Winning team: Grant and Adrian Rivers claimed the national drag racing title for 2016-17 season.
Winning team: Grant and Adrian Rivers claimed the national drag racing title for 2016-17 season.
Whanganui's River Rat team have regained the 1NZ crown they so covet after overcoming engine issues to finish runnerup at the 49th NZ Nationals at Masterton last month.
The result saw Grant Rivers and son Adrian finish top of the points table for the five rounds of the NZDA nationalchampionship season in the Competition grade, with Hamilton's Andrew Rea and Gary Martin finishing second while the Paterson's - Ana and Monique - were third for 2016-17.
Final points tallies were scrutinised and confirmed in just the last couple of weeks.
For the Rivers family, it is their first time claiming the national title since 2014, having come runnerup in the last two seasons.
"It's father and son, because Adrian and I shared driving the car," Grant Rivers said.
"I don't know if a father/son combination have ever won the title."
At the Masterton dragstrip on March 18-19, the Rivers clan came in with a narrow points lead over Rea and Martin, and had hopes of securing the title by beating their season-best time of 6.5s, at 347.62km (216mph) on the quarter mile distance.
Grant Rivers did the first qualifying run on the Saturday, where the supercharged/fuel injected Pontiac engine broke a piston connecting rod during the run, with Rivers coasting through to still finish in 6.8s.
Following a quick discussion, the River Rat team packed everything up and quickly drove back the 169.5km to their base in Whanganui, where they refitted the spare chevy engine before leaving immediately to get back down to Masterton by 8pm that same evening.
After their record time for the changeover, Adrian Rivers took the wheel for the Sunday elimination races, and despite being down on power after swapping out the big block engine, they still managed low 7s passes to secure runnerup spot and win the overall season championship.
Grant Rivers said they were fortunate as despite being the most consistent car across the series, they opted not to enter the fourth round of the nationals in Motueka on March 4, as they were helping run the Wanganui Road Rodder's annual Street Drags that same weekend.
"We weren't sure we would win it. But Andrew Rea didn't go to the fourth round either, so we left with the same points."
At the opening round in Masterton on December 10-11, the Rivers team qualified first and then made the fastest time at 6.58s.
They followed up with victory at the Summer Nationals in Taupo on December 27, where they set the national record for miles per hour.
The team kept their roll going at the Southern Nationals in Motueka, again qualifying first and going on to win while setting the top speed.
After skipping the second Southern Nationals on March 4, they took a 50 point lead into Masterton for the NZ Nationals to wrap up 1NZ.
Adding to the family success at Masterton was daughter Nicole Rivers, who entered the 40-car Super Street class in her father's 1965 Ford Mustang.
Nicole qualified sixth in the large field, then on the Sunday she progressed through to the final round before losing narrowly to national champion Dean Hastie.
