THE UPSET NATIONALS

The Australian Nationals is the longest running event in the history of Australian Drag Racing and was run for the 44th time at Western Sydney International earlier this month. Some 450 drivers and crews came from all over Australia and New Zealand enjoying three beautiful sunny days for the sport’s number one race.

The early spring weather attracted a solid crowd over the three days of the event, but Friday evening saw some controversy when with the first session of Top Fuel was moved in front of the large Top Doorslammer field. With the track temperature dropping the tin tops turned around and went back to the pits, much to the disappointment of the assembled throng.

Also on the controversial side of things was the news that a couple of pro racers had come up positive in a random test for substance abuse. ANDRA’s Communications Manager, Rob Sharp gave us the background on the issue.

“ANDRA has had an active substance abuse policy that was introduced in February 2008. Our system is based on Occupational Health aspects unlike some other similar sanctioning bodies which are based on performance enhancement (obviously a five-second pass is a bit shorter than a 500 mile race – Ed). This is not only more in keeping with our goals for the programme but it is a more cost effective form of testing and as such we did more testing over the race weekend than we would be able to do in an entire year with another system,” Sharp revealed.

The race was full of other highs (no pun intended) with the Saturday afternoon Pro session being a corker, however as night descended so did the event with a string of oil-downs, crashes and injuries that saw the ambulance leave the property for over an hour.

(Above) After many years of being the only competitor to try out a nitrous engine combination down under, Tony DeFelice decided earlier this year to switch to a blown engine combination. On this Saturday afternoon qualifying pass the pretty car was to suffer a blower backfire about 100 feet out that didn’t do his chances of qualifying any good.

(Below) Steve Read and Martin Stamatis, the first and third qualifiers, met in the final. These were the two most consistent cars with Read running a top qualifying 4.68 as well as back-to-back 4.76 and 4.80 times to take his berth there. Stamatis on the other hand saw a belt-throwing 5.69 being followed by a semi final 4.86. In this pairing a pretty even launch saw Stamatis really march over the first half of the track, however around the 1200-foot mark his parachute opened prematurely and slowed the black and white dragster allowing Read to take a popular win – a 4.779 at 297.61 to a 4.897 at only 227.50.