GRUDGE KINGS
CARS AND CROWDS PACKED SYDNEY RAG WAY FOR GRUDGEKIGS 2019, SHOW CAN G SOME OF AUSTRALIA’ S QUICKEST DOOR CARS AND THE BEST RACING AROUND
Bulk prize money lured the biggest Pro Street players out of hiding for Grudge Kings
THE opportunity to settle bench-racing matches at the track doesn’t often happen, which explains why racers have jumped on board to support the Grudge Kings event. Held at Sydney Dragway, it is a melting pot of car classes and racers of all manner of automotive persuasions, with Pro Slammers, turbo Pro Mods, radial-tyre V8s, turbo six Fords and VLS, trianglemotor rotors, six-second street-registered 2J Supras and R32 GT-R Skylines, and even the odd tough-nut four-banger all throwing down with each other.
While the event had been slated to run on 6 July, Mother Nature saw fit to spend that week dumping rain on the Harbour City, so Grudge Kings boss Po Tung wisely chose to move to the back-up date of 20 July. Thankfully, the spectators still turned out in droves, with an estimated 4000 through the gates.
Moving to the new date saw 10 cars unable to race, but the pits were still packed with 117 of Australia’s wildest door cars.
For 2019 the class structure had a shake-up, with no fewer than nine car classes, plus the crazy two-wheeled rockets in Extreme Bike. The Pro Mod and Pro Street categories were stacked thanks to each carrying a $50,000 purse for the
winner, while the Small-tyre Fighter class was divided into Radial and Pro sub-classes.
There is no doubt the Pro Mod class was a big drawcard at Grudge Kings. “There is a big group of people trying to get a Pro Mod class together at the moment, with some resistance from the traditional Doorslammer guys,” said Po. “So we invited the ’Slammer guys to come race the turbo Pro Mods, and we left it all ‘run what you brung’ so the blower guys can go flat-out just like the turbo guys.”
Then there was all the action in Pro Elite, Pro Modified, Outlaw, Street Outlaw and Grudge categories, making for an awesome day of super-diverse racing.
“Our business model is basically to have all the cars you wouldn’t traditionally see racing each other,” Po explained. “The way I put the classes together is more based around the time – it doesn’t really matter what the engine format is.
“For example, the Pro Elite final came down to a 20B RX-8 against a turbo small-block Mustang; you don’t see that anywhere else. I think the racing on the weekend proved the concept, as every class final round we ran was door-to-door. That’s what we set out to do!”
Pro Street, using an instant tree and four-round elimination format, was raced over the eighth-mile, while all other classes ran the full 400m. Pro Mod, Pro Elite and Pro Modified all
THE PRO STREET FINAL SAW A CLASSIC TURBO VS BLOWER DOGFIGHT: JEREMY CALLAGHAN’S CAMARO AGAINST CRAIG HEWITT’S CV8
THE PRO ELITE FINAL CAME DOWN TO A 20B RX-8 AGAINST A TURBO SMALL-BLOCK MUSTANG. YOU DON’T SEE THAT ANYWHERE ELSE
I THINK WE HAVE A PRETTY GOOD EVENT MODEL WITH GRUDGE KINGS, SO THE NEXT THING I’D LIKE TO LOOK AT IS A RADIAL-TYRE EVENT
used a pro tree and three-round Chicago Shootout heads-up format, while Street Outlaw and Small-tyre Fighter racers used a Sportsman tree and three-round DYO bracket format.
While the weather was perfect and the track prepped to nearperfection, the big blown cars in Pro Mod struggled through the three rounds of racing. By the time the sun was going down and the Pro Mod final rolled around it was Steve Ham’s Camaro Pro Slammer up against Greg ‘Mauler’ Tsakiridis in the ex-moits twin-turbo Mustang.
Mauler had been running huge numbers all day, and while both cars were absolute rockets in the final race, the Mustang’s 5.63@271mph chopped the Slammer’s 5.69@253mph to take the win.
“We worked hard for it, but we got there in the end,” Greg sighed. “It was a lot of work, but we achieved what we wanted to achieve. Everything pretty much went to plan, although we had a couple of little hiccups here and there.
“The staff did a killer job with the track, and because it changes through the day and into the night, we worked with the data we had. We were pulling good numbers, and we ran a 5.62 and a 272mph to break the record we broke a couple of months back.”
The final of Pro Street came down to a classic turbo versus blower dogfight as Jeremy Callaghan’s Pro Line-powered ’69 Camaro duked it out with Craig Hewitt’s blown Hemi-powered CV8 Monaro in the final round. Both cars had been running jetfast all day, and while Hewitt got the jump on the Camaro off the line, the turbo car’s top end reeled the supercharged Monaro in by the finish line to take home the $50,000 prize money, with a 4.11@186mph playing a 4.23@173mph.
“We got to the semis last year but got knocked out, so we knew we could get close,” said Callaghan. “I didn’t think we could do this! We were lucky today and had a few good breaks.
“This sport has been unforgiving at times, but it has been a good sport. I have my whole family here, my workers, and it is awesome to be able to share this win with them.”
While he puts on the best show I’ve ever been to at Sydney Dragway, Po isn’t keen to rest on his laurels with Grudge Kings. “I think we have a pretty good event model with Grudge Kings, so the next thing I’d like to look at is a radial-tyre event,” he said. “I’m also thinking of moving Grudge Kings to a warmer season so we can get more track time, maybe even run ’til 10pm or 10:30pm. We could get a lot more into the event that way.”
We don’t know how you’d pack more into the one-day event, but we’ll be there to check it out, Po!