Motueka Championship Series Meeting
28 October 2006
By Richard Ramsay
The second round of the NZDRA Championship Points Series was held by the Nelson Drag Racing Association on the Motueka Airport runway.
The meeting was held on Saturday 28th of October 2006 and the day dawned fine with light winds. Great drag racing weather and with a good turnout of local and out of town racers, the day was looking good.
The organizers had been up until 11.00pm the previous night trying to fix a gremlin in the timing lights system. But as they set the lights up at the runway things were not looking good, the gremlin was still there. With the agreement of all the racers it was decided to run a few cars and bikes down the track using a manual...drop of the flag...style start just to keep the crowd entertained. Whilst we did this the organizers worked flat out on the lights and by the time the Mod Bike class lined up we were back racing with lights and time cards.
So the lineup for the bike classes was as follows....
Comp Bike had the local lads Tristan Scalmer and Craig Wray, along with the Motueka based Xtreme Racing team. Ian Taylor also came down from Wellington with his new bike "StrayCat" for some more seat time.
Mod Bike was represent by 11 local riders and myself down from Auckland with my Suzuki GS1200SS. The local bikes were a mixed bunch with a Hayabusa, Kawasaki Ninja, BMW K75, Honda Firestorm and a bunch of Harleys. Also racing were a Honda 400 and Mark O'Carroll on his Triumph 955i. Mark had a very interesting handmade wheelie bar on his Triumph that was quite trick looking. With a bit more modifying he will be getting some impressive times out of his bike.
The Comp bikes lined up for their qualifying run and Tristan let go with one of his normal burn-outs...long and loud!!! But after launching, Tristan's bike died past the 60ft mark. It was later put down to a dead battery. Craig's bike misfired for a while but made it all the way down the 1/4 mile. The Xtreme Force's Harley sounded strong off the line but lost the rear cylinder part way down the track and was retired for the rest of the day.
Ian Taylor had major starting problems with StrayCat but got the fire lit and had quite a good launch, straight for a good portion of the track and he only had to button off slightly to bring the beast back into line. This was Ian's first full 1/4 mile run and things were looking good for another run, but on returning to the pits he discovered oil on the back tire. This had come from the overflow bottle and it was feared that the oil was a symptom of something wrong deeper in the engine. Ian decided to retire the bike to further investigate the problem.
That left Tristan and Craig to fight out the final. Tristan ran a red light and handed the win to Craig.
Mod bikes whittled themselves down from twelve bikes, to the final three. My Suzuki, a Triumph and a Harley. Due to a dial-in mix up, myself and the Triumph had to race a second time to decide the finalist. Well, I made it through and after a delay, raced the Harley in a bit of a rain shower for the decider. It was quite interesting to hit white painted lines in the wet at half track! But after all the waiting I won the final for a full 100 points.
Once again I must comment on how much traction these southern tracks seem to have. Here was Motueka running it’s first meeting for the season, the track was short on rubber (planes don't do good burnouts when landed properly), but I was getting some of my best 60ft times ever. This is real credit to the Nelson Drag Racing Club's track prep work. It will be interesting to compare the rest of the Northern tracks as the season progresses.....
Now here is a bit more info I got from the Xtreme Force racing team about their Top Fuel Harley. It was originally built for Jim McClure and then moved from the USA to Aussie. It is presently on it's way from Aussie to NZ. The bike runs 93% Nitro and has a 120ci motor, a two speed B & J transmission, Kosman wheels and has run 7.4 @ 178mph!
So it looks like NZ's other Top fuel Harley will have some competition soon and we will be privileged enough to see some side by side Top Fuel passes soon.
The Xtreme Force race team are very committed to seeing both their bikes running at their best and are not going to be rushing things, but rather taking as much time as it takes to do this thing right. It is great to have another group of drag bike racers joining in and bolstering our numbers. Welcome to Xtreme Force Racing.
So, who's going to be at Masterton ???
Richard Ramsey
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