FAST FRIDAY
TIMES TUMBLE FOR ADELAIDE’S TOP STREET-DRIVEN RACE MACHINES AT FAST FRIDAY
Adelaide’s top street-driven race machines do battle on the strip
NOW that Adelaide’s had a consistently running drag strip for six years, the flow-on effect has been a surge of singlefigure street-and-strip monsters. Turbo-powered small-cube rides are now commonplace in a land where naturally aspirated, big-inch cars once dominated. So it seemed a good time for
Street Machine to venture along to a Fast Friday quarter-mile street meet-style event at Adelaide International Raceway for a gander at the current scene.
Fast Friday events are open to everything from bog-stocker streeters to comp cars that need some test time. The mix makes for a great visual and acoustic feast, and at $75 for pre-entry, it’s cheap racing – if you don’t break anything!
Although an unusually humid day with the threat of rain kept both entrant and spectator numbers down, those that did rock up got in as many runs as they dared, and some even managed to run their best numbers against the odds.
While the event was laden with Holdens in a city that’s still grieving the General’s departure, it was a 70s Ford that stole the show: Phil Edmondson’s ‘White Whale’ XB coupe belted out an 8.97@154mph pass, in a strong headwind. Phil’s been chasing eights since last year’s Street
Machine Drag Challenge, so he was a very happy camper having pulled that number straight off the (nonexistent) trailer.
“I went through the tune for over an hour last night with Nathaniel from Dandy Engines remoted into my laptop,” Phil said. “I planned on only changing the off-the-line boost over all the runs to get consistent
data. I tried feeding in more boost off the line, but I’m guessing it was the humidity that kept me from seeing another eight.”
It’s events such as our own Drag Challenge and the Us-based Hot Rod Drag Week, along with the Street Outlaws TV show, that we can thank for the rapid rise in super-fast street-driven drag cars. For proof, look no further than the SA Street Outlaws Top 20 list and related Facebook page. To make the Top 20, you need to drive to the track in your crazyquick streeter and run a single-figure pass in full trim. Do that and you’ll be popped onto the list by the page administrator, the forever-patient Jake Sansovini. Simples!
Phil’s eight-second pass saw his XB bump up into second on the list, knocking Luke Cakebread’s twin-turboed 370ci powered LX Torry to third. Another mover and list shaker was Anthony Ghinis’s turboed Rb30-powered LC GTR Torana
(SM, Oct ’08), which rocketed into fourth with a 9.08@141mph late in the night. Probably another half-dozen from the list were giving it a crack, but the heavy air held them in place.
With a few top spots being nabbed in one night, and close times between them, it’s a guarantee that those displaced won’t take it lying down. I reckon it’s a powerful injection of fresh energy into what was a plateauing sport in Adelaide. Quite a few competitors on the list are good mates, crewing for each other when they’re not racing themselves, harking back to how the culture was when AIR first opened in 1972.
With the list shake-up, along with early testing for several Drag Challenge potentials, Fast Friday showed that these street meet-style events should have some top-level racing in store in the s foreseeable future.