Cory explained, while thanking Terry’s Chassis Shoppe, 24/7 Hoses and Fittings, Microtech EFI and JSE Fabrications for their support.
“We hope to fly over to race three or four times a year – when we race at home we are competing against three or four others whereas in Australia there are 18 to 20 cars in the category so it will be really cool to be able to race against those bigger fields more often.”
