Auckland drag racer Rod Harvey has continued his pursuit of hundreths-of-a-second and raced even deeper into the 5secs performance range during his latest outing in Australia.
Harvey’s team spent the weekend at Queensland’s Willowbank Raceway making test runs with the Yuasa Batteries Toyota Camry in preparation for the Brisbane Jamboree sport compact drag race event later this month.
Harvey scorched to a career-best 5.708secs run on Saturday with his second-best top speed of 256.08mph. He followed up with a 5.779secs at 255.48mph second run to complete preparations for the Garrett Brisbane Jamboree over the August 24-25 weekend.
Harvey, pictured in May at the Extreme Sydney Jamboree. Photos / Dragphotos.com.au
Track and weather conditions were excellent at Saturday’s Willowbank Raceway event but racers had to contend with a strong head wind.
Compared to Harvey’s previous best of 5.721secs — at Sydney Dragway in May this year — the latest run isn’t as quick to the 60-feet, 330-feet and eighth-mile increments but was faster at the eight-mile and delivered a 0.016secs improvement in the second half of the track.
‘‘We’re still trying to find our way with this car,’’ said Harvey.
‘‘We had struggled a bit at the Winternationals [in June] so I went home and had a think about it. We’ve changed a few things in the rear-end set-up since then and went back to test a few weeks ago but it was rained out.
‘‘So last weekend was our first chance to try things and it was cool to run a 5.70s and 204mph to the eighth-mile on a track that was okay but not great, and into a really strong head wind as well.
‘‘The Jamboree should have a better track and if the wind isn’t as bad I think we can chip away at it some more.’’
The latest personal best ET leaves Harvey’s Toyota Camry still ranked with the third quickest ET for a six-cylinder ‘‘import’’ car in the world and also number two in the speed rankings with his 256.89mph Sydney run.
Harvey’s Toyota Camry competes in the Factory Extreme category and is powered by a 3.2-litre turbocharged six-cylinder engine based on the Toyota 2JZ design.
The New Zealand contingent racing at the Brisbane Jamboree also includes Papamoa’s Cory Abbott chasing success with his Abbott Brothers’ Racing 13B turbocharged Mazda RX-7 in a 24-strong field of Pro Compact contenders.