Drag Racing South African Style
Some things look familiar to American racers, such as these Chevys in Factory Street action. But wait, there is unfamiliar road ahead…
The R24, a highway without a whiff of glamour, leads away from the gritty congestion of Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, through miles of low-rise suburban sprawl, and, finally, into a landscape that hints at the way things were before the discovery of gold in the 1880s brought thousands, then millions, of fortune-seekers to the region. South Africans call this undulating region, covered with dry grasses and lonely trees, the high veld. Americans would call it the high prairie. It’s a primordial landscape, and it provokes deep thoughts, such as, “The first automobile race must have been a drag race.”
Mind you, I don’t have any actual proof for this assertion, but it makes sense. It happened like this: Some guy sitting behind the tiller of a horseless carriage said to his buddy, in another horseless carriage, “I bet I can beat you to the end of the block.” And our sport was born. Road racing (trying to get from here to way over there faster than the other guy) and circle track racing (trying to get from here to here faster than the other guy) came later. The first race was a straight line sprint. Had to be.
 Nico van Rensburg was busy running two cars in three classes. Here is his Top Eliminator. |
In fact, the first race of any kind was a drag race. (This is another deep thought for which I have absolutely no proof.) It happened when some guy, long, long ago, challenged the guy he was sitting with to race to the hut at the edge of the village. That first-ever barefoot drag race happened about 150,000 years ago somewhere on the high veld of southern Africa, where our ancestors evolved into us, homo sapiens. Tarlton International Raceway, South Africa’s only purpose-built drag strip, is probably near that spot.
Stay on the R24 long enough--to the point where sprawl gives way to the veld--and you’ll find Tarlton. There, on Sunday, 10 August 2008, nearly 150 entrants contested Round 4 of the South African National Drag Racing Championship. This was modern drag racing, of course, with cars, bikes, and quads that are organized into classes with names--Super Comp, Factory Street, etc.--that American racers would find familiar. Everybody dials in--except in two bike classes, which race heads-up--and leaves from a staggered tree. Nothing strange there, either.
The cars themselves are a different matter. Sure, you’ll find alcohol dragsters and funny cars that would be at home on an American track. The same goes for the scattering of Detroit iron--Camaros, Chevelles, and Monte Carlos. But how about 10, count them, 10 Cobra replicas, including Wouter Havenga’s white beauty, with a BMW M5 motor under the hood.