The chance for Scotty to take his late dad’s VE Valiant ute down the drag strip has been a long time coming, but that day finally came last weekend at Heathcote Park Raceway – and what a day it was!

Scotty went into the event with no expectations, simply wanting to give the car a squirt to see what it’d do – and, most importantly, enjoy it, just like his dad had always wanted.

The car ran a 14.3@100mph straight off of the trailer, and Scotty then started fiddling with the Edelbrock carby in between runs to try and get the car closer to the 13s.

After a few more test hits, the eliminations kicked off. Scotty was running in the Naturally Aspirated Eight-Cylinder class, with the racing all being run on a dial-in format.

His first run was up against a much newer Chrysler 300. Scotty cracked a PB on that run with a 13.98, and because the 300 red-lit, he won the round even though he broke out of his 14.00 dial-in.

For the second elimination, Scotty scored the win when another competitor also jumped the gun and red-lit at the start of the race. He then backed that up with an outright win in the third round.

At this point, Scotty was starting to feel pretty confident about his chances of taking the class win. That energy flowed straight into the semi-final, where he narrowly beat his opponent to make it to the final.

Scotty then came up against a father-son duo who happened to be long-time family friends of his, Tom Banks Sr and Jr. They’d come down from Sydney with their 10-second hardtop to run in Mopar Nationals, and Scotty found himself lining up against Tom Jr in the final.

So, how did it play out, and who won? You’ll have to watch the episode above to find out!