Shambles at Taupo as timing lights wrecked

MASTERTON drag racer Scott Miller, right, will have to wait for the nationals in Auckland in two weeks to find out just how fast his new dragster really is.
This follows a chaotic meeting in Taupo at the weekend, when one of the competitors at the World of Outlaws Doorslammers Challenge meeting rolled and took out all the timing gear.
The organisers, who had billed the meeting as New Zealand's biggest-ever and had brought in a group of top Australians, were reduced to starting races, usually timed down to thousandths of a second, by the archaic system of waving flags.
"It was a hard case," said Miller's father, Gavin. "He (the driver who crashed) didn't just take out the timing wires. He also took out the backup systems, the computers, everything."
A lot of time was lost clearing the track and attempting to restore the timing system before the flags were pulled out.
The young Masterton mechanic did, however, get to do his first two full runs in competition at Taupo, having previously done a series of half-passes in testing.
In the first one he was against a car that usually runs in the 8.40s. He had a hiccup near the start but easily overtook his opponent halfway down the track.
"In the second he was off like a rocket ? we reckon it (the run) would have been in the 7s. Scott leapt out and was jumping up and down ?. He was fizzing," Gavin said.
Scott Miller's aim is to join the elite 200mph club, hopefully next season.
The car that caused all the damage, understood to be a green coupe which is a reular competitor at the Masterton Motorplex strip at Hood Aerodrome, was not the only casualty of the meeting.
The Rayglass Datsun 1200 which set a New Zealand record at Hood this season, in doing so becoming the fastest 4-cylinder car in Australasia, rolled and was totally wrecked, according to reports.