Article: Miss Victorious

[Steve Holmes]

One little piece you missed in its history Steve. lol. Back in the day when I was just a teenager hanging out at the Stone Bros BP servo in Tuakau with my brother (where the car was based at the time) , my brother was regularly running his E49 down the Meremere drag strip and they were looking for someone to match race against Allan Lim in his Mk1 Escort/Chev drag car (Quartermaster) at their next street meet. My big bro is an old friend of Ross and Jimmy which is how I came to be there and he spoke to them about the possibility of Miss Victorious taking on Quartermaster. Not sure how long it took them to talk Jack into it but the result was that she was at the next street meeting for a 3 race match up. I remember her racing against QuarterMaster but not who won. I will ring my bro and ask if he can remember. Ok, rang Keith and he recalls that she won all her runs over the day as well as the match race with Allan Lims Quartermaster. Ran consistent 10's for the quarter. Monsieur Lim was not a happy market gardener that day.

Thats a great story Tony, and I'm glad you told it because you reminded me of an old NZ Hot Rod mag clipping I've had for many years. These captions didn't give any times unfortunately, but they're still great to see. Thats my writing noting the date, June 1977, which would probably be the magazine date, rather than the date of the event. I assume this was published several months after the actual event, because Greg Lancasters V8 Victor was destroyed during the 1977 season, and these photos were shown in NZ Hot Rod mag after the 1977 season, when all the big bangers had been outlawed.

It was pretty common back then for road course racers to do a bit of drag racing, as many were hot rodders at heart anyway. I've got clippings of Brent Bullivants V8 Capri, Red Dawsons Camaro, Ron Sylvesters Monaro, Clyde Collins' V8 Cortina, John Osbornes V8 Capri, and Rod McElrea's V8 Cortina at various times doing a bit of drag racing in their roundy-roundy cars. Maybe I should start another thread for circuit racers on the drag strip!