ON Wednesday, Portland’s South Coast Raceway hosted the Street Machine Drag Challenge, with racing enthusiasts from across the state descending on the town to partake in the event.

This represented one leg of a four-leg event, with drivers starting in Heathcote on Tuesday, before travelling to Portland on Wednesday and then up to Mildura yesterday, with the event finishing up back at Heathcote today and tomorrow.

Importantly, racers must make the journey from venue to venue in their drag cars themselves, adding a layer of difficulty to an already tough event.

Nick McNeil has raced in the event for a number of years, and said it is a very large undertaking.

“It’s called the drag challenge for a reason, it’s a very long time to be sitting behind the wheel of a car that isn’t built for that kind of driving,” he said.

“These cars are built for short quarter-miles, not hundreds of kilometres.”

McNeil, who hails from Karoonda in South Australia, said having to drive the cars from place to place certainly threw up a number of obstacles.

“The first thing is the fuel, my car (a Ford Falcon XD) uses about 25 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres… she’s certainly no Toyota Prius,” he said.

“Fortunately my car has run very smoothly, haven’t really had any issues so far… on the plus side for us our car doesn’t need any work done before or after the race, we’re pretty much good to go once we get off the track.”

The wet weather overnight on Tuesday caused another complication to the event, with a small amount of rain forcing the initial start time of 10am to be pushed back by more than an hour.

“Unfortunately, the weather’s held us back a bit but we should still be right to go,” McNeil said.

“(Wednesday) is our biggest day, we arrived here yesterday but we want to get most of the drive to Mildura out of the way… it’s going to be a long one.”