Video: VPW Allstars Drag & Drive 2026

Allstars Drag & Drive

Drag-and-drive events are some of the toughest and most rewarding racing you will ever do. The sense of achievement that comes from building a swift street car and then driving it from track to track, lifting wheels and hitting PBs cannot be overstated. Daniel Case and Daniel Düll know this, and that’s why they’ve put together their own road-and-track adventure called Allstars Drag & Drive.

Dan Case has done Street Machine Drag Challenge a bunch of times in his small-block Chevy-powered Torana, and he saw the need for a local event in South East Queensland that tested entrants without them needing to travel 2000km south. “There are a lot of radial cars up here that are street cars,” he says. “When we toyed with the idea and asked a few guys, they were all dead keen to the point where we had no option, because everyone was like, ‘Hurry up; get it done.’”

In 2025, the two Dans dipped their toes in the water to see if the idea would work, and that first Allstars event was so well received that this year’s second outing sold out in just 25 minutes.

“The way we see it, if you want to do a really deep drag-and-drive where you do five tracks and torture the car, you do Drag Challenge. If you want to drink beers and muck around, you do some of the other local events. But if you want something in between, with prepped tracks and decent drives, you come to Allstars,” Dan says. Just over 200 entrants signed up for the 2026 Allstars, with 186 turning up on Day One to compete in one of the 10 classes across three days of high-intensity action, starting and finishing at Willowbank Raceway, with a trip to Warwick Dragway and back in between.

MORE Video & results: VPW Allstars Drag & Drive 2026

Half of the classes were split by tyre size and/or boost, while the remainder were fixed index classes for those running 8.50, 9.50, 10.50 or 11.50. Basically, if you couldn’t run quicker than a 12.0 over the quarter-mile, there wasn’t much point in showing up.

At the pointy end of the boosted classes, you needed a low-seven-second average to even be in the running for the top trophy, but all eyes were on Adam Rogash’s STRIPSHOW Capri, with Adam planning on running sixes (or the eighth-mile equivalent) at every track. The test session on Thursday afternoon put everyone on notice when Adam ran a 6.70@217mph – a great start to his campaign.

“We’d just travelled 1600 kays to be there, so to be able to let go of the button and just go down as smooth as what we wanted was a relief,” Adam said afterwards. “We got a good night’s sleep that night.”

Plenty of other racers also took the opportunity to work out a few bugs and get some test hits down the quarter. There were plenty of respectable passes lighting up the boards, including 2025 Drag Challenge winner Brandon Zito getting off it early for a 7.89, William Yarwood’s 2JZ Corolla running a 7.72, and Jason Mansweto clocking an 8.94 naturally aspirated in his old XY ute.

Allstars proper kicked off on Friday at Willowbank, followed by a circuitous drive to Warwick Dragway for Day Two, and then returning to Willowbank via Beaudesert for the final day’s racing, with a total road trip of about 500km. Racers were blessed with very reasonable Queensland weather for Day One, with some high clouds and temps just over 20 degrees – cool for the locals, but just perfect for those who had travelled up from Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide. A pair of local legends, Steve Carkeet and William Yarwood, got things started, with the nitrous big-block HQ of Carkeet firing down the track for an 8.75@154mph, while Yarwood’s Corolla pulled to the side with mechanical issues – the start of a long weekend for him.

One of the big differences between Drag Challenge and Allstars is the latter’s one-second reaction time rule. If your reaction time exceeds one second, the amount of time above one second is added to your car’s ET if you hand in that timeslip. It’s a rule that has been used at Hot Rod Drag Week and Sick Week in the States over the past few years, and the two Dans reckoned it made sense for Allstars. “That was more or less to try and speed things up. We did some calculations prior to see how many more passes an hour we could get by speeding up the proceedings,” Dan Case says. “Also, as a spectator in the grandstand, watching cars leave the startline together is far more enjoyable than watching one guy leave.”

It certainly put a lot more pressure on the racers at the startline, and some needed to hit the staging lanes again to improve their reaction times, but by the end of the day, some entrants were just forced to go with what they had.

To no one’s surprise, the quickest car of Day One was Adam Rogash and his big-block Capri. With a pair of 315 radials under the rear, Adam’s Capri was running in the Unlimited class, and he was in the staging lanes early to try to get a solid pass in before the track got too hot. It was a good plan, with the Capri rocketing down the track for a 6.73@218mph to set a new ET and mile-per-hour record for an Australian drag-and-drive event.

Adam wasn’t the only one having a good time, with 12 racers laying down seven-second passes on Day One – a pretty decent effort in anyone’s vocabulary.

Once the day’s racing was done and dusted, everyone hit the mandatory route north to the first photo-stop checkpoint for parmies and beers at the Bottletree Hotel in Glamorgan Vale, before heading to the second checkpoint at Superior Racing in Toowoomba. From there, it was a straight shot down the New England Highway south to Warwick Dragway. In a normal car, that would be around a three-hour trip, but in a hot street car with multiple stops for photos, food, or even just to stretch the legs, it was closer to five hours – more than enough to test the mettle of any streeter.

It was a tad cooler in Warwick for Day Two of Allstars, thanks to the higher elevation and some cloud cover, and the plan was to run the cars over the eighth-mile instead of the quarter. “We reckon it makes it more of a challenge for the fixed index classes running it as an eighth-mile,” Dan Case says. Racers in the four fixed classes of 8.50, 9.50, 10.50 and 11.50 needed to aim for 5.50, 6.00, 6.50 and 7.50 respectively over the eighth to hit their numbers for Day Two.

Clearly, the traction was pretty good at Warwick, because eight cars ran into the fours – more than in the entire history of Drag Challenge!

Leading the charge once again was Adam Rogash, who was put into a quarantine section in the pits, along with the top three entrants from each class. This meant they weren’t allowed to get a helping hand or parts from other racers in the pits; only the people travelling in each race car or other quarantined entrants could help. So, it was all up to Adam and his passenger Austin, but the benefit was they didn’t have to line up with everyone else; all racers in quarantine got an express lane to the startline.

“I think quarantine is a bloody awesome idea,” Adam reckoned. “It means that as soon as we want to make a hit, we can roll out there. So, if we’ve had problems on the road and we miss our first session, we can still roll out whenever we like. It takes that stress and anxiety out of it.”

As it turned out, Adam did break a couple of rockers out on the road, and he managed to source some replacements from Mark Whitla before hitting the track on Day Two.

“We didn’t know what the track was going to be like, so we said, ‘Well, what do we need to run?’ So, we literally put a tune-up in it that’s been 4.48 before.”

That strategy was right on the money, with the Capri going 4.50@171mph over the eighth. Brandon Zito in his green LC Torana was a couple of tenths behind with a 4.74, while Trent Brimble’s VL sedan nipped at their heels with a 4.80.

The first checkpoint for Day Two saw the drag-and-drive horde cruise back down the highway and then across to Oz Torque Automotive in Beaudesert, before heading on back to Willowbank via a stop at the BP servo in North Maclean.

Back at Willowbank Raceway, the final day started off cool and overcast, but despite the low track temps, the action was hot, hot, hot.

Jason Kenny’s bright yellow VN got things started with a 7.59@183mph, which was good enough to lock in third spot in the Forced 28 class. He wasn’t the only one into the sevens either, with 13 cars handing in a seven-second timecard for Day Three. Remember when Top Doorslammers were running sevens? Sure, it was 30 years ago, but even so, to have so many street cars running that quick is quite an achievement.

Then there was Adam Rogash, who skipped straight over the seven-second zone to finish the event having run sixes each day (with that 4.50 eighth-mile pass at Warwick the equivalent of a six over the quarter). Knowing that he had the advantage of the quarantine lane, Adam let some warmth get into the track before making his first pass, and the Capri breezed down the track to run a 6.64@219mph, resetting the national drag-and-drive once more.

Naturally, for an overachiever like Adam, that wasn’t enough. Back in the pits, they cooled down the trans, checked all the rockers and put the full-send tune into the ECU before heading back to the lanes. Adam already had the overall win in the bag – with Brandon Zito running a new PB of 7.18@196mph to finish second and Trent Brimble snagging third with a 7.27@189mph – so he didn’t really need to stomp on the record yet again, but he did it anyway.

Off the line, the Capri was fairly relaxed over the 60-foot with a 1.22 short time, but then the power came in; at half-track, the timers stopped at 4.35, and then just over two seconds later, Adam was crossing the line for a 6.56@219mph – a new PB for the car that also broke the Australian drag-and-drive record for the third time in three days. It doesn’t matter which way you look at it – quickest single time; quickest average – Adam’s Capri is unequivocally Australia’s quickest street car.

By any measure, the second Allstars Drag & Drive was a massive success, and Dan Case and Dan Düll – and their respective partners Megan and Amy – need to be commended for creating such a massive event and doing it so well.

In fact, entrants are already talking about next year. “They’re already going, when’s the next one?” Dan Case laughs. “It’ll be the same time next year probably, but we might add a few more spots.”

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