JUNGA BUNGA DRAGS
Drag racing gets rebooted at Warwick Dragway for the first running of Junga Bunga’s No Prep Cash Days
LOng-time readers may be familiar with my love of Queensland’s Warwick Dragway. I got to know the eighth-mile track when I visited their headline Dragfest event back in 2004, and have returned many times since for the Six-banger Nats and our own Drag Challenge Weekend. What I dig most about the volunteer-run facility is the vibe. The atmosphere is friendly, the track staff welcoming and there is always an interesting bunch of cars in attendance.
But like just about every drag strip in the country, 2020 has been a challenging one for the Warwick crew. COVID-19 has meant they’ve had to cancel their usual program, including the Six-bangers, Dragfest and the VW Nationals.
“With the borders shut, we decided not to run those events,” says Warwick Dragway’s Matt ‘Junga’ Loy. “We get a lot of interstate competitors and it just wouldn’t be the same without them. And they are big meetings; Dragfest usually has around 240 entries, and that just won’t work with the COVID restrictions.”
The ever-changing rules around what is permissible make it tough to organise just about anything except test-and-tunes, but Matt has come up with an ingenious plan to keep things on the boil at the track, without needing big numbers or even spectators.
Dubbed Junga Bunga’s No Prep Cash Days, the new series pretty much does what it says on the box. Normally, staff will apply track prep to the startline to help cars gain traction, but at a no-prep meeting, the race surface has no traction aids applied at all.
While there are quite a few no-prep events in the US, the concept has never really taken off in Australia. “We have tried it a couple of times over the past few years,” says Matt. “We learned from that, and it’s starting to take off. A key thing seems to be to keep it to minimal classes.”
One big advantage of no-prep racing in the COVID era is that it reduces the upfront investment for the club, but it also has the bonus of levelling the playing field. “This type of racing is an equaliser,” says Matt. “It isn’t necessarily about who has the most horsepower; it’s about who can get their car down the track.”
The disadvantage of running without traction compound is the added potential for things to go pear-shaped, as we’ve seen numerous times in the US. “Of course racers are always going to be competitive, but we just emphasised that the aim of the day was for everyone to come away unscathed,” Matt says. “Better to pull out of the pass if it gets sketchy than stay in it and wreck your car. We want everyone to walk out happy at the end of the day.”
For the first No Prep Cash Days, Matt ran just two classes: Small Tyre for racers running 275 radials or 10.5 slicks or smaller, and Street Tyre for cars running on hard street rubber. “The 275 radials are really popular,” says Matt. “They fit under a lot of cars without cutting them up, and it’s where all the fast guys want to be.”
The Street Tyre class is something new. At Drag Challenge, hard street rubber is banned because it rips up our expensive track prep, something that isn’t a problem at a no-prep meeting. “The Street Tyre class is great. On one hand, you have folks in their regular muscle cars just coming out for a hit. But we are also getting guys who normally run on drag radials having a go. It is a real challenge, and again, it levels the playing field. We define a street tyre as anything with a tread wear index no lower than 140.”
For this first meeting, only 100 people were allowed on site due to COVID restrictions, so Matt kept the entries to just less than 30 cars per class and ran without spectators. Each racer was allowed two test passes; then racing began. Running on a Pro Tree, the meeting ran elimination-style, with knocked-out racers able to come back out to make grudge passes.
JUNGA BUNGA IS A WAY TO KEEP THINGS ON THE BOIL AT THE TRACK WITHOUT NEEDING BIG NUMBERS OR EVEN SPECTATORS