Illegal street racing under the spotlight

The racers have welcomed the initiative

Johannesburg just like about every other city has a vibrant but underground street-racing community that operates on lonely streets and under the cover of darkness. However an initiative called Illegal 2 Legal is getting these racers off public roads and onto the Wesbank Raceway.

Cool guys, even cooler cars live for their night racing and at the Wesbank Raceway they can now do it legally and safely. Victor Pordal, a street racer, says: "There are many reasons to go legit, people mostly think that illegal street racers are like hooligans, and they just want to kill people and drive crazy.

"It is not like that we actually try and be very organised, we target areas where there is no traffic at night, basically industrial, so that we can't cause problems, we don't want to cause problems with the law."

Prizes are also up for grabs. A new set of tyres, for example, when you have destroyed yours in the burnout competition. Herbie Herbst of the Wesbank Raceway says they just had their third meeting and the crowd is getting bigger and bigger and the amount of entries is tremendous. Jan Johnson, of the Drag Racing Commission, says: "Some of the racers are very good and will go into drag racing."

The racers are required to wear helmets. Apart from that there are only three rules no drugs, no alcohol and no stolen cars, the racers can still do their own thing in their own unique way.