THE STARS ALIGN

THE INAUGURAL ALLSTARS DRAG & DRIVE SAW SOME OF THE COUNTRY'S QUICKEST STREETERS ROAD- TRIPPING FROM WILLOWBANK TO WARWICK AND BACK TO BATTLE IT OUT ON TRACK

- STORY MARK ARBLASTER PHOTOS DRAG PHOTOS

CRUISING the backroads of Australia with your mates is one of the greatest experiences you will ever have with your street machine. Fortunately, the proliferation of drag-and-drive events over the past decade or so has provided us with many and varied opportunities to do just that, from our own Street Machine Drag Challenge to events like Hot Rod Drag Week or Rocky Mountain Race Week in the US. After all, who wouldn't want to be a part of a convoy of tough, road-pounding monsters driving from track to track to battle it out for bragging rights?

The latest Aussie event of this type was the inaugural Allstars Drag & Drive in July, hosted by Queensland duo Daniel Düll and Daniel Case. "Queensland has a really strong car culture, and there'd been talk about organising another drag-and-drive up here for a while," Dan Case said. "We just wanted to light a fire under the car scene here, so we thought, 'Let's dip our toes in the drag-and-drive scene and do it.'"

The Dans weren't out to reinvent the wheel, drawing inspiration from successful events like Drag Week, Sick Summer and Drag Challenge, but with a focus on attracting the best and quickest entrants they could.

The three-day event started and ended at Willowbank Raceway, with road legs to and from the eighth-mile Warwick Dragway in between.

From a racer's perspective, the biggest adversary during any of these events is track prep. Radial cars in particular can struggle on a drag strip, especially in summer heat, so the boys elected to run the event in July. It turned out to be smart idea, with great drag racing weather throughout the event.