Terry Grieve's Ford XA GT Makes Drag Racing Return After 20 Year Hiatus

The 56-year-old Trainer Assessor from the Gladstone area will be once again campaigning his Ford XA GT that he used to campaign all those years ago racing at Benaraby Dragway.

“I think it is absolutely awesome what the NDRC is doing. Having these kind of meetings around the country is great and to have a chance of winning a Christmas Tree trophy is unbelievable,” Grieve said.

“It is because of the NDRC that I am coming back. If not for that and the fact my son Joel is now racing in Modified Bike, I probably would have just continued on my way watching events but not actually competing.

“I believe this will only be the second time we will have this kind of national-level meeting at Benaraby, with the last being the Sunstate Nationals back in the late 1980s, so this is really exciting.”

Grieve started racing in his late teens and is keen to get back into it after his extended time away. 

“It has been about 20 years now since I raced at Benaraby in the XA and 15-16 years since I have competed in any kind of traditional drag racing events, aside from things like Rockynats and the odd All Ford Day or similar event, which I ran with a late model Ford Mustang.

“The GT has been in storage for the 20 years, and we are in the process of putting all the original bits back in to make it all original and very similar to where it was two decades ago. Hopefully it will run faster than it did before, and we can have no problems and be competitive."

Grieve says he has been pleased also to see how Benaraby Dragway has evolved over his time away.

“Benaraby is 20 minutes from my home, so it is my home track in every sense of the word,” he said. I hadn’t been there for a few years and neither had my son, and when we went there earlier in the year, we were pleased to see some massive improvements made over the years."

“The pits, the bitumen return roads, the facilities, the shade on the hill – all of these things were a distant dream a few years ago."

“It is a really tidy and welcoming place too, and they seem to run things quite well,” he concluded, while thanking his family and all that lend a hand for their support of his racing.