Bazz Young is a name most nostalgia drag racing fans are familiar with. He owns and drives the Down Under Thunder 1969 Camaro bodied car here in the USA and last weekend he was home in Australia to drive Paul Shackleton’s “Shack Attack” 1974 Camaro bodied funny in the Aeroflow Outlaw Nitro Funny Car series event being held in Sydney. We’ve heard that these cars are rocketing up the popularity charts in Australia just as they have done here in the USA and for the same obvious reasons. The cars resemble their production bodied inspirations, they have awesome names and paint jobs, and many of the legendary drivers and tuners of the past have come out to have some fun with them. Shackleford is one of Australia’s nitro legends so his presence alone is a big deal for the series. Adam Rhodes was serving as head wrench on the car last weekend. Rhodes had an awesomely successful year here in the USA serving as crew chief on Chris Demke’s national championship top alcohol dragster.
As you’ll see things looked pretty good for Young until he got to the top end of the course and it is at that point you can head the motor nose over and then BOOM, the engine pops and soon after sparks and fire fill the cockpit for a brief second. Young does a nice job dragging the thing back down to a stop but this definitely qualifies as one of those, “So ya wanna drive a funny car, eh?” types of runs. Less experience and not quite as cool of a head and Young could have gotten himself into some real issues here. Thankfully he handled it like a boss and the boys went back to the pits to fix the machine and hit the track again.
Nitro…you never know what’s coming next!
That’s ‘Shackleton’ not ‘Shakleford’