THE SMELL OF VHT
If you had asked me last November how excited I was for 2020, I would have talked your socks off for 20 minutes; we had more events planned than we had ever run before. We had overseas tours, a world fuel altered challenge, we were racing in New Zealand and all over Australia — it was set to be an incredible year of racing. Well, as we all know, that hasn’t happened. The Australian bush fires prevented us from getting to Perth in January, we managed to race at Meremere Dragway in February, and everything since has been cancelled or postponed! After it became obvious that the worldwide pandemic was going to put a stop to any racing for a long period of time, we had to put a strategic plan in place for Aeroflow Outlaw Nitro Funny Cars. TV-only events were not a reality for us; our series is based on getting crowds and entertaining them. For us to maintain our goals and reputation as an entertainment form of drag racing, we realized that we had to ride it out until such time as crowds are allowed back at venues.
We quickly changed our attention to how we could make the most of this downtime. We had already serviced the cars to race at Masterton Motorplex so the majority of that was already done. Attention turned to all the little jobs that we had never done: some long overdue work in the transporters, fitting electro-motion safety shut-off systems for driver safety, tidying up some of the wiring on the cars, and a whole host of ‘little jobs’ that we have always wanted to complete. Everyone asks what we are doing now that we are having a break from racing; well, we haven’t really stopped — there have always been heaps of little jobs to do, and, when there are now 17 race cars to look after, trust me, everyone has been busy.
We were lucky enough last week to get a final test session at Sydney Dragway before the track gets resurfaced. With government restrictions in place, we could hire the track but we were allowed only 10 people there. We had to have our temperatures checked and stick to strict Covid guidelines. But, honestly, I think we were all just so excited to go drag racing that we would have agreed to any guidelines.
With the restrictions, we decided to test two cars, ‘King Kong’ really didn’t behave in New Zealand, so, when we got it back to the shop, we changed the engine location and weight distribution to see if it would help it leave the start line better and give Brandon some more laps in the car. Brandon comes from a motorbike background, so getting him more laps in these cars was important. The other car was the fuel altered ‘Psycho’, in which we were trying a new ignition system. It was the first time in a good couple of years that I hadn’t driven a car at one of our test sessions, and I was looking forward to being able to just concentrate on the car set-up and not have to drive.
When we got out to the track in the morning, we were greeted by the most incredible smell: VHT and rubber as the Sydney Dragway team prepped the track. I hadn’t realized I had missed that smell so much. Even though it was only a few months away, man, it felt like Christmas just being out there again. The big problem we had was going to be the weather; it was a cold, cloudy, miserable day. We knew that the rain was going to come in the afternoon, but we wanted to get some passes in anyway. The track temperature was 16℃. In drag racing terms, that means very cold and very little traction, so we had to set the cars up accordingly. We managed to get two passes in per car in between rain showers, but the day ended after the second pass with a heavy downpour. Although we didn’t get any super-fast times or speeds, we made great gains on both cars considering the conditions.
As for not driving — I have to admit that I really enjoyed being able to just watch the car and oversee things a bit more. But, let me tell you, as much as I enjoyed it, damn, I wanted to get back in the seat so bad. We should have had five events this year by now, and we have had one — let’s hope the second half of 2020 brings some more racing.