The past six months have been a real eye opener for me in our dealings with the New South Wales Government ministers, public servants, local government officials and big time private enterprise wheelers and dealers. Pursuing a drag racer-controlled stand alone drag strip for Sydney has meant long hours and lots of meetings with the sorts of people I have had very few dealings with before, and at the start I went in a little apprehensive about what I would find, and how we would be received.

In the end I've come to the conclusion, that in retrospect should have been self evident right from the start, that as long as we were honest, to the point, enthusiastic and had done our homework we would be listened to. But what had me a little anxious before we began was what would be the presumption of our listeners when we said we wanted to talk about building a drag strip.

It's not that I'm not happy to admit that I'm associated with drag racing. I'll chew the ear of anyone who wants to listen about the good points of this sport, but experience in the past has taught me that there are some people with assumptions about drag racing and its relevant merits that can make it a hard slog at times to make headway. The sort of all-encompassing nonsense that we get out of the general media at times is an indication that our view of drag racing and that of people outside the sport can sometimes differ. What we wanted to do was going to depend very heavily on the reputation of our sport, so that we weren't mentally dismissed before we even opened our mouths.

I would have to say that wherever we went, in most cases, the sport was not that well understood in terms of exactly how it operated or its size and needs, but almost without exception, at all levels of government and private enterprise, it had a reputation as an activity that was very popular, drew big crowds and was obviously significant.

This has been one of the factors which has enabled the sport to move ahead in Western Australia, when it became necessary for the track to shift out its long term home at Ravenswood, and which has enabled us to proceed as far as we have with our proposal in Sydney. In the mid-1980's when the Castlereagh track in Sydney was threatened with closure by encroaching suburbia there was much earnest breast beating and enthusiastic searching for a replacement site, but it all came to nothing, because we weren't influential enough to have a sufficient impact on those who counted when it came time to ensure the sport didn't just fall in a heap.

The same influences applied when an enthusiastic bunch of drag racers in South Queensland perceived the need for a second drag strip in that area in the mid-1980's. They got some help from the state government, but it was only pretty minimal assistance in enabling them to secure a loan from the bank to put down the asphalt. They certainly got a lot of help from the local government because they had a committee member on the council, but they couldn't call on much more direct assistance. The sport didn't have the influence.

Drag racing has come a long way in the past 30 years. Even when we feel we're stumbling along and battling internal difficulties we now have an influence that far exceeds our own opinion of ourselves. We can get major government ministerial attention because we now have the impact and the profile to ensure it.

Willowbank has often been promoted as an object lesson for racing communities around the world. They did it by dint of the determination and personality of the handful of guys who launched the project, and who still run it, and to some degree that would be necessary in every case. However, while we have not as yet got anything in writing that secures the land or funding for what we want to do, if we can bring this off in Sydney there is no reason why, given the right preparation and correct approach this sort of project could not be brought to fruition in every major city and state.

Drag racing's ultimate future lies in the sport's ability to control its own destiny. One way of assuring that is to have drag racers operating all of the tracks. It's unlikely that in the foreseeable future ANDRA is going to have the financial reach to become the operator of its own tracks, which many would view as the ideal situation, but a close second would be a chain of racer-run tracks like Willowbank around the nation.