Fast Fest 2014 took place on Heritage Day at Tarlton International Raceway, it was the first round of the South African National Drag Racing Championships.
Both Leon du Plooy and Mark van der Westhuizen were geared up and ready to put their Nissan bakkies down the strip but as fate would have it, they both ran into technical difficulties.
Having only two qualifying runs before eliminations come into play, Leon and Mark had to set solid times. In Leon’s first run one of the bolts on his wheelie bar came loose, causing him to veer into the left lane.
“I had to slack off otherwise I would have run into the other lane, my time was 14.85s with a speed of 85km/h, normally I run a speed between 240 and 250km/h,” said Leon.
Watching Leon’s second run you could hear that something went wrong with his gearing.
“There was no second gear, the gear lever selected, but the gear didn’t take and I had to freewheel down the 400m,” added Leon.
On Leon’s third run he had no problems with the gearbox and managed to slide into fifth gear.
“It seems I had a lot of gremlins in my bakkie on the day,” he laughed.
“But that’s racing, sometimes you have a perfect day where everything works out 100% of the time and then you have your days when nothing works out,” he added.
Come eliminations, Leon dialled in a 9.0 and crossed the line ahead of his competitor but only with a 9.3. His opponent dialled in a 10.0 and finished in 10.07, winning the elimination with 0.07s compared to Leon’s 0.3s.
“After watching a video my wife, Mariaan took I saw that the one side of my bakkie is higher than the other, I suspect the problem is my shocks, that’s what stopped me from launching properly on my runs and what caused me to launch skew,” Leon said.
Leon wasn’t the only one battling with his car, on Mark’s end his bakkie was struggling to get the boost up and this set his times down. He managed a 11.1s run and was pitted against Gerhard Nel from Nelspruit in the eliminations.
Gerhard Nel did 10.4 twice, a 10.7 and a 10.9, breaking the previous record for a front wheel drive turbo charged Toyota in South Africa. The previous record stood at 10.7s and with Gerhard’s first run he drover right over it.
In the eliminations Gerhard and Mark were pitted against one another when disaster struck, Gerhard rolled his Toyota powered Nissan Langley. Fortunately Mark was in front on the strip. Gerhard was lucky enough to escape with a few bruises thanks to his roll cage.
Mark seeing what happened stopped his car and ran up the strip toward Gerhard, he saw Gerhard’s Langley had caught fire and shouted: “Hardloop tjom, jou kar brand.”
Gerhard got out of his harness and dived to the ground alongside the track, covering his head as the emergency services rushed to the crash, fortunately the fire died out before it got out of hand.
“Gerhard’s accident just shows how important it is to have a roll cage, especially in high speed racing,” said Leon.
Leon recently chatted with Gerhard who is fine now, a bit battered and bruised and upset about his car but still in high spirits after breaking the record.
“I will build another front wheel drive, this time stronger and safer and I will break my old record,” said Gerhard.
Stig Neergard, a dragster driver from Denmark, and the 2013 European Top Fuel Champion attempted to break Nico van Rensburg’s record of 5.6777s, his closest time came in at 5.85s. He put on quite a show of driving skill as he broke down the 400m at over 400km/h.
Be sure not to miss the next round of the South African National Drag Racing Championships which will take place on April 28 at Tarlton International Raceway and view the galleries of the first round of nationals.
