Arguably the pass of the event was Robert Joosten’s low qualifying effort late on Sunday evening. With the air temperature rapidly dropping close to the dew point and the darkness firmly descended over the race track, Joosten’s Corvette hooked up and flew to a 6.206/230.29 that was half a second quicker than the best of the rest of the field and had a few crew chiefs scratching their head and looking for a similarly stout ‘skating rink’ tune-up. Ironically, with conditions much improved on raceday, Joosten went up in smoke off the startline to lose in the opening round to Graham Ellis.

Top Methanol

Whilst it wasn’t the weather for running A/Fuel cars, it was neither optimal
conditions for Blown Alky combinations, but some very promising early season
numbers were produced by the Top Methanol class. Of these, Rob Turner’s
5.484/255 was the quickest, but that came in the semi-final and an early
shut-off in the final round handed victory to Derek Flynn’s Gold RV injected
nitro rumbler who clocked a 5.723/247 in a winning effort.

Nostalgia Fuel Altered Association

The Nostalgia Fuel Altered Association had a strong field at the Thunderball
with low ET honours going to Tony Betts in his nitro burner, but the event win
went to Frank Bennett (right) shaking down a new blown alcohol combination
to great effect with a new PB of 6.635 at only 181.22 mph suggesting there is
plenty more to come from the Relentless Topolino.