Whether you are a slot race fan or not, they have certainly added a spike at an otherwise quiet time in harness racing.

We are just four days out from what will be a stellar night of harness action across Australasia.

Is it ideal the $NZ1mil Race by Grins and $1mil Nullarbor are on the same night? No, of course not, but the big upside is the five-hour window of excitement it will provide for harness fans on Friday.

The time zones mean the second running of Cambridge’s Race by Grins will be first-up and then the focus switches to the inaugural Nullarbor at Gloucester Park.

Why are they on the same night I’ve been asked 100 times? It’s actually not harness racing’s fault.

The Race by Grins changed dates slightly from last year, but was first with a footprint so the NZers haven’t done anything wrong.

So, who chose the same night – April 14 – for the Nullarbor?

It certainly wasn’t any of the WA harness bosses.

Simply, WA is running three slot races. They wanted a “mega” weekend and the timing was built around the richest and biggest of them, the $4mil Quokka for thoroughbreds.

So, the Nullarbor and Sandgroper (for greyhounds) were scheduled for the night before.

While there has been some small level of cannibalising with the races clashing, they are so far apart geographically that they largely draw on different pools of horses.

Dave Branch and his Cambridge team will be disappointed they didn’t get Jason Grimson back after he almost won the Race By Grins last year. Instead, he’s taking the emerging Betterzippit to Perth.

And Spirit Of St Louis is another the Kiwis probably hoped would head to Cambridge instead of Perth.

On the flipside, those in Perth would love to have enticed Jess Tubbs’ dual Group 1 winner Better Eclipse to Gloucester Park instead of crossing the ditch.

Perhaps the biggest issue is the numbers of stars who aren't contesting either race, headed by the likes of Honolua Bay, I Cast No Shadow, Mach Dan and Major Meister. 

That’s primarily down to the hectic schedule they’ve had through the Inter Dominion and then Hunter Cup and Miracle Mile campaigns.

You can’t run in everything.

Young guns Catch A Wave, Captain Ravishing and Leap To Fame are being set for the inaugural $2.1 million TAB Eureka on September 2, so they were never going to try a WA or NZ trip with so much on the line in coming months.

So, which of the slot races has drawn the best field?

NZ just gets the nod because of cream at the top of their domestic pacing ranks, headlined by Copy That and Self Assured along with the emerging pacers Old Town Road, Akuta and B D Joe.

That final lead-up race at Cambridge last Thursday was a cracker. We can only hope the Race by Grins is as good. Better Eclipse adds some serious class, too.

WA has a good, even bunch of open-class players, but none proven away from their own patch. Magnificent Storm, Lavra Joe, Diego and Jumpingjackmac are the best of them.

The Nullarbor badly needed a serious “raider” to make the race more than just another version of the Fremantle or WA Cups run just a few months back.

And it has that in Spirit Of St Louis.

Team McCarthy’s pacer is proven at the very top level. It wasn’t long back he ran slashing races behind King Of Swing in a Hunter Cup and Miracle Mile.

Two starts back he beat all bar Catch A Wave in the latest Miracle Mile.

But, adding further to the intrigue of the Nullarbor, Spirit Of St Louis ran well below his best at his first Perth run at Gloucester Park last Friday night.

Was he in need of the run? Did he have an off night? We won't know until Friday, but he's gone from the one to beat to just part of the jigsaw.

Now the Jason Grimson factor becomes even more important.

Few trainers in the history of the sport have had quite the stunning past 18 months Grimson has enjoyed in big open-class feature races.

Many were surprised he chose Betterzippit of all his stable stars to chase the Nullarbor.

But, soon after he did, Grimson went on Perth’s Racing Radio and left listeners gobsmacked when he said: “I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t win (the Nullarbor)".

Two days later Betterzippit won at Menangle by a cricket pitch and smashed the clock with a quicker time than Catch A Wave did winning the Miracle Mile just four weeks earlier.

So, NZ has the slightly better field, but the Nullarbor has more X-factor and shapes as a more fascinating race, at least on paper.