It was a successful weekend on May 27 and 28 for the opening weekend of Central Alberta Raceways (CAR) drag strip with bracket racing.
“The Friday night street legals were a success, the races Saturday and Sunday were both completed with only one minor incident. It was a great turnout, lots of smiles and everything went perfectly,” said John Bleys, head executive for the drag side.
The street legals was a brand new event for CAR, and they had a pretty good turnout for their first time putting it on.
“We had 24 cars show up for the first event, which was a little bit light, but we also had one of the best spectator nights we’ve ever seen,” he said, adding there were probably over 200 people in attendance.
Coming up on June 10 and 11 will be the bracket racing, along with three funny cars, a blown alcohol dragster and a two seat dragster.
The blown alcohol dragster will compete against the funny cars.
In attendance and putting on the race will be Webb Family Motorsports and Twisted Motor Sports, who are members of the International Blown Alcohol Association.
Twisted Motor Sports will have a 69 Camaro car, the two seat dragster and the blown alcohol dragster, while Webb will have the Dodge Cuda and an Acadian.
“In the eighth mile we’ll get up to about 160 miles an hour. We’re running around 2,000 horsepower,” said Colin Makarowski, crew chief with Twisted Motor Sports.
Up until this past year, they are the only team that has two licensed female blown alcohol drivers, but neither one are driving this year due to different circumstances, but will hopefully get back out at some point.
Makarowski will now be driving the dragster.
People will have an opportunity to ride in the two seat dragster, a custom purpose built car, for $150.
“There’s only one other one in Canada that we know of where the passenger actually sits in the front, so as a passenger, you see exactly what the driver in a dragster would see,” he said, adding that the other ones have the passenger sitting behind.
Typically, if you have a passenger in the quarter mile, you are only allowed to do 100 miles an hour or a 15-second elapsed time.
“They’ve allowed us, because of our car, the work we’ve done on it and our drivers, to do 150 miles an hour, and as quick as 8.6 in the quarter mile.”
They’ve used the car for years and have raised upwards of $50,000, which goes toward different charities.
“It’s a true bucket list experience.”