T
HE opportunity to settle bench-racing matches
at the track doesn’t often happen, which explains
why racers have jumped on board to support the
Grudge Kings event. Held at Sydney Dragway, it is
a melting pot of car classes and racers of all manner
of automotive persuasions, with Pro Slammers, turbo
Pro Mods, radial-tyre V8s, turbo six Fords and VLs, triangle-
motor rotors, six-second street-registered 2J Supras and
R32 GT-R Skylines, and even the odd tough-nut four-banger
all throwing down with each other.
While the event had been slated to run on 6 July, Mother
Nature saw fit to spend that week dumping rain on the
Harbour City, so Grudge Kings boss Po Tung wisely chose
to move to the back-up date of 20 July. Thankfully, the
spectators still turned out in droves, with an estimated 4000
through the gates.
Moving to the new date saw 10 cars unable to race, but
the pits were still packed with 117 of Australia’s wildest
door cars.
For 2019 the class structure had a shake-up, with no fewer
than nine car classes, plus the crazy two-wheeled rockets in
Extreme Bike. The Pro Mod and Pro Street categories were
stacked thanks to each carrying a $50,000 purse for the1
winner, while the Small-Tyre Fighter class was divided into
Radial and Pro sub-classes.
There is no doubt the Pro Mod class was a big drawcard at
Grudge Kings. “There is a big group of people trying to get a
Pro Mod class together at the moment, with some resistance
from the traditional Doorslammer guys,” said Po. “So we
invited the ’Slammer guys to come race the turbo Pro Mods,
and we left it all ‘run what you brung’ so the blower guys can
go flat-out just like the turbo guys.”
Then there was all the action in Pro Elite, Pro Modified,
Outlaw, Street Outlaw and Grudge categories, making for
an awesome day of super-diverse racing.
“Our business model is basically to have all the cars you
wouldn’t traditionally see racing each other,” Po explained.
“The way I put the classes together is more based around
the time – it doesn’t really matter what the engine format is.
“For example, the Pro Elite final came down to a 20B RX-8
against a turbo small-block Mustang; you don’t see that
anywhere else. I think the racing on the weekend proved the
concept, as every class final round we ran was door-to-door.
That’s what we set out to do!”
Pro Street, using an instant tree and four-round elimination
format, was raced over the eighth-mile, while all other classes
ran the full 400m. Pro Mod, Pro Elite and Pro Modified all