Benaraby Raceway will next weekend hold its first ever round of the national Aeroflow Sportsman Drag Racing Championship and among the stars competing will be Supercharged Outlaws points leader Luke Marsden.

Marsden has won three events out of the seven so far held this season, including the most recent round in Alice Springs, and has amassed a large points lead but for the M2 Racing team it has been just as much about the journey as the destination.

Marsden has been travelling the country with fellow Queensland racer and sponsor Chris Van’tHof to attend as many rounds as possible and support a season that has seen the number of tracks on the Aeroflow Sportsman Drag Racing Championship almost treble.

“It has been awesome for ‘The Hoff’ and our teams to go and see all these new race tracks, we have taken the time to do a bit of travel at each event as well to check out the sights,” he said.

“I have been guilty before of whinging we have nowhere to race so when the Aeroflow Sportsman Drag Racing Championship was expanded it wouldn’t have been fair of me not to race.

“Each track has got its own good things about it. I really liked Perth, Portland was fun and the scenery at Alice Springs like the stars at night time was amazing.”

Marsden’s stand out performances have come through an approach that sees the team developing a tune up that should be able to apply to most tracks, rather than getting too focused on tuning for individual conditions.

“The way we have set the car up is that we can leave it alone race meeting to race meetings and as we get data at each track we can try and relate that back,” he said.

As the car gets more reliable, Marsden explained that it improves his mental game going into each Supercharged Outlaws round.

“The car is getting better, it is repeating itself more and more which makes it easier to drive because you don’t have to pressure yourself by pushing hard on reaction times and so on,” he said.

The Benaraby Nationals will run from July 20-21 at Benaraby Raceway in Queensland and features round eight of the Aeroflow Sportsman Drag Racing Championship.

Image courtesy Lee Davis.