BENNY PHILLIPS
WHILE the seven- and eight-second cars tend to hog the headlines at Drag Challenge, the guys and girls at the pointy end of the Tuff Mounts Dial Your Own handicap class have to work just as hard. This year’s event had some formidable competition, including last year’s DYO winner Alysha Teale in her HQ Holden, John Kerr in his Mercury Comet and Carl Taylor in his ’62 Chev bubbletop. But the man who finished on top was Benny Phillips in his green HK wagon.
Ben is no drag racing noob; this year he took out the 2016 Top Sportsman Championship at Hidden Valley Raceway in NT in his strip-only eight-second Torana.
Ben bought his Drag Challenge carriage a couple of years ago for street duties, and while the wagon is not quite so animalistic as the Torana, it is still plenty stout.
“It had the motor in it, but it had a lot of stuff not complete,” Ben explained. The motor was probably the jewel in the deal: a Shafiroff-built small-block based on a Dart Little M block assembled with AFR alloy heads, Callies crank and rods, and Mahle pistons. With all those good bits, the cube count ends up at 434ci and it breathes with a Quick Fuel 950 carb. On the hamsterwheel, the Us-assembled engine delivered 638hp on pump fuel.
Before Drag Challenge, Ben’s HK had run a 10.6 on 255 ET Streets, so it’s no slouch. “Yeah, I’ve driven it to Calder, run a 10.6 and driven home!” he said.
“Actually, my Land Cruiser is up in Darwin, where I work fly-in/fly-out, so I’ve been using this as something of a daily, down to the shops and back, when I’ve been back home in Portland!”
DYO is all about consistency, and the wagon seemed to be across that situation. The longroof cruiser was straight into the high 10s on Day One and it stayed there all week.
“It ran a 10.96 at Calder on the first day and backed it up with a 10.97 at Heathcote,” Ben said. “We were actually going too quick, so we were leaving the exhaust on and racing it in full street trim. I found that changing shift revs by even just 100rpm was having an impact.”
Ben managed to keep his mighty HK’S timeslips within six-thousandths of a second all week, which handed him a very well-deserved win for the DYO class.