The Ballarat Drag Racing Club held an extra race meeting on Sunday the 30th of December after the 2nd of December meeting was rained out. This was the second time in 20 years a meet has been canceled due to rain.

The earlier meeting promised to be full of action with the appearance of Super Gas racers Omar Sedmak, John Williams, Dave McDonnell, Ron Hutchins, Darrell Mathieson, Matt Forbes, Stuart McBain and Chris Johnson.

The weather remained fine for the late December meeting and many new vehicles attended for the first time. Club member Craig Geddes arrived with his immaculate bright yellow C/Altered. Geddes was keen to do some testing before the Nationals after rebuilding and replacing many components in the drive line. On a very tentative first pass the Altered went through the traps with a vary easy 5.70 e.t. The data logger revealed that full acceleration was achieved in the first 1.8 seconds of the run. The next pass netted Craig a 5.50 at only 110m.p.h., which is the record for a car behind Graeme Morrell's Nitro Harley 5.36. Again, this pass was barely past the 330ft mark when Geddes had to back off. Craig was very satisfied all was in order and packed the car away confident of good numbers at the 2002 Nationals.

Graeme McDonald raced his beautiful purple 34 ford 3 window coupe, much to the appreciation of the crowd. The quality, presentation and performance of this vehicle is superb and certainly impressed everyone judging by the crowd around this car in the pit area.

Darryl Porter and Tony Van Ginniken again made the trip from Warrnambool. Both laid down some great burnouts, strong times and some truly amazing wheelstands. These guys are crowd favorites at the Ballarat track and very tough competitors.

Regular racer Anton Krajina arrived with his Cortina and colorful crew, again providing some tough racing and excellent reaction times. It was also great to see up and coming racer Darren Parker compete in his VP Commodore which was featured in a Dragster Australia 'Future Watch' article. Another new comer was Kym Oberauer in his recently purchased Capri. Kym is new to drag racing and with the help of Matt Despirit and Craig Gerdes has adapted quite well, going a couple of rounds in racing and picking up the best presented vehicle award.

Two brackets were contested on the day. 'A' bracket was one by Anton 'Snapper' Krajina over the Elgas powered Capri of Tony Seychells. 'B' bracket was won by Graham Collet in his neat 6 cylinder LJ Torana over Andrew Francis in his Chev powered early model Celica.

The next meeting for the Ballarat season is on Sunday, February 10. This meeting will feature the Nitro Funny Car of Gary McGrath, Peter Pearce on his Top Bike, a field of Super Gas cars and Operation Dragsafe with their new VT SS police car. We will also have our regular brackets for cars, bikes and junior dragsters.

Matt Forbes and Les Waight
B.D.R.C Race Committee