Like any good country town, they love their cars up here – take a look at the “Green Gremlin” XR8 and “Fully Sic” ute I spied round the streets recently! There are a few rice rockets clogging up the roads with their wheezing turbo boosts, but really, the Goldy locals love nothing more than a classic Falcon or Holden V8. And I can understand why…I too have a soft spot for big Aussie donks.
Over the long weekend we drove up past Dreamworld and Movieworld through the endless sugarcane fields to the Holden Driving Centre as El Rad was fortunate enough to score a seat in a V8 hotlap! El Rad had given a two-person passenger pass in a V8 for his mate A-Fin’s recent 21st birthday…and when A-Fin’s dad couldn’t make it, El Rad put his hand up to live out his Mark Webber dreams. I just went along for the ride and to listen to the sweet, sweet sound of thundering V8 engines reverberate across the open grassland. And driving a 6-cylinder Ford Falcon myself, I was happy to see all the other hotted-up Falc’s on show. I could have upgraded to a second-hand supercharged XR6 Bullet 400kw custom rocket, but I didn’t have a spare $38,000 for the asking price. It was nice to take a look though.
Although a couple of the cars were stickered-up and pimped-out, they weren’t quite the real deal V8 Supercars you see on TV, however the Falcon that the guys got to take a ride in was a slightly de-tuned former racecar…and it had a spartan interior to match. And you can see from the smile on the boys faces they were pretty pumped after a few laps round the track.
So here are just a few photos of the fun. I realised that using a fast 1000th of a second shutter speed didn’t really capture any feeling of the speed of the cars, particulalry as I couldn’t get all that close the corners. So I took a couple shots at 100th of a second and panned the camera to get some background motion blur and wheel spin. And the final shot even has some exhaust flame out the back. Cool. I can still hear the rumble of engine and exhaust in my head right now…
RadMania 