WHEN mates brainstorm over a few coldies at their local, magic can happen. For Harry Haig and Ryan Ford, one such session birthed the Hardass 1000.
Harry has won Street Machine Drag Challenge twice and raced at several Hot Rod Drag Weeks in the US, while Ryan Ford has been running Chopped for years, so in hindsight it seems almost inevitable the two would eventually cook up their own drag-and-drive event. “I’d been wanting to do a Hard Metal [drag-and-drive] for a while, and then one night Harry and I thought, ‘Bugger it, let’s do our own,’” Ryan said.
“I’ve done plenty of these, and I know what sucks and what doesn’t,” Harry added. “I’ve waited in the lanes for hours, got to checkpoints in the dark, eaten shit servo food and slept under overpass bridges at 2am, so I was having none of that at our event.”
Unlike most other drag-and-drives, the Hardass 1000 is not about pushing yourself and your equipment to the limit and proving your worth with super-quick cars. While the boys welcomed the seven-second, big-tyre firebreathers, they were just as interested in 186-powered HK Prems yanked from back paddocks. Harry wanted just as many first-timers as he
