The Drag Challenge circus rolled into Heathcote Park Raceway today for Day Three of Street Machine Drag Challenge 2023.

The day dawned overcast, and we kicked off racing at 9.30am or so. We copped a very gentle smattering of rain in the morning, but the track crew got onto it and had us back up and racing in short order.

Just after midday, the Haltech Radial Blown class rolled into the staging lanes to find the track set to kill.

The radial-shod cars responded in kind with some cracking runs, including a 7.83 for Matt Lampard’s LUMPER HZ, a 7.76 for the LC Torana of Brandon Zito, a frustrating 8.00 for Shane Baker’s Holden-powered VH Commodore, and a 7.88 for Chris Kaarsberg.

Mark Drew in his ‘Crusty’ Torana then stunned us all with a 7.196-second pass at 197mph!

That is the quickest pass in Drag Challenge history, with the previous record of 7.35 belonging to Dan Szabolics, set on Day One of DC 2019.

Mark Whitla’s slick-shod Capri was in kill mode, but a 1.22-second 60-foot time turned into a series of wheelstands and pedals.

The Capri crew have been battling gremlins and needed to run the bonnet on the roof on the road trip to keep the car cool.

Tomorrow we head to South Coast Raceway in Portland, before the big finale back at Dragway at the Bend in South Australia.