In the past six months Top Fuel racer Jim Read and myself have been pursuing the possiblity of establishing a separate stand alone drag strip for Sydney. We got into the project because nobody else seemed to be doing anything and because it needed to be done. Drag racing in New South Wales is dying unless a championship grade drag strip is established, and soon. We didn't seek to do this, it just happened. We were offered the chance to have some meetings with senior public servants to discuss "options", and it was from those meetings that we were directed on the path we are now pursuing.

It's been a unique experience, and one that I hope we will be able to look back on with pride in coming years. It hasn't always been an easy process, and there have been occcasions when we've been in frantic damage control mode while we try to deal with the handful of opponents who have seemed determined to destroy what we've set out to achieve. It seems some people are more interested in their own interests rather than those of the sport.

What we are seeking is a stand-alone track, that can set its own priorities, is not being pumped dry all the time to pay the bills of other activities which have no connection with drag racing and is not compromised either in terms of the number of events or the structure of the meetings by the management's lack of knowledge of the sport or its disinterest in the sport. The whole proposition from day one has been to establish a non-profit track that will return all surplus funds back into the property for future development. That has been the proposal we put to government and which is an absolute must in terms of support from government.

We have no answers we can give the racing community yet and since our first submission was only placed before a government minister on August 20 it's only been preceding for two months. In reality we never expected that it would happen in anything under several months. However, the progress of the report has begun to snowball fairly rapidly in the last few weeks and help has begun to flow from all directions, including overseas.

But what has been important throughout the whole process has been the ability to impress and influence people - whether they be senior government ministers, public servants, mayors or committees of businessmen - through the now well known report on the 1998 Konica Winternationals, put together by the Ipswich City Council Economic Development Department.

The common response is, "We just never knew drag racing could move so much money around. We never realised."

As a tool to influence the decision makers in the community it has been vital in every stage of our progress. So far we've produced over 50 copies of the report, all in colour and at no small cost, but it's been money well spent.

If we simply went to government with a story that drag racing in NSW was dying they'd say something like, "Well, that's tough, but sorry, it's not our problem."

That's why we have gone to them with the explanation that our problem - the collapse of drag racing - has a solution and in that solution is benefits for all of society. The Willowbank figures are very conservative when you apply them to a city like Sydney, because the potential to have a major economic impact in the heart of a city of four million is much greater than on the far outer fringe of a city of two million.

However, using even these figures, for 12 national open events (including a major Championship event and two lesser regional title meetings), 10 or 12 test and tunes and 50 off-street meetings (and we believe there's no reason why you couldn't run as many as 100 off-street events per year in the heart of urban Sydney) we have been able to demonstrate that drag racing can move as much as $17.5 million per year through the NSW economy. And when you add on the money generated by the potential add-ons and using the formula in the Willowbank economic report, you can show how drag racing can employ as many as a thousand people in NSW.

That's a significant economic impact and it stands up well when you consider that the NSW government recently announced that to continue the employment that has been generated by work on the Olympic site it was recommencing planning for an east-west tunnel under the heart of Sydney's central business district, which was going to cost something in the billions of dollars and which would employ 1400 people for three years.

We're still a way from seeing anything to completion, or even a start, in Sydney, but we've been able to go a long way down the road towards it because this sport can now demonstrate that it has this level of economic impact and because we now have enough people associated with it who have the influence to open the necessary doors and make things happen. In spite of the current problems besetting the sport, it's a sign that drag racing is growing up.