THE guys from Radial Life put on their first drag racing event last weekend at Ballarat Airport. Dubbed No Excuses, the event was based around prepped, radial-tyre, heads-up eighth-mile racing, and did not disappoint, with some of Melbourne’s quickest street cars attending – including some of our Drag Challenge entrants who clearly still haven’t had enough of racing. There were three tyre-based classes for the event: 235, 275 and 325.

John Ricca raced his DC Top Five-placing VL Commodore and had one of the biggest saves we’ve seen, getting the RB-powered seven-second streeter up on two wheels at one point.

Kai McPhee was another Drag Challenge competitor who came along for some action in his single-turbo LS-powered VC Commodore. Kai and his crew had a rough trot on DC when a throttlebody screw got sucked into the engine, forcing them to strip the heads off before making it back to Swan Hill and running a PB. At No Excuses, Kai took home two trophies for Quickest V8 and Quickest Holden after running a 5.66.

Brad Kelly’s single-turbo LS VZ ute was on-song following a successful Drag Challenge campaign, making it through to the final for the 275 class against Matt Brame’s WHIPYA aspo small-block LH Torana. Matt got the win, taking home yet more silverware from Ballarat Airport after winning Tunnel Vision’s King Of The Street recently.

Jason Ruby’s all-wheel-drive Silvia doesn’t run a 325 tyre, but he was in the big-boy class due to the inherent advantages of having four driven wheels. But that didn’t hold him back one bit, which was no surprise to anyone. Having won King Of The Street at Ballarat previously and run eights down the quarter-mile with a manual ’box, Matt has since gone to a Powerglide and wound even more power out of the RB.

Jason met Sam El-Haouli and his twin-turbo LS-powered LH Torana in the final. Jason just got the jump, but Sam got the better launch, so it was a close race all the way to the finish, with Jason just getting the win.