STREET FIGHT!

MARCH 1990

AFTER the Street Machine Shootout, the SM crew got even more ambitious and put on the Australian Street Machine Drag Racing Championships at Calder in November ’89. The event combined a show ’n’ shine, a swap meet and two days of hardcore racing.

While the SM crew were disappointed that the entry list just topped the 100 mark, they were more than happy that 12,000 punters lobbed on the Sunday to see the racers battle it out.

The field was divided into a street-tyre class dubbed ‘Street’ and another called ‘Pro Street’ for those running tubs, four-links and engine swaps that had not been blessed by the authorities. Geoff Paton fitted an alloy bigblock to Robin Waite’s stock-suspension HJ Holden, topqualified in Street with a 10.23@138mph pass and took the cherries. Manuel Galea won the Pro Street class in his tubbed 400-cube Mazda.

Sadly, that was the one and only ASMDRC to run, leaving Performance Street Car to take up the mantle with its excellent series of Street Car Shootouts that ran throughout the 90s.