About 10 years ago, at our old business (CarAdvice, now Drive), we decided to shoot a video of a Tesla Model S P85 drag racing a Walkinshaw-tuned HSV GTS and a V8 Supercar produced at Winton Raceway in Victoria.
The video went viral and gained over a million views within the first 24 hours (Elon Musk even tweeted it). Back then, this number was huge. That was before non-standard drag racing videos were really a thing, and before YouTube was as popular as it is today.
So, fast forward 10 years and we thought, let’s do it again. And this time, let’s stay with the theme – the affordable production car goes up against some crazy exotic non-genres.
Easy – we’ll lay down a track, line up some cars and we’ll be sweet. Our first The video is now liveBy the way!
Well…not really. We hit some roadblocks – literally right before we started filming. That almost didn’t happen, so we thought we’d share with you the journey we took to get to the point where we could have a record number of cars on the tarmac.
Location is one of the hardest things to guarantee. We looked at a professional drag racing venue, but there were restrictions on helmets, filming, timing, track preparation and then additional barriers on the road for some cars faster in terms of roll cage and parachute.
We scrapped that idea and started looking at airports. It sounds like an easy task, but for this production to be cost-effective, we needed to shoot some of this content back-to-back over a period of a week to make it worthwhile. . That means finding an airport willing to close all week.
That rules out most airports near any major city and even some more remote airports.
A further complication was that we needed to focus the series around Perth. One of our (very generous) investors, tech billionaire Laurence Escalante, offered us his fleet of supercars and hypercars to use for this series and most of the Vehicles are located in Perth.
Shipping tens of millions of dollars worth of cars across the country was too expensive and insurance would be a nightmare, so we kept looking for a regional airport around Perth.
We finally found a place in a town called Wyalkatchem – located about 2.5 hours from Perth. With a population of under 1000 people, the once bustling town is now a bit quieter but also has a recently resurfaced airstrip (mainly used by private aircraft and the Royal Flying Doctor Service ).
Preliminary discussions with the council have gone well. Alborz made several trips there last year to try to convince the council and get permission. Things were going well but as we got closer to the date, the board’s CEO changed and the committee was less enthusiastic about the project.
We made further trips to Wyalkatchem (after a 4-5 hour flight from Brisbane and Melbourne) to meet with the council in person to re-present the idea.
After the committee vote, we came back with a long list of demands for the project to move forward.
Beauty, we think. Now all we need to do is call our public liability insurer, renew our insurance to cover the event and we will be ready to handle it. Well, not really.
Some of the brokers we approached didn’t want to go near this place. We couldn’t find a single insurance company that offered public liability insurance (not even auto insurance, just property damage liability insurance). After months of working with insurance companies, we were certain that wouldn’t happen (Alborz was much more enthusiastic).
However, we finally hit the jackpot when we found an insurance company willing to insure the event with some strict conditions and a hefty premium. This approval came literally with two weeks to spare. We were on.
Even though in the videos it seems like there are only a few people – there are a lot of people in the background that we need to thank.
Wyalkatchem City:
People who live in regional towns are often laid-back and easy to get along with. The people of Wyalkatchem go well and truly above and beyond. The council committee, councilors and council staff have gone above and beyond to accommodate all our requests. There is nothing they cannot or will not do for us. Truly wonderful people – so thanks again for having us in town for the week!
We also got a chance to meet some of the locals on the final day as we put some drag racing cars on display in town for everyone to see. If you’re ever near Wyalkatchem – be sure to stop by and try out the pub or some of the local cafes.
St John Ambulance:
We have three paramedics on duty each day of the event in two vehicles in case something goes wrong. Extremely appreciative of their support – luckily they didn’t need to do anything and were able to enjoy Alborz and I being wrapped up in each other the whole time.
Fire departments and emergency services:
We also had the Shire of Wyalkatchem fire service on standby the whole time, on one fire engine, a 70 Series, and a mean sounding F truck.
These people also had nothing to do during that time – again, great news!
Western Australian Police Force:
The area police are also absolute legends. We have local police and police from other areas coming in during the event to make sure everything is okay. Thank you again for your time and service and for pretending to catch Alborz a little too realistically on many occasions.
Hyundai:
I’m sure you can imagine the cost of this project. In fact – even if you can imagine the cost, just double it… or triple it. Hyundai did something most manufacturers don’t do – engage in a project of this scale without any control over the outcome or production process.
Hyundai helped cover the majority of the costs involved in making this happen and without their support this would not have been possible. So throughout this series you’ll see the new all-electric vehicle Hyundai Ioniq 5N.
Beyond customization:
The guys at Beyond Custom helped manage and prepare the cars to ensure they were ready to roll as soon as we arrived. One of the cars we raced was the McLaren P1 GTR, which also required its own fueling station and had to be filled/drained before and after use.
A big thank you to Steve who hauled his own 1800hp HQ down for one of the races (this was unreal!).
Diamond towing service:
As you can imagine – driving some of these cars on country roads for 2.5 hours wouldn’t work, so we had to haul all of these vehicles down to Wyalkatchem for the event. Big logistics and long days. The folks at Diamon Towing have made that process easy.
LEE Collection:
Of course, none of this would have been possible without Laurence’s car. These cars are just a small selection of what he has in his many warehouses around Australia and the world, so be sure to subscribe to the channel to get notified when our next series is released. I was released, because we were just introduced!
