Since its inception in 2016, the Holden Drag Nationals has evolved into one of the best-loved events on the Aussie drag racing calendar. If you want proof, the 190 entrants packing Central Victoria’s Heathcote Park Raceway for the 2025 instalment of the Lion-hearted lovefest should be ample.

This year saw the event return to HPR after a move to Mildura’s Atlantic Oils Sunset Strip eighth-mile in 2024. “We changed it up, but Heathcote just feels like the home for this event,” says head organiser Todd Foley. “The feeling around the track is just right, so it was great to be back.”

Following an unofficial test day on the Friday night, Saturday’s race day didn’t quite go to plan. “The track started off great in the morning, but we just kept having downtime from track breakages,” Todd laments. “It felt like every hour someone spat out something, and those messes take time to fix.”

Compounding those time pressures was Heathcote’s new, strict 10pm noise curfew, which unfortunately did rear its ugly head and keep this year’s event from running all the way through to the final races. “It’s a non-negotiable curfew with the EPA, and we ran for as long as we could, right up until around 9:57pm,” says Todd. “I think for next year, we’ll go back to a two-day format; even with 12 hours of racing, we couldn’t get through it all with the delays.”

As with previous Holden Nationals, entrants were broken up into classes based on tyre and powertrain types, with seven in total. The majority of those ran in dial-your-own format, while the big-hitting 235/255 and 275 GOAT classes used a heads-up, eighth-mile format.

Despite all the interruptions and the 10pm cut-off, there was still plenty of hot pace and talking points from the day’s racing.

Jason Kenny’s bright yellow, turbo LS-powered VN Commodore produced the quickest eighth-mile pass of the event, romping to a 4.98@143mph and then a 4.89 with a 1.13 60-foot.

It was a far less successful day for DC veteran Luke Foley, with the Dart-block LS in his VH Commodore ending up with some unwanted viewing windows on each side thanks to a part failure.

With the women-only YTG class the only one that managed to complete its final before curfew, Todd elected to split the prize money between all class finalists as well as hand out individual awards. “All the entrants were super understanding; we didn’t hear a bad word about the compromise, so it was a best-case scenario,” he says.

A true bright spot from the day was the Little Legends kids’ drags, staged in memory of Billy Cartledge. Thirteen keen youngsters lined up in electric racers to run on a small section of the staging lanes, and there was even some money on the line! “One of the young lads bet one of the adults $20 he could beat their golf cart, and he did!” Todd laughs. “It was an awesome thing to have, especially for the Cartledge family to pay tribute to Billy.”

The Holden Drag Nationals will no doubt be back for 2026, and Todd is already making plans for another event later this year. “We’ll be looking to do a Ford vs Holden Nationals in November at Heathcote, so we’ll announce more details about that soon.”