Rain dashes drag racing hopes

LAST weekend's national drag-racing round at Hood Aerodrome promised fireworks, but in the end all it produced was a damp squib.
A disappointed Masterton Motorplex events co-ordinator Bob Wilton said later the entry was the strongest ever.
"We had a really big field, with six top alcohol cars and five top door-slammers ? the best we've ever had."
And then the rain came. Just gentle spitting at times, but when you're trying to put 2000hp down onto the tarmac the last thing you want is water on the track.
There were frequent rain breaks on Saturday, when the lower-powered cars got in some runs, but after steady rain overnight Sunday proved a washout.
Wilton said weather insurance cost thousands of dollars, and substantial downfall was required to trigger a payout, so the club decided not to seek cover. And there are no spare dates for the re-running of the round.
"It's disappointing, but hey, we've had a good run up till now," he said.
The club's final meeting of the year is on December 27 - 28, when it's hoped the weather will be more favourable.
If the club was disappointed, so too were competitors who travelled from Auckland and Christchurch for the meeting.
Take Graham Carter, who brought his lovely Jaguar-bodied car from Auckland for the previous meeting and blew his engine during the warmup. He towed it back home, rebuilt the engine and hauled it back, an arduous 11?-hour journey in which his truck developed engine problems. And then the meeting was rained off.
Fans would have been sad to miss seeing the Seyb dragster from Christchurch in action. This is a 6.8s/200mph car with some startling stats: ) - 100km/h in 1.1s, generating 3Gs in the process; 2000hp; and chopping out a set of tyres in something like 7 miles!
Another from the Seyb stable is a 1991 Corvette with a 9.6litre motor, which has run 7.005s/194.5mph.
One man who was probably happy not to be fronting up is Scott Miller, who has hopes of joining the 200mph club. His car won't be ready until the next Masterton meeting