Video: How Shane Locke’s Chevy LUV won the $25K at Rumble in the Jungle

Shane Locke’s underdog Chevy LUV beat 64 cars to win the first Rumble in the Jungle shootout at Willowbank Raceway

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Photographers: Dragphotos.com.au, Chez Images

Shane Locke’s super-basic Chevy LUV has emerged victorious against a bumper field of 64 cars in the inaugural Rumble in the Jungle shootout at Willowbank Raceway, with Shane winning $25,000 for his trouble.

Run as part of the Kenda 660 Radial Riot event on Sunday 29 September (moved from Saturday due to rain), the Rumble in the Jungle format was simple but brutal. All cars had to be street-registered and race to a 6.40 index, with a $300 buy-in per racer and no practice runs allowed prior to eliminations.

Those elimination runs were virtually back-to-back. There were no tow cars to move racers to and from the lanes, and no refuelling or tyre changes were allowed between runs.

“We only had about five minutes between runs; they got through all 64 cars in around an hour,” Shane said. “It worked well for me; I can hot-lap this thing all day!”

Shane has done plenty of racing in the past, but compared to his competitors on the day, he wasn’t taking it all that seriously. “I wheeled the car out of the garage after 10 months off, and the radials are bloody 10 years old!” he laughed. “I didn’t have any gamesmanship or strategy going in other than to tether it enough to not run over 6.40. The event just fell on one of my days off.”

The LUV sports a fairly basic combo of a 383ci Chev small-block with an APD carby and Dart heads, running on E85. It was making around 630hp when Shane took on our Queensland Drag Challenge Weekend events in 2018 and 2019, and he placed second in the Tuff Mounts 235 Aspirated class at the 2019 event.

At Rumble in the Jungle, the LUV went all rounds to the final, running in the low 6.40s for each. Shane’s last race was against Bill Abdou’s beautiful Mustang, but before the final got underway, he made a $500 side bet with Bill to go halves in the $25,000 first-place prize money, with the winner pocketing the extra $500.

“I’m not that fussed [about the money], you know?” Shane said. “There was a lot of smack-talking going on between some big-name racers who all lost out; for them it was all about the green. But I couldn’t really care less, so I was happy to share it with Bill.”

In the final, Bill got the jump, but that ended up costing him. He broke out with a 6.39@112mph in the Mustang, giving Shane the win with his 6.41@107mph run.

Rumble in the Jungle’s winner-takes-all $25,000 prize was the largest amount ever offered in Sportsman racing history, and Shane’s a big fan of the idea. “It’s great to finally get some big prize money for racing like this, so I’ve gotta give big props to Justin Simpson and the Kenda crew for putting it on.”

“I also have to give thanks to Garry Green at Lockyer Automotive; Straight Jacket Racing; Leigh Drake at Speed Labs; and Calvin Munro for his help on the day.”

You can catch all the Rumble in the Jungle race-day action in the first couple of hours of Overtaking Lane’s livestream replay of the full Kenda Radial Riot event. Watch it below!

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