A close knit racing operation from Ontario took the “family funster” on a recent long road trip in support of Canadian drag racing….
Google maps shows that the total KM between Buford Ontario and Edmonton AB is 3365 KM one way and that is just part of the distance navigated by Kyle Harris’s KHR Racing team recently.
KHR’s extremely quick supercharged Top Dragster entry, was an unexpected and pleasant surprise on the entry list for Edmonton’s Mopar Rocky Mountain Nationals event held at Castrol Raceway last month.
For driver Kyle Harris, who has been a fixture within southern Ontario’s drag racing scene in various capacities now for a number of years – his decision to head West in July was for sure interesting, demanding and multi-faceted .
Prior to entering both his race team’s Top Dragster and Junior Dragster at the Rocky Mountain Nationals event, the KHR Racing team made a very special appearance in support of their primary sponsor, Charles Jones Industrial, to help celebrate the grand opening of a new facility for that innovative Canadian company.
“We first put together our deal with Charles Jones Industrial last December,” Kyle revealed. “We learned about their newest facility (opening in Edmonton) and the timing for that happened to fit nicely with the Mopar Rocky Mountain Nationals event dates. So we decided to make arrangements to come out and do a race team display for their grand opening and BBQ. (CJI) brought in people from all over Canada for this – they have branches in Montreal, Stoney Creek, Mississauga and Brantford too – and they had about 500 guests. We put both our cars on display and that was really well received. In fact a lot of the guests were then invited to the drag strip a couple days later and they were able to experience this form of motorsports for the very first time.”
Then during the Mopar Rocky Mountain Nationals event itself – Kyle was for sure a very busy man. Not only did he race his awesome ’32 Bantum car on an exhibition basis – where he recorded a Castrol Raceway event ET record for Top Dragster class cars (6.005 secs), he also oversaw both the event effort of his son “Flyin’” Ryan’s Junior Dragster as well as the competition debut for his brother Colin Harris’s new ’55 Chevy-bodied Funny Car (from Fort McMurray).
Kyle Harris’ ’32 Bantam recorded the quickest legal Top Dragster class time seen at Castrol Raceway’s Mopar Rocky Mountain Nationals event.
“The elevation at this track is very high and the barometer was reading very low,” Kyle affirmed. “Those are certainly conditions we were not used to for our particular car. It was tough to make HP — but we were able to adjust my car to compensate – and we’re pretty happy about the string of ET’s we ran.”
Both Ryan’s Junior and Colin’s new Funny Car also ran well, with Colin in fact finishing as the event’s runner-up the 6.90 indexed Funny Car class category.
The KHR team was also active in both Junior Dragster and the 6.90 index Funny Car categories at the event.
“I’m glad overall that we were able to make a nice splash at this event,” Kyle added. “I had been to this facility a few times before when I was a crew member for Robbie Atchison’s Funny Car – but had never actually been down this track surface myself until now. And Castrol Raceway is also a very special place for our Harris family. Our Uncle, Brent Harris, who we lost (in 2014), was a great and extremely popular local racer here. So coming here to race meant a lot to us and we dedicated this weekend to his memory.”
That’s Kyle with Uncle Brent in 2004…..
Kyle was quick to also thank his dedicated list of supporting sponsors for making his trip West possible. In addition to Charles Jones Industrial, that includes Atchison Machine, Iron Bridge Fabrication, Mountain Tire and Fast Eddie.
Posted by Bruce Biegler
