Round two of the Steel City Drag Club Championship coming from Whyalla in South Australia had near perfect weather for racing on the eighth mile venue.
The first round of the club championship was abandoned during qualifying when the track could not be cleaned sufficiently to the required standard, and Drag News can report both drivers involved in seperate incidents also on the day escaped relatively unharmed. Track conditions were not blamed for either accident that saw Cara Bertoli impact the wall with her little Cortina and the immaculate EH ute of Corey Pocock take a series of tumbles after the finish line.
The club hosted a contingent from Tamworth going through to Perth for the Westernationals, with two Super Sedans, one Super Streeter, one Modified car and a Modified bike taking part and a crew of twenty seven backing them up, they added to the depth of quality racers already taking part at the meeting.
Added to this was two new cars taking part with long time Modified racer Simon Barlow doing some practice runs in his newly built big block dragster. With runs in the 5.8 second range that did not seem impressive until you hear that he was only in low gear with the car not shifting into top gear.
Andrew Braithwaite a new racer came up to licence in his newly imported FED dragster, Andrew managed to pass the ANDRA licensing process during qualifying allowing him to take part in racing.
The club prior to this meeting had the track ground flat from the 200ft mark to the finish line to remove some of the race surface imperfections, this making the second half of the track a bit tricky as it takes weeks of work to prepare the race surface. It was still an outstanding achievement for the amount that was applied in the time allowed due to outside circumstances (weather).
Supercharged Outlaws had only two racers taking part, Mick Oehms in a Ford Capri who has only recently completed this car has had some rear suspension setup problems in getting the car to hook up straight the last few meetings, but it does look like he has adjusted it in the right direction with the car almost doing a full powered pass, hooking up and going straight down the strip.
The other car is the very nice looking 1959 Corvette of the club President Mark Kuhn.
With a best out of three round format, the first round had Oehms red light to allow Kuhn to take the win, second round it was Oehms with the win when Kuhn broke out, not that worried Kuhn who just done his best ever anywhere 60ft with a 1.034 from the ‘vette. The third round Kuhn did not front and Oehms picked up the automatic win along with the meeting win.
With only four Modified entries turning out for racing, the bracket had a extra time trial due to the two round format for the bracket. Leading qualifying it was the Bantam Altered of Ron Crosby from Perth with a 5.353, the newly imported FED of Andrew Braithwaite was next with a lazy 5.816.
First round it was red light city with Bradley Hicks giving the win to Crosby and Tamworth’s David Hutchen giving Braithwaite his first ever round win in the new FED. The finals it was all lost on the tree with reaction times, Brathwaite having a 0.415 nap on the line giving the backing off win to Crosby.
Super Sedan had 12 entries with Tamworth’s Bill Ausling in his 68 Camaro in the top spot with a 5.633, Tony Miskelly was in the second spot with his 5.933 in the AMC Hornet. Ex Whyalla local Jack Darzanos made the finals with two good reactions (0.031 , 0.017) and a bye run in the semi finals. The other finalist was Tamworth’s Mark Harding in the small block Capri who’s 0.003 reaction time showed he was no slouch on the tree either, Darzanos pushed the tree a little too hard with a 0.015 red light to hand the win to Harding.
Super Street had 17 entries and all the top half of the field was out by the semi finals. Semi finalist Brenton Lynch had suffered a string of bad luck coming into the event (3 punctures from 3 meetings), but fortune was shining now with a solo into the finals, his sub 0.05 over dial ins and .00 reactions times put some big names on the trailer along the way too. The other semi finalist was a well known Kylie Tanner who also was performing good on the tree and close to dial ins during the meet, Tanner went through to the finals when Creagh Stuart pulled one of them heart breaker 0.001 red lights. Kylie’s luck continued to prevail in the final too when the red flashed up again in Lynch’s lane gifting her the win, tough racers breed red lights for opponents.
Modified Bike bracket had ten entries with the top four taken by Harley Davidson VROD Destroyers, the quickest of which went to Matt Thompson with a 6.073. However only one of the Destroyers made it all the way to the finals, three red lights in a row from his competitors made that a easy task for Dave Argent but he is known for being very consistent on the tree and dial in when it needs to count. It was no surprise to whom was in the other lane for the final, Bryan Finn, as these two again matched up for a final at Steel City. With the win count been pretty close between the two it was Argent’s turn to be on top, his 0.006 reaction and 0.022 over 6.222 run was always going to hard to beat.
Junior dragster had only two entries, and with Dylan Argent leading Connor Oehms by only 0.184 seconds it was going to be close racing for the spectators. Argent’s great reaction times in the first two races (0.02 and 0.05) pushed Oehms into two breakouts, Argent pushed things too hard though pulling a 0.04 red light in the third race. The finals had Argent again ripping a great 0.09 light for a solid 0.077 over winning run over Oehms. In the presentation Dylan was asked how many trophies this was? – “A lot more than Dad,” was the reply as team Argent again picked up the double win.
Steel City runs one of them brackets that are getting run around the country where people can come and have fun in their street cars and not have that pressure of a heavy hitter Super Street racer in the other lane. Steel City calls it Street Challenge, this bracket is becoming very popular with 13 entries on the a 8.5 second cut off. One of the more interesting racers was Outlaw and Modified racer Bruce McHendrie racing his newly finished hot rod in the bracket, with his reaction times a the tenth or lower pushing him all the way to the semi finals. The final though was Andrew Favotti against Paul Jennings, Favotti cut the tree down with a 0.014 to Jennings 0.090 and that proved the difference, a holeshot win going to Favotti’s Torana.
Image and report by Dave Murray/TAD Photography
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