Hopkinson raising the bar for local Drag Racers

Drag Racing in Guyana continues to grow with the increasing level of support from fans, and the competitors beginning to make bigger investments to go faster.

Leading the charge for the locally-built cars is Harold ‘Top Gun’ Hopkinson and his Toyota Supra, piloted by his son, Denzel.

It is more than a mere coincidence that the mechanical team behind the Supra- S&D Performance- was one of the first local groups since the revamp of Drag Racing, to build quality cars.

Shawn Persaud with his Toyota Caldina was the one who took to the line to challenge the lone GT-R in the initial days.

Persaud was also the caretaker of the Supra under the previous owner, the late Deryck ‘Mad Dog’ Jaisingh’, who gathered success with the machine.

In October 2019, the car brought the buzz to the Drag Strip with sublime runs. Fast-forward to February 19, 2023, it has shown the capability of going faster.

Though losing the official race to Team Mohamed’s Nismo, driven by Azruddin Mohamed, the young Hopkinson returned to the line for a second showdown.

Albeit an unofficial race, Denzel managed to cross the line ahead of Mohamed, but an unfortunate accident occurred after the finish line.

Despite Hopkinson jumping the start due to a glitch with the lights, it was the first time in years a locally-built car managed to cross the finish line ahead of a formidable GT-R.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, the young Hopkinson stated his team, led by his father, worked overtime for the past weeks to get the car to the line.

“We were successful in bringing out some of the potential of ‘Kong”, he stated.

“We are nowhere close to where we will be in the next two drags, so be on the lookout, this is a start. We are just extremely happy that we finally got the car on the track [but] not the results we were looking for but we will be back”, the young racer expressed as he noted he has close to 15 years of race experience.

Commenting on the unfortunate accident with the Nismo on Sunday, he insisted, “I would never do anything to jeopardise the life of a fellow competitor and my own Life.”

The next Drag Racing event will be the innovative Day/Night racing on June 3 followed by the International meet on August 6.

It is the latter event that the Hopkinson camp and other local racers would be eyeing to be at their best, given the number of overseas competitors expected to participate.

The next event on the race calendar is Circuit Racing on March 19.