Summer ends at full throttle
AColin Smith
s the country turned the clocks back an hour at the weekend, the sport of drag racing used the last day of summer to go full throttle with its time machine.
From behind the tyre smoke at Saturday’s World’s End Nostalgia Drags — an annual event organised by Tauranga-based Bay Rodders at Meremere Dragway — multiple eras appeared on the start line.
The Nostalgia Drags are in part a hard core drag racing contest where fractions of a second count and also a quarter-mile moving car show for classics and one-off creations.
The racing is as diverse as 90-yearold “four-bangers” covering the quarter-mile in a sedate 20s to the ferocity of nitro funny car and altered exhibition passes.
Each year the Nostalgia Drags has a theme. For 2018 the Bay Rodders brought a quartet of Australian Gassers across for a Beach Hop outing and the nostalgia racing at Meremere.
A Kiwi team was selected for a three-round, 12-race transtasman shootout which saw the Australians enjoy a performance edge as Ash Hayley (supercharged 55 Chev) and Damien Kemp (64 Ford Fairlane) raced into the low-9s bracket.
Hayley’s unbeaten run through three rounds of crowd-pleasing old school Gasser action anchored the 24-22 points win for the Australians.
A racing highlight included a huge 56-car entry in the pre-72 American Muscle Car category racing to a Super Street DYO format that demands quick reaction times and driving consistency.
The winner was Tauranga’s James Key in his 66 Chevrolet El Camino, who beat the 67 Ford Galaxie of Wayne Flord in the final. Russell Lowe won the 38-car pre-48 Hot Rod contest driving his 1938 Chev Coupe.
Competition cars included two classes for front-engine dragsters (super-charged and normally aspirated). The Blown FED final saw John Shepherd deliver a sequence of low-7s passes in his blown-Hemi Backdraft dragster. A strong 7.025s run at 197.8mph defeated Grant Briffault in the final.
Ross Brown clocked 8.414s on an 8.40s dial-in to race past Ana Paterson’s Fontana four-cylinder dragster to win the naturally aspirated class. A strong field of competition cars was split into two eliminators. In the quickest class, Mark Gapp in his supercharged 41 Willys Coupe was the winner as Bobby Owens clobbered the wall with his supercharged 427 T-Bucket in the final.
There was also drama in the Comp 2 final with Stephen McKay having his 36 Dodge Coupe far enough ahead to be safe when Phil Webber spun his 38 Chev Coupe and cleaned out the half-track timing blocks. Karen Hay achieved the day’s quickest and fastest pass with her 6.793s/219mph pass in her Evil II 27 T Roadster.