After a pace-setting Day Two, it was hump day for the Street Machine Drag Challenge competitors facing some eighth-mile racing at Mildura’s Sunset Strip. A chilly start to Day Three helped many competitors suck in some cool air and put down some scorching passes, but the Aussie desert heat soon took over again.
Some big oil-downs put the pressure on competitors that didn’t get in early, and sitting in the staging lanes with the hoods up and water bottles in hand became de rigueur for the day. Nevertheless, the shorter track meant more frequent passes and the staging lanes were flowing all day.
Lorenzo Gullotto came out firing early, running a 4.97 at 144mph in the cooler air – a record for the first four-second pass over an eighth-mile in Drag Challenge history. This was good enough to bump him up to fourth place overall before hitting the road early for a cruisey trip along the road section. Former fourth-place holder, Mark Drew in the orange Crusty Torana, joined the growing list of casualties, dropping out of competition and onto the back of a tow truck.
Taking advantage of the fast-moving staging lanes, Adam Rogash ran through plenty of passes in ALLSHOW, trying to squeeze every last drop out of the VL Commodore and remain hot on the heels of Frank Marchese ahead of him. Alas, the top three positions stayed the same by the end of the day, with Harry Haig still leading, followed by Frank and Adam.
The split between those three guys is less than four-hundredths of a second going into the penultimate day, so racing will be tight. Considering Lorenzo has been gaining momentum throughout the week and sits only 0.02-second outside of a trophy position, tomorrow’s racing back at Swan Hill will be fantastic to watch.
A quieter but more fierce battle has been developing in the Dial Your Own class, with the top five competitors all within two-thousandths of each other! The DYO class runs like a spread – entrants must pick their time slips for each day based not on their quickest, but on what is closest to the rest of their results, basically creating the smallest gap between their quickest and slowest times. Make sense? It can be tricky, but there’s also some fun in that. Given today was run on an eighth-mile, there was some head scratching and maths scribbling taking place using a 1.555 multiplier in order to calculate a quarter-mile relative time. Alysha Teale reigns supreme in DYO with her matte black HQ Holden, running with a split of only 0.00-second after three days.
As the temps climbed and numbers in the pits waned, it was time to hit the road back towards Swan Hill via a different route to the previous day. Much of the drive took place on rural highways, meaning single-lane, bumpy tarmac, plenty of trucks and road trains, and not much else in between larger towns.
The mandatory checkpoint at the Kaneira Hotel proved quite a party, with many racers and crew opting to park up, cool down and wander inside for a beer. The sleepy street was overrun by swathes of classic steel, vibrant colors, and weary competitors. A street machiner’s paradise by a quintessential Aussie pub!
As always, check out our gallery of images from the day, the video wrap up, and tomorrow we’ll find ourselves swatting away plenty more flies at Swan Hill Dragway for the penultimate day of racing for 2018 Street Machine Drag Challenge.
1. Harry Haig – Holden HQ sedan – [email protected] (19.377 total) – Outlaw Blown
2. Frank Marchese – Ford XW Fairmont – [email protected] (19.488 total) – Radial Blown
3. Adam Rogash – Holden VK Commodore – [email protected] (19.743 total) – Radial Blown
4. Lorenzo Gullotto – Holden VL Commodore – [email protected] (19.772 total) – Radial Blown
5. John Ricca – Holden VL Commodore BT1 – [email protected] (20.116 total) – Outlaw Blown
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