ONE of the great things about Racewars is that you get to see cars racing together that would never normally be in the same place at the same time. I’ve been to every Racewars event – as has Mark Grose, the owner of this killer nitrous-fed HT Monaro – and I never get tired of watching him square off against Ferraris, Lamborghinis or any number of grey Skylines.

This is a genuine nine-second car over the quarter-mile, so it has more than enough grunt to beat a lot of supercars over the 400m runs, but that’s about as far as Mark is willing to push the old girl. Those modern European and Japanese cars with their working suspensions, good brakes and aerodynamics soon prove their superiority over the longer distances.

Mark – who has owned the car for 31 years – had been running a 383 SBC combo for several years, which pushed the car to high 10-second quarters naturally aspirated and well into the nines with the 250-shot of nitrous. But a few weeks before Racewars a new 434 combo went in, which was dynoed at 687hp at the crank, but don’t forget, Mark’s still got that 250-shot of nitrous up his sleeve to give him over 900hp! That’s pretty handy for a car that regularly sees street duty, does a ton of drag racing and gets flogged to the limit at events like Racewars.

With the relocation of the event to Albany this year, Mark did feel a lot more comfortable in the car and hinted that he might put some taller gears in for next year’s event and give the 800m and maybe even the 1000m Vmax challenge a crack. That will be something worth seeing!