BOOST FOR WHITTINGHAM

Brent Whittingham’s hard-charging secondgeneration Camaro has been lifting its wheels at tracks around the North Island for the past few seasons and picking up plenty of accolades in the Super Sedan class in the process. With the increasing cost of nitrous oxide, however, Brent slowly accepted the idea that a boosted combo was the obvious way to go. The hunt for a decent blown engine led him to Russell Lowe at The Toy Shed in Rotorua. It was there that things quickly escalated, and, before long, the idea of buying a blown motor morphed into buying Russell’s top doorslammer ’69 Camaro instead. The car was purchased as last raced, complete with an ex–Shane Lodge 509ci billet big block Chev engine that produces around 2500hp — although that amount of power was well beyond what the chassis was originally designed to take. With this in mind, and due to the car having run countless wild passes down the strip in the hands of both Russell and previous owner Steve Milne, some chassis updates were in order. For this, Brent called on the expertise of Grant Downing at Paralax Racing Cars in Hawke’s Bay, who soon stiffened up the chassis and added a floating rear end as well as some minor safety updates. Brent’s plan is to run the car in the new Outlaw 71 class this year, but it will also be teched for Top Doorslammer, should he decide to take the leap at some stage in the future. So, what becomes of the second-gen Camaro? Well, that’s simply being pushed into the corner for the time being while Brent has fun in the ’69.