FOR YET ANOTHER YEAR, THE SKIES WERE CLEAR AND THE SUN SHONE BRIGHTLY ABOVE SEAVIEW FOR CAM COUNTY INC’S RUNNING OF THE ANNUAL BURGERFUEL PORT ROAD DRAGS

RWORDS AND PHOTOS:

unning an outdoor event with New Zealand’s fickle weather is a bit of a gamble; running it successfully for 49 years is a feat in itself; running it for 49 years straight without a single rain off is unprecedented — you name another event in New Zealand that can boast that kind of record! There’s no denying that, over the past few years, the quest to become the quickest street-legal car in the country has certainly hotted up. As a result, the engines are getting bigger and wilder, and the power adders are becoming more commonplace, be they of the supercharger, turbo, nitrous, or SHANE WISHNOWSKY centrifugal supercharger persuasion. As a result, the sheer volume of mental street cars turning up to drag events all over the country to make some noise and smoke — and, all going well, a warpspeed pass — is exploding. This was blatantly obvious after a quick trip through the pits at the Burgerfuel Port Road Drags; the amount of chrome under bonnets and sticking out of holes in bonnets was impressive, to say the least. Standing out from the rest were Dan Southall, Aaron Jackson, Darren Riches, and Todd Hall. These guys all have cars regularly running nine-second passes on the quarter, so it would be whoever could run as close to the ‘no faster than six-and-a-half seconds’ on the measured eighth-mile who would win the day. The aim of the game for any drag racer is to go as quick as you can and leave nothing on the table, but, for safety reasons — remember, this is a road and not a drag strip — a lid must be kept on things. The quickest any competitor is permitted to run is 6.5 seconds. Dip under that time, and you will get one warning, and one warning only; do it again, and you are on the trailer. During the morning’s qualifying runs, a warning was dished out to Aaron Jackson in his hostile ‘COPB8’ Torana. Aaron has recently gone down the nitrous-oxide route in his quest for quicker