Words and photos by Jon Van Daal

Following on from the Australian Nationals, the opening round of the new ANDRA season in September, the second round of Australia’s travelling acceleration circus returned to Sydney Dragway for the Halloween weekend. Top Fuel and Top Alcohol were on the agenda and full fields appeared for both brackets on show, however the scary bit was that someone forgot to tell the spectator,s as both days played to a very small band of hardy fans.

Some of you may have seen that Australian team owner Santo Rapisarda was racing at the NHRA race in Las Vegas with driver Mark Mariani. While he did this as a tribute to the death of his son, Louie twenty years before, prior to this event there were fears that a full field of eight top fuel dragsters could not be drawn together. Rapisarda usually fields two entries, however in the end nine cars faced the starter in qualifying including Perth fuel punter, Damien Harris who swapped his fuel funny car for one of the kings of the sport.

With similarities to the Las Vegas NHRA Top Fuel final where underdog Dom Lagana faced Tony Schumacher, Terry Sainty’s Aussie built dragster went up against the Rocketship of Andrew Cowin (near lane). Off the line Cowin took a .059 to .113 lead against his opponent and once the scoreboards lit up at the other end it was a 4.835/309.84 to 8.24 all the way win. I spoke to a jubilant team owner, Graeme Cowin after the win light came on in son Andrew’s lane. “The secret to winning was not to overpower the track so we took a lot of power out of it and we were still had enough power to take the win”, he revealed.