WE’LL KEEP YOU OPERATING

Well, by the time this column is being read, who knows what situation the world will be in. But for now, let’s go back a few weeks. It was Monday morning, we had just raced nitro funny cars down the track I grew up at, in front of a whole pile of fans — you could say things were good.

Anyway, after the Meremere event we set off down to New Plymouth with eight nitro funny cars and two transporters to Pirtek Taranaki. We had two weeks to pull apart, maintain, put back together, test start, and prepare everything to top condition, ready for the Masterton Motorplex round of the New Zealand tour. We only had two weeks, as we were due back in Sydney to test a new car and combination at a test day at Sydney Dragway. Jeff and Janice Dobson and Adam Prestney at Pirtek Taranaki have been long-time friends — I consider them family — so for them to offer us the back of the workshop at Pirtek to complete our maintenance program was incredible, and it was a no-brainer for us to go down there. We had already lost a day with the rain delay at Meremere, so the boys knew we had some work on our hands. The area the Pirtek boys had allocated us was absolutely ideal and allowed the Aeroflow crew to get straight into it. Check out page 62 for a cool article on what goes into servicing an Aeroflow Outlaw Nitro Funny car between events. The boys worked tirelessly, with some very long days. We had cars ready to start by Thursday night. I don’t think the New Plymouth neighbourhood was ready for five nitro cars to be fired up at once. On Friday night, we were honoured to be part of the Pirtek Pit Party. Jeff and Janice were hosting a number of their clients, as well as some Pirtek hierarchy. A range of Pirtek Taranaki vehicles were on display, including a Formula Ford, a trophy truck, a speedway Midget, and the Pirtek Doorslammer. These vehicles were all on display for customers to not only look at, but they could check out the view from the driver’s seat. Pirtek brand ambassador Greg Murphy was in attendance, so we thought there was no better way to introduce him to nitro funny cars than to start one up — but if we were going to do that, we may as well put him in it! To my surprise, Greg was keen as to get in it, and let me tell ya, he was impressed. We just ran the car idling for a couple of minutes to give him and the crowd that nitro experience. Once we shut it off, it took us a long time to get him out of the car. He had so many questions on how things worked and was just blown away by the whole experience. We then decided then to roll out a second car for a quick fire-up. This time, I got in the seat and we ran through our normal procedure. What we forgot to mention — OK, we didn’t forget, we decided not to tell anyone — was that we needed to seat the clutch, which means, with the fuel system and clutch fully loaded, we give it a quick whack of the throttle. Now, not only is it bloody loud when we whack it, it almost jumps the car off the stands — it really tickles the senses. And when you don’t know it’s coming, it’s even better. Seeing everyone jump back about a metre was hilarious. Seeing everyone jump another metre when I whacked the throttle a second time was even better. The crowd loved it, and, more importantly, it was something we could do for the Pirtek team to thank them for their hospitality.

After the Pirtek Pit Party, we still had plenty to do to prepare for the Masterton race. The boys worked their tails off, as it’s not just the cars that need to be sorted; it’s the trucks, fuel, oil and merchandise, etc. Everything had to be sorted so that when we rolled into Masterton Motorplex we would be good to go. We finished up at the end of the second week with cars finished, trucks loaded, getting everything ready to put on another display for the Kiwi crowds. I can’t emphasize enough how hard everyone worked to get the cars done and ready on time. With our flights booked out of Auckland, we took a detour back to Meremere Dragway to watch the New Zealand Nationals before heading back to Sydney for testing.

It wasn’t until after testing that things started to look concerning. The coronavirus seemed to be ramping up, and as the phone calls became more frequent I knew we had a big decision on our hands. Unfortunately, that decision was taken out of our hands a week before the race with the 14 day isolation policy for anyone travelling to New Zealand. Now, I’m not going to get political and go into it, but all I will say is as a New Zealander I agree with keeping New Zealand safe in whatever way possible. As a drag racer, it hurt! We wanted nothing more but to finish off the New Zealand tour with a bang. Ticket sales were going through the roof, we had people who had seen the Meremere event and gone, “Yep we have to see it again, and already booked for Masterton”. The time, effort, and money that went into this event from so many people was just huge, and to have it cut short by something so far out of our control was tough. How big was it going to be? Well, we will never know. Let’s just hope that once everything passes, we can get back there to finish what we started.