 |
 |
- Road Conditions
- SA Motor Industry
- Carnet & DE NET
- Load Regulations
- Buyer/Seller's Guide
- Toll Tariffs
Hot Babes !!
What is drifting?
Drag Racing In Mzansi.
Drag racing is the
fastest growing form of
motorsport in the world right now, thanks to cult car movies like The Fast
and the Furious.
Illegal street racing has been going on since the second motorcar arrived in
this country.
At drag strips all over the country there has been a concerted drive to get
racers off the street and competing in a controlled environment.
The 400-metre stretch of tarmac used by drag racers at the Rainbow Strip
near Alberton is the oldest drag racing venue in South Africa. Competitors
have been burning rubber here since the strip opened way back in 1967.
A serious drag racer like Gavin Wilkins has his work cut out preventing
wheelspin. With something like seven hundred and fifty kilowatts fed through
to the rear tyres on his Ford Sierra XR8, this car can wheelspin at over 200
kilometers per hour. This is a 1984 classic in mint condition. And the
five-point eight litre Ford V8 engine has had thousands of rand spent on it
over the years.
Every single component is specially made for drag racing, including the dual
stage Nitrous Oxide system. When Gavin hits both nitrous buttons in the
cockpit, there’s an instantaneous two hundred and twenty-kilowatt power
injection. This fully street legal Ford covers the four hundred metres in
under eleven seconds and has an officially-tested top speed of two hundred
and ninety eight kilometers per hour.
The weird and the wonderful at a legal drag race just gets weirder. This is
true in the case of Louis Lima's Nissan 1400 pick-up.
Louis' bakkie started out as a legal street machine, but these days Louis no
longer pretends that his Nissan is anything other than an out and out racer.
Using a two comma two-litre Mazda engine with a massive turbocharger and
dual stage nitrous oxide, this Nissan is the fastest pick up in South Africa
and one of the fastest in the world.
It runs the four hundred metres in eight comma six seconds with a top speed
of over two-sixty through the timing lights. That's when Louis can find
enough traction, even using those massive drag slicks.
Bringing a semblance of normality to the drag scene is Rob Green's
supercharged BMW M3. Now this is a car that you would expect to go fast, and
indeed it does. Rob was testing out a new GPS timing system on his car,
which gives data readouts all the way through a run.
This mighty BMW is an 11-second car and one of the interesting tidbits from
the GPS read out was that it covers zero to one hundred kilometres per hour
in three comma eight seconds.
Colourful cars, colourful people, that's what drag racing is all about.
There’s a delightful informality about a drag meet, unlike circuit racing
where everyone seems to take themselves much more seriously.
Supercharged Chevy V8s, rotary-engined Beetles, and what seems like an
endless stream of modified Nissan pick-ups.
That's drag racing for you!
|
contains sim55 dna