Central Drag Racer Rishi Kanick is officially the fastest T&T national on the drag racing strip. Kanick clocked a time of 5.54 seconds travelling at 293 miles per hour (mph) doing the quarter of a mile drag on April 16 at the Zmax Dragway at North Carolina in the United States. Kanick, who started drag-racing in 2006 with his Llumar sponsored racer, was at the time qualifying for his drag racing license that would allow him to race Top Alcohol dragsters that run on nitro-methane. On Friday, Kanick, who returned to T&T recently, stated that he beat the record time of Sheldon Bissessar's 5.68 seconds for the quarter mile race. Bissessar holds the record for Top Dragster. However, the cars that Kanick now race are in a totally different league from Bissessar since Top Alcohol cars run much faster than the Top Dragster.
Kanick, of Boodram Street, Enterprise, started racing in a rail-type dragster that he brought from Michael Luke. Since then he competed at a number of regional events. Last year, he shifted his focus to South America and formed an alliance with Sidney Frigo, Brazil's Top Drag racer. Frigo invited Kanick to join his Brazilian racing team to compete at events in the US and South America. Kanick shared that Frigo allowed him to use a $2 million race car for the event, citing that he was most impressed when he visited Frigo's privately owned Sao Paulo International Dragway and suggested private-public sector partnership to build a similar racecourse in T&T to attract international events. Kanick said that he felt proud to license in the presence of drag racing greats like John Force, Robert Hight, Larry Dixon, Antron Brown and Melanie Troxel who were all testing on the day.
Kanick, who is the first T&T racer to get the NHRA Top Alcohol license said that he ran a time of 5.60 seconds at 224 mph in his first pass. He went on to break Bissessar's mph record of 243 mph when on his next quarter mile pass he ran a time 5.54 second at a phenomenal 262 mph. Kanick had to do four passes to complete the license which he started at Gainesville Florida. To get a Top Alcohol Dragster license Kanick had to do a minimum of two passes 5.9 seconds or lower. Kanick said, "What was absolutely amazing is that after the first pass of 5.60 seconds. I went on to do three more five-second passes with the best time of 5.54 seconds." He eliminated Bissessar's one-eighth of a mile time of 3.75 seconds at 197 mph with 3.70 seconds at 217 mph. Both Frigo and Kanick got licensed together, the latter for TAD and the other for Top Fuel. Kanick indicated that his next step would be to get experience racing Top Alcohol cars before going for his license to race Top Fuel cars that cross the 300 mph line and are able to do the quarter of a mile drag in just over four seconds.