NITRO NATURE

racetrack, especially on the second half of the track, and, with all the extra torque that the nitro engine creates, you have to make sure that you keep both tyres in the groove, because when one wheel gets out on the dirty stuff, things really start to get interesting. The braking / slowing down is pretty similar — there is certainly more tug on the chutes, but you expect that from going faster. One Bad Kiwi has carbon rear brakes, so, in an emergency, they do stop well. Thankfully, I have only had to rely on the brakes once, and that was due to the chute not coming out; it was because Darren Morgan crossed into my lane right in front of me at the finish line in Sydney — as I said, these things like to move around a bit on the second half of the track. As for the crazy phenomenon we call ‘tyre shake’ — in the alcohol funny car, the tyre shake happens in the first two seconds of a run at anywhere between 100kph and 180kph; in the nitro car, it can happen as late as four seconds into the run at over 320 kph. Tyre shake is hard to describe, but if tyre shake in the alcohol car is like four people grabbing you and shaking you as hard and as fast as they can, then tyre shake in the nitro funny car at 320kph is like having your head put into one of those paintshaking machines at Bunnings but at 300kph until you can no longer see. In test runs or qualifying in most forms of racing, when it shakes the tyres, you can just roll off the throttle, go back to the pits, and make some set-up changes for the next pass. However, because of the format we run in Aeroflow Outlaw Nitro Funny Cars, there are no qualifying or practice runs, so every run counts. So, when it shakes, you can either try to drive through it (which can fix it or make it worse), try to shift gear (which can fix it or make it worse), or give the accelerator pedal a quick whack — and this all needs to be decided at 320kph. It’s all this that makes these cars such an absolute blast to drive — they are fun yet wild. The racing is side by side; there are header flames. What more can you say? They’re nitro funny cars!