Dwane Garrett on his way to victory in the Top Alcohol class. PHOTOS/JADE CVETKOV
MOTORSPORT
CHRIS COGDALE
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Masterton’s Dwane Garrett took the early lead in the Top Alcohol class national championship at the Masterton Motorplex over the weekend.
The meeting was the first round of the four-round national series for the group one cars, which encompasses the Top Alcohol and Top Doorslammer classes, and is shared between Masterton and Meremere, in South Auckland.
Garrett took the victory with a time 6.093 seconds at 228.51mph. However, bragging rights for fastest time of the meeting went to Paraparaumu’s Tamara Silk, who narrowly missed breaking into the five-second bracket with a time of 6.093 seconds at 233.81mph for the quarter-mile.
Auckland’s Barry Plumpton won the Top Doorslammers, beating Jeff Dobson from New Plymouth, with his fastest time of the meeting, a 6.742 second pass at 196.39mph.
Nine personal best times were set over the two-day meeting, which pleased Masterton Motorplex manager Bob Wilton.
“When you’re getting a lot of personal bests, that says something about how good the track is,” he said.
“It got better and better as the weekend went on, especially on Saturday when we ran pretty late to get through the third round of qualifying. It was like 7.20pm, and the air was getting good then.
“A couple of the group one drivers were also close to their personal bests and they were pretty happy.”
Wilton said entries were up by about 20 cars from the same meeting last year, and it attracted a good crowd over the two days.
The next meeting at the Motorplex is on January 2-3 and will feature the crowd-pulling Wild Bunch cars.
“That’s our traditional ‘Dragstalgia’ meeting, and it ended up being our biggest meeting of the season last year,” Wilton said.
“We had 20 Wild Bunch cars, and the fans came out to see them after the cars being absent from drag racing for years.”
