Happy Birthday to Street Machine Drag Challenge
It’s the 10-year anniversary of Australia’s longest-running and most prestigious drag-and-drive event, Street Machine Drag Challenge. Big high-fives to Scotty Taylor and Simon Telford and the rest of the Street Machine team as they set off this week for another five-day tour. I wish I could be there in person to help blow out the candles on the cake.
Street Machine Magazine is very near and dear to me. Working as part of their team for many years in Australia is basically what steeled me to do what I do now. I learned a lot of what I know about video-making while working on SM productions, and through covering events like Summernats and Drag Challenge. I was given opportunities to travel, both in Australia and the USA – the first two times I attended Drag Week was for Street Machine. I also made a lot of friends, including Sick The Mag editor Luke Nieuwhof, who I met while working alongside him at Drag Challenge Weekend in 2019.
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It’s been cool to see the sustained growth of Drag Challenge over the past 10 years. Especially when you consider its humble beginnings, with just 18 entrants on a 1000-kilometer racing road trip starting in Sydney, New South Wales and finishing in Heathcote, Victoria.
That first event was held in 2014 (hence the 10th birthday) and it was all done in secret. The Street Machine team discreetly sent out invitations to the owners of the quickest street-legal cars in the country, and 18 of them showed up. Many of the pioneers from that first trip are still part of today’s scene, including Mark Arblaster, Alysha Teale, Luke Foley, Nathan Ghosn, Carolyn Tzortzas, John Kerr, Greg Mason, Terry Seng, Brendan Cherry and Brenton Miller, plus the late, great Harry Haig.
The reason for the secrecy was that Street Machine wanted to first ensure they could pull off a drag-and-drive event safely in Australia, without the added pressure of hosting spectators at the tracks or attracting unwanted attention from law enforcement on the roads. Call it a test hit if you will. They kept it on the down-low and only told the public about how awesome it was after the fact. This caused a severe outbreak of post-factum FOMO across the nation and it all kicked off from there.
Drag Challenge has come a long way since. From 18 cars in 2014, the field is now capped at 250, and it’s a guaranteed sell-out every year. The event has never been back to New South Wales but instead has made its home predominantly in the state of Victoria, and occasionally South Australia (which is now likely to become regular since the recent opening of the world class Dragway at The Bend facility in Tailem Bend, SA). Spectator interest continues to grow, and for this year’s event Street Machine is upping the ante by adding pro burnout competitions after racing is completed on two of the days, each paying $15,000 in prize money. It’s an innovative cross-promotion, and in a place like burnout-crazy Australia, it just might work.
Things have gotten increasingly more serious on the racing side of things, too. The first Drag Challenge was won by Quentin Feast in his Holden Torana with a quickest time of 8.59/161mph. By comparison, last year the quickest pass was a wailing 6.91/208mph, run by Mark Whitla in his Ford Capri. That’s a leap of more than a second-and-a-half. And while a 6.91 is not quick enough to trouble the heavy hitters here in America, it’s wildly impressive in light of the stringent laws around modified vehicles in Australia.
Australia was colonized by convicts and their overseers over 200 years ago, and for some reason they still love making and enforcing rules. What’s more, safety is a big priority. Governments at federal, state and local levels are cautious of protecting everybody. Australia offers free healthcare for residents, which is generally a great system, but it comes at the cost of some liberties. Accidents are a drain on the medical system and the economy – if I get hurt, my neighbor, the taxpayer, pays for it – therefore the government must minimize the risk of accidents happening by wrapping everyone in high-vis cotton wool, metaphorically speaking. Everything is made ultra-safe for the good of the country. This extends to the creation of strict laws around modifying cars for street use, and also to the sometimes hyper-vigilant policing of those laws. But I digress…
The point is, running sixes in a fully engineered (meaning inspected by government-approved officials) and street-registered car in Australia is no mean feat. But, while Whitla’s six was the first and only one at an Australian drag-and-drive event so far, I guarantee it won’t be the last. In fact, I think it’ll happen again at Drag Challenge starting next week.
Want me to name names? Okay. Firstly, Drag Challenge veteran Adam Rogash will be there in his latest ride, the ‘STRIPSHOW’ Capri, which went straight into the sixes upon its track debut last year. In recent testing on the excellent Sydney Dragway surface, the car went a scorching 6.7/211mph, so there’s quite a bit of wiggle room there. This will be the car’s first drag-and-drive test, but it ain’t Rogash’s first rodeo. He’s been diligently testing the Capri both on the track and on the street – it’s sub-sevens or bust for that deal.
Last year’s overall winner, Mark Drew in his ‘Crusty’ Holden Torana, would also be a likely candidate to run sixes in competition, having done it in testing two years ago. But Mark is currently recovering from an injury and is not able to participate this time around.
Another car that has proven capable is Dan Szabolics’s HQ Holden Monaro. In testing it has gone as quick as 6.65/214mph in full drag-and-drive trim, but Dan has never been able to put it all together to run that fast in competition. Could this be the year?
The other obvious contender is the famed ‘FAIRXW’ Ford Fairmont, which Frank Marchese drove to victory at Drag Challenge 2018. This year it will be raced by former Radial Aspirated winner Keith Hards with Marchese along as co-pilot. Marchese is respected as one of the biggest brains in the game (he even built the big-block that’s in Rogash’s Capri), and you can bet he isn’t returning with the big white four-door after six years just to make up the numbers. It went 6.72/209mph at Sydney a few months ago, so you don’t have to be Notradamus to predict it’ll run a six next week.
As always, the battle for the overall win will likely come down to attrition more than raw speed. Scouring the list of contenders, there are many seven-second capable cars that will be ready to pounce if the top dogs so much as stumble. It’s harder to pick than a broken nose. All I know is, I smell sixes.
