SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Cen­tral drag rac­er Rishi Kan­ick is de­ter­mined to take the lo­cal drag rac­ing record from T&T's top drag rac­er Shel­don Bisses­sar. Kan­ick, 39, of En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, has been rac­ing for the past six years and said on­ly frac­tions of a sec­ond sep­a­rates him from Bisses­sar's record. Bisses­sar's lo­cal record time is 6.8 sec­onds, while Kan­ick's best time is 6.9 sec­onds. Kan­ick start­ed drag rac­ing to pro­mote LLumar, a brand of au­to­mo­tive tint, he mar­kets, but even­tu­al­ly got hooked on the sport.

"I start­ed to dri­ve and en­joyed it. I en­joyed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to run this fast car. Drag rac­ing is ad­dic­tive as a drug. I de­buted at 7.9 sec­onds for the quar­ter mile drag. My best time is 6.9 and I plan to go even faster." Kan­ick said he has in­vest­ed more than $1 mil­lion in drag rac­ing cars and has changed three en­gines and chas­sis since he start­ed in the high­ly com­pet­i­tive and ex­pen­sive sport. He made his de­but with the Llumar Top Drag­ster at the Waller­field Race­way on De­cem­ber 11, 2005. The ve­hi­cle was then pow­ered with a 388 cc Chevy V 8 and fin­ished the quar­ter mile drag strip in 7.9 sec­onds on a 218 inch chas­sis.

In 2006 he en­tered the Au­to Sport Pro­mo­tion's Drag Rac­ing Cham­pi­onship Se­ries, and re­mained un­de­feat­ed in his class for that year. He man­aged to up his time to 7.6 sec­onds. The en­gine was lat­er changed to a 410cc all alu­minum block, while the chas­sis was changed to a 225-inch ul­tra light pro start. In 2006 he hit the 7.33 sec­ond mark just two hun­dredths of a sec­ond short of Bisses­sar's na­tion­al record of 7.31 sec­onds at that time. In 2008 he was rac­ing us­ing Bisses­sar's 706 all alu­minum V8 en­gine on a 270 inch chas­sis, and did a best time of 7.2 sec­onds at the Cam­den race track in cen­tral Trinidad. He re­ceived the TTASA sports­man of the year and Cham­pi­on Dri­ver, open class awards. He lat­er clocked 6.9 sec­onds at Cam­den at a Speed Pro­mo­tions rac­ing event, and went on to rep­re­sent T&T in Grena­da.

Trained by Bisses­sar, the en­er­getic Kan­ick said "It is now time that the stu­dents sur­pass­es the mas­ter." Kan­ick said tak­ing a record from Bisses­sar would be a chal­lenge. "Shel­don did not get where he was overnight, he has 20 years ex­pe­ri­ence, his pas­sion dri­ves him. I too have dreams of hold­ing a record, es­pe­cial­ly a lo­cal record." Kan­ick said af­ter the clo­sure of the Cam­den Race­way, T&T no longer had a drag rac­ing track for the show­down if Bisses­sar de­cid­ed to ac­cept. He is will­ing to take his drag­ster out of stor­age from a se­cret ware­house, and ship his car to Flori­da for races in De­cem­ber to chal­lenge Bisses­sar at the Braden­ton Mo­tor­sports Park.

Kan­ick said his drag­ster ran on rac­ing fu­el and used a lighter chas­sis than Bisses­sar's Trinidad Rock­et. He said it al­so used a three stage ni­trous ox­ide re­lease sys­tem. His in­ten­tion is to one day run the quar­ter mile drag in the low five sec­ond brack­et. This he said would re­quire an al­co­hol pow­ered car that has a greater en­gine out­put, al­though it is not easy to jump in an al­co­hol pow­ered drag­ster. But he plans to go in pre­pared. "I in­tend to at­tend the Frank Haw­ley Drag Rac­ing school that holds class­es for Top Al­co­hol rac­ers." Kan­ick said.

Al­co­hol pow­ered cars run at 230-260 mph and have ex­plo­sive pow­er and ac­cel­er­a­tion. They are the most dif­fi­cult cars to dri­ve. Train­ing is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant, and dri­vers need light­ning quick re­ac­tions and ex­cel­lent co­or­di­na­tion. "If for some rea­son Shel­don Bisses­sar does not go in­to top al­co­hol, I cer­tain­ly will. And I will be pur­chas­ing a top al­co­hol car which will pre­pare me for ul­ti­mate­ly run­ning a top fu­el ni­tro-methane pow­ered car that can com­plete the quar­ter-mile run in four sec­onds at speeds of over 333 mph."