SIX AT 200

dropping a sub record time in practice I think he knew he had to be on his game. Unfortunately for Gav, I think he had had a couple too many cans of Red Bull and red-lighted his chances away. Lucky for us, as we had underestimated the track and didn’t have enough power on the start line, but we did get some good data to tune from. Second round, we had a bye run and rattled off a 7.17 at 199.89mph — 7mph faster and 1/10th of a second quicker than we had ever gone before — did I mention that we thought we had found a few things that were hindering us? All of a sudden, after being stoked to beat the national record the day before, we had now completely shifted our goalposts! Being 0.11 of an mph off that magical 200mph mark, we knew that number was in reach; we didn’t even dare think about that six-second pass, as plenty of racers have been stuck in that low-seven-second zone for a long time. Not only that, but we were going to the final! We made a few changes to the car between rounds — in theory, to be a bit faster from quarter-track to half-track — crossed our fingers and hoped it would be enough to get the team and Adam his first 200mph pass. In what was another one of those few degrees of separation moments, the guy we faced in the final was Ryan Sheldon in his Joker Camaro. Ryan was the guy with whom I teamed up to get my start in Top Alcohol Funny Car racing, and the guy who got me my first six-second and 200mph passes. We knew that if we repeated our earlier 7.1 pass we would be able to win the meeting, but in a final it’s OK to be greedy, and we wanted more than just the win. The car left the line well, with our quickest 60-foot ever. Half-track we were 4mph faster and two-tenths quicker than we had ever been before. As the win lights flashed up in our lane, we knew we had the job done, but, when commentator and friend Gavin Doughty screamed, “And the boys have done it, 6.97 at 202mph”, we were all just blown away with what we heard. We had hoped it would happen, but to know we had achieved it and become the first BB/TS legal car to go in the sixes was something else. The boys will only get a few weeks to celebrate, however, as at the end of the month we will be off once again to run the One Bad Kiwi nitro funny car in Aussie, this time at Willowbank Raceway in Queensland! Here’s hoping our winning streak continues!