PERTH, SYDNEY AND WILLOWBANK ANNOUNCE THEIR OWN SERIES

Australian drag racing undergoes major transformation

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AS EXPECTED, in a follow-up to ANDRA’s member statement released yesterday, Perth Motorplex, Sydney Dragway and Willowbank Raceway have announced that they will not be taking part in the 2015-2016 ANDRA Championship Drag Racing Series. The tracks’ full press release can be found here.

Instead the three tracks plan to go ahead with their own championship series for 2015-2016, headlined by the Group One categories: Top Fuel, Top Alcohol, Top Doorslammer, Top Bike, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Bike. They also plan to include the Sportsman categories as a support to the main circus and run the whole thing under ANDRA sanction.

How ANDRA feels about this development remains to be seen, but the word from the head office is that they are putting together a response as we speak.

In today’s press release, Willowbank’s Tony Wedlock said: “We intend to initially provide a better schedule of events through a revitalised National Championship, improve the health of the professional categories, and return confidence to the sport. Our announcement is in the best interests of Australian drag racing and will take the sport back to the top where it belongs.”

In addition to the tracks’ press release, Willowbank Raceway has added a Q&A session with Tony Wedlock to its website, responding to some of the claims made by ANDRA in yesterday’s member statement. You can find that here.

So what does all this mean for Australian drag racers? Well, unless something changes soon, it seems like we’ll have two racing series running concurrently over the next 12 months. ANDRA still seems keen to go ahead with its Summit Racing Equipment Sportsman Series, the first round of which is at Alice Springs Inland Dragway in just four weeks (25-26 July).

No doubt we’ll hear more from ANDRA tomorrow on this subject, but this is a situation that needs to be fixed for the good of the sport.

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