Social Drag Racing formula created

Motorsport South Africa and its Drag Racing Commission have formally introduced a new social drag racing class for 2016. This comes after many months of behind the scenes discussion and hard work.

The essence of the new class is to encourage illegal street racers to take their racing off the streets and into safer, controlled environments.

This new social class is for road-registered, street legal cars that the average person in the street uses for everyday purposes during the week.

MSA will create a national street legal drag log, which will be published via social media and will encompass the combined points of all SLD events held throughout the year at official MSA-sanctioned events.

The main new innovation with the new class is that the car, rather than the individual drivers, will need to be licensed with MSA, at a mere cost of R200 for the whole year.

This allows a licensed car to be used by any number of drivers, who will simply need to pay a small participation fee to the organisers of each event and complete an MSA indemnity form.

SLD Vehicle licences can be obtained at any of the MSA-registered clubs around the country.

The drivers of any MSA-licensed vehicle that have completed the required MSA indemnity form will automatically be entered onto the national log to be administered by MSA.

Clubs will be able to run their own club logs and will also be able to join forces with other clubs to run inter-club series.

MSA trusts that this new initiative will not only create a more structured approach to so-called ‘street racing’ but also lead to safer public roads, which is in all of our interests.

One can only hope that this venture succeeds in all of its objectives.

This publication has long opposed all forms of non-sanctioned motorsport participation on public roads.

Our reasons are simple, and three-fold.

Firstly, nobody can run an event where vehicles reach high speeds on a public road in safety for spectators.

If the competitors are dumb enough to take high risks in standard road vehicles, that is their affair and, who knows, probably their constitutional right.

However, such happenings inevitably attracts curious onlookers, who, in the past, have been killed.

Which brings us to the second point.

Nobody, but nobody, has the right to commandeer a public road for a high speed event, even if they possess advanced driving skills and high performance cars.

That is like a boxer beating somebody up in a shopping centre, “because he knows how to”.

Point three – there are a number of serious, legitimate drag racing comptitors in our country, who do brave, exceptional things with both cars and motorcycles on legitimate drag strips.

We hold them in high regard.

They do not deserve the general condemnation that follows, every time some idiot crashes during an illegal drag event, and news headlines proclaim “Spectators maimed in drag race”.

Here is weight to your arm, MSA.