IT HAS been five years in the making, but Eddy Tassone from Active Automotive has finally taken out the overall win at Motul Racewars 2018 – a standing 1000m top speed event held at Albany Airport in Western Australia. After crashing his VZ GTO heavily at the 2013 event, Eddy has had to rebuild his car, and more importantly, his confidence to achieve this result.

He finished well ahead of his competitors and just shy of the Australian record with a 334.93km/h run with second placed Peter Gray almost 10km/h behind with a 324.94km/h pass in his AWD R33 Skyline GTR. Third place went to Jose Jardim of ITP Race Cars and his 1995 Supra with a 321.20 km/h pass. These performances are staggering on their own, but considering they were all achieved into a 30km/h headwind, who knows what speeds we could have seen in better conditions?

So, what’s it take to be Australia’s fastest RWD car? Well, over 1500hp helps. To get there – on 20psi of boost – Eddy has screwed together an all-alloy 460ci LS combo based around an RHS block and Mast Mozez heads. A couple of Precision 76/75 turbos are tucked down low and out of the way with the boosted charge making its way through a Plazmaman intercooler then into a sheetmetal high-rise intake from Marcella Manifolds.

On his winning pass Eddy pumped 24.4psi through the motor and then came back out very late in the day to have a crack at the national record. With a bit more boost the car ran through the 800m traps at 314km/h but got a little out of shape so he backed off – and still went 309km/h.

After battling head gasket issues and pulling the motor three times in the last two weeks, Eddy got on top of it all and laid down the most impressive pass ever seen at Racewars. In a car that’s really set up for drag racing – it’s gone 8.25 @ 170mph – who knows what Eddy could be capable of with a more slippery car, say a brand new Corvette? As it happens, Eddy’s wife has one in the shed.