Steve Reed will make the 4500km trek to Perth with his Allstar Batteries Top Alcohol Funny Car team in a bid to maintain last seasons momentum for a winning start to the 2014 championship.

Take a supercharged V8, some radical weight distribution, remove the floor and put together a lever based steering system and you have one of drag racing’s most bizarre exhibition offshoots – the wheelstander. Drag News caught up with new ‘Nitro Sheriff’ driver Josh Leahy to get a newbie’s view on what driving one of these insane cars is like.

Twelve teams will kick off the Top Alcohol season and a strong nineteen car field has nominated for Top Doorslammer when their national championship commences next weekend at Perth Motorplex’s Pro Showdown – with a few surprises amongst them.

Sitting back at the Morgan Lucas Racing headquarters, Australian rookie Top Fuel pilot Richie Crampton had time to reflect on his first official test session as driver of the 8,000-horsepower GEICO/Lucas Oil Top Fuel dragster.

There’s a couple of new dragster-driver combinations kicking around in Modified at Willowbank Raceway lately, sure to add to an already tough field of racers.

Queensland drag racing school operator and fuel system whiz Ken Lowe ponders on what drag racing has to do to keep its spectators around. If drag racing were a bus, then I am a passenger on that bus. I don’t get to steer or even flick the turn signals but I can talk to other passengers (all of you) and complain to the driver. As usual I have more questions than I have answers. Often, I find as soon as I do find an answer, it only makes another half dozen questions. I hope this does not wander about too much, because the questions and subsequent answers often take us different places. Please bear with me. Complex situations seldom have simple answers. Something that has been on my mind for a while now, is where do new racers come from? As a motor sport, is drag racing growing or shrinking? This concerns me for at least two reasons, first since I have spent my life drag racing it is important to me and second my business supplies drag racers so is my client base growing or shrinking? And once you have the answer, the second part of that question is why? And lastly if it is growing then good, how can we grow it faster? But if it is shrinking, how can we reverse the direction? These are not rhetorical questions but things we need to answer if we are to ensure we are still around in the future. Let me qualify one point here before we go any further. Profit drives us all. Drag racing is no different. A drag racing event takes two groups of customers, brings them together and the result is more at night than you had in the morning. Spectators pay to attend the race, consume food and drink and are entertained for a price. Racers pay entry fees to attend the event, consume food and drink and work their butts off. If the racer does well on the day, the idea is that with his winnings he will go home with more money than it cost them to survive the day. If it was really about making money they would make more working at McDonalds for the day (probably less work too). So if it is not about making money then it has to be about respect. I will cover more on this later, but consider that point – respect. Drag racing is an entertainment medium. Drag racing is a participation medium. Both are true statements, but I believe it has shifted from a participation medium of yesterday to an entertainment medium of today. Make it an event Historically, at one point many spectators were interested parties that had a desire to potentially participate and their attendance at the track was to learn about how to do something that they aspired to, but I think that is changing. Big events such as the Winternationals at Willowbank Raceway only confirm this. There are many races where there are a lot of quality race cars with few spectators yet those cars are at the Winternationals and the place is packed, by comparison, albeit less packed than it has been before. People attend the Winternationals because it has grown from just a race to an event. Maybe I should capitalise that – an EVENT. If most of the spectators came to a race to learn about something they wanted to participate in then attendance at smaller events would be strong, and it isn’t. The Winternationals is a large event that appeals to spectators expecting to be entertained. Make it entertaining The declining spectator attendance at major races confirms my theory about the changing composition of the spectator crowd. Now they are here for a show, a spectacular if you will, and the declining attendance also confirms that maybe we are not as good at the show stuff as we should be, or maybe we don’t treat our drag race spectator-customers with the respect they demand and deserve. No shade on hot days, oil downs and a slow show, all contribute to taking a good show and ruining it for the drag race spectator. We need to give them a good show and do it for them in comfort. Because that is what our competitors in the entertainment business are doing. I understand that pro categories take more start up time, which is okay as that is part of the show, building anticipation. This is not the case with the sportsman categories though. If you look at a brick home, most will call it a brick home but in fact it is a brick and mortar home. They bricks won’t stand by themselves as the pro categories can’t stand by themselves. The pro categories need the sportsman categories to fill in the spaces between the pro shows. I have both pro cars and sportsman cars and understand the different dynamic. Having said that, if I was running a drag race show during a sportsman category I would stand on the opposite side of the track to the stands (bleachers) and watch the crowd. If their heads weren’t swivelling back and forth like they were watching a tennis match I reckon they would be getting bored and a bored spectator is not a happy spectator. People have a short attention span. To ramp up the show I would want two cars staged up on the start line, two in the water ready to start the burn out and two running behind ready to pull into the water. As soon as the pair on the start line leave, next pair to start the burn out and by the time they are completed and rolling into stage the first pair are close to making the turn at the end. The show has to be faster. Reduce the stoppages Don’t even get me started on oil downs. They are a show killer. Watch what happens to the spectators in the stands when the tractor comes out.

He may have once been called Australia’s fastest teenager but Western Australian Shane Weston has grown up and is now hunting down the highly respected records of the Top Alcohol Dragster class.

A new venture for Sydney Dragway has been the introduction of “Bike Night” sponsored by Harley-Davidson of Blacktown and they are starting to gain momentum in popularity with the addition of some dial your own racing for spice.

Racers had the chance to blow away their New Year’s cobwebs at Sydney Dragway’s Full Throttle Friday event, the first serious hit out at the venue for 2014. Read on as we take you through some of the highlights of the round.

Rob Pilkington is aiming for a third straight Top Alcohol win in Perth when the ANDRA Drag Racing Series opens up for the category at the Pro Showdown on January 31/February 1.

Six-times Australian Top Doorslammer champion John Zappia is readying for round one of the 2014 series in two weeks but already has a focus on a new race format that will take place at the Westernationals in March.

Richie Crampton ran a new personal best in pre-season testing in Florida this morning, carding a 3.808 pass at 323mph over 1000 feet at Palm Beach International Raceway in Florida.

Richie Crampton continued to build his Top Fuel experience at Palm Beach International Raceway earlier today, making two tyre spinning runs as the NHRA gets its official pre-season test on in Florida. Crampton, from Adelaide in South Australia, was announced as the driver of the Morgan Lucas Racing/Geico dragster last year. Thanks to the wonders of social media, here are a few images of Crampton at work. We wish the best of luck to a man who is out there living the dream! #NHRA @MLRtopfuel driver @richiecrampton launches off the @RacePBIR starting line during a test run pic.twitter.com/82QaKmV8Jh — Mark J. Rebilas (@rebilasphoto) January 17, 2014 @richiecrampton strapped in and ready to go @MLRtopfuel @GEICOPowersprts #NHRA pic.twitter.com/Y2WBTJzZzr — Morgan Lucas (@Morganlucas34) January 14, 2014 @richiecrampton testing in S. Florida getting ready for the @MelloYello season launch in just 3 weeks. #NHRA pic.twitter.com/dvFdh1HWsK — NHRA (@NHRA) January 17, 2014 Thanks to those awesome dudes at bangshift.com you can watch the replay of the day’s testing below! Richie’s runs are at about 20 minutes and two hours and 19 minutes in. Video streaming by Ustream {fcomment}

An auction of unique motorsport items is taking place to help out a young Darwin boy who is hoping to be able to move to Perth to be closer to where he has his medical treatment.

Mouhamed Ibrahim’s gold-plated, rotary-powered BMW has certainly prioritised show over go in recent years but that is set to change with the blinging Beemer recently heading into the Pac Performance workshop for a massive increase in power.

Australia’s biggest field of nitro cars is heading to one of the country’s prettiest racetracks with the Aeroflow Outlaw show heading to Fuchs South Coast Raceway near Portland, Victoria for February 1.

Pro Modified Australia has made the announcement that the Slamfest series, which took many of Australia’s Top Doorslammer stars to regional venues, will not be happening this season. The predominantly eighth mile-based series said through their official Facebook page that due to the larger amount of rounds than before in the ANDRA national championship, Slamfest would not be happening at all this year. A number of replies to comments on the page had indicated that the series would not go ahead but this is the first official word that has been provided. Slamfest was originally created by Top Doorslammer racers to give themselves more events to race at, but with the addition of Melbourne and Adelaide to the national calendar recently dates have been harder to come by. The Slamfest events were renowned for attracting big crowds of spectators and delivering wild supercharged sedan action. “The drivers and teams of the Slamfest series want to thank all their supporters. And would like to say that we hope to be back in the near future. To bring the fastest door cars on the planet back to the regional tracks where it all started,” the statement concluded. Regional tracks aren’t likely to be left completely in the cold, with the Aeroflow Outlaw Nitro Funny Car series expected to attend many of the same venues as Slamfest. {fcomment}

Jett Racing’s Kelly Corbett is New Zealand-bound after she was selected as just one of four Australian drag racers to compete as ‘feature acts’ in the upcoming 2014 V Four and Rotary Nationals (25/26 January 2014).

Shane Tucker has showed off the new look that will go on to his NHRA Pro Stock Camaro plus the truck and trailer ahead of the season opener at Pomona in just a few weeks time.

In drag racing’s fast street car genre — the Outlaw 10.5 category is certainly well worth fan attention and some Ontario-based drag racers are helping to take that class to a higher level within Canada.

Australia’s Top Fuel season begun on Saturday but it wasn’t the only nitro action down under with New Zealand seeing its first pairing of locally owned Top Fuel dragsters at Fram Autolite Dragway’s Nitro Shootout in Meremere.

Graham Slapp has always had a passion for the unique and for variety, but it’s fair to say he has never quite found a comfortable place in a sport where variety is never short.

Six new national records were set, all in the Aeroflow Sportsman Drag Racing Championship, at Perth over the weekend despite maximum temperatures well into the forties.

Australia has a new Top Fuel pilot commencing licensing with Peter Xiberras recently beginning the process at Willowbank Raceway.

Reece Fish was testing at New Zealand’s Fram Autolite Dragway in Meremere last week when things got very hot for the man who was, at least until this weekend, the New Zealand record holder with a personal best of 5.22 seconds. Earl Edwards of Popeye Pics captured this firey sequence. Cool, things look alright so far. Image by Earl Edwards. Uh oh, beginning to spin the tyres pretty hard, will it hold? Image by Earl Edwards. We have ignition. Image by Earl Edwards. Where there’s fuel, there’s fire! Image by Earl Edwards. If you look closely you can see the bank manager wincing in the background. Image by Earl Edwards. Well, at least the fire’s out… Image by Earl Edwards. …and there are some cool souvenirs. Image by Earl Edwards. And here’s a video recorded from the stands. The good news for Reece Fish is that he managed to get it all back together for the Nitro Shootout held on Saturday at Meremere. We’ll be bringing you a mini report from the event soon! {fcomment}

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It was the Phil Lamattina show once again with the Fuchs dragster powering to an impressive win for his second ANDRA Silver Christmas Tree in as many nights in round two of the ANDRA Top Fuel championship.

Phil Lamattina turned in a bracket-car like performance to win the opening round of the ANDRA Top Fuel championship while Mark Drew dropped some quick passes on the Top Fuel Motorcycle field to also earn victory.

The ANDRA Drag Racing Series fires up for 2014 at the Nitro Max event at Perth Motorplex this weekend, with double header championship rounds of Top Fuel and Top Bike plus the second round of the Aeroflow Sportsman Drag Racing Championship.