ANDRA Nationals at Sydney, Australia

SYDNEY RACING STUNNER

Words and photos by Jon Van Daal

The 47th ANDRA Nationals, held at Sydney Dragway, celebrated the opening of a new season of drag racing, and strangely enough is the event is the same one that will finish it next November as the organisation changes back to a calendar year format. Perfect racing on Friday and Sunday was marred by a strained Saturday of qualifying that included nuisance rain, bad crashes and oil downs.

The final of Top Fuel was a fierce battle between bucks down racer, Darren Morgan (far lane) and Phil Lamattina in the Fuchs/Elders fueller. Lamattina red lighted to Morgan the week before in Adelaide and this time didn’t make the same mistake as he took a tenth of a second lead off the line. Despite this Lamattina’s car started to mix up cylinders and this allowed Morgan’s 4.781/319.29 to slip by at about the 1200 foot mark to lead a faltering 5.007. After two straight wins Morgan is out to try and annex his third straight Australian Top Fuel Championship title and his fourth overall and is off to a good
start.

Darren Morgan is the first to admit that he hasn’t access to the biggest bank roll in town and despite not having the money to even test he still keeps coming up a winner. This has a lot to do with his extremely dedicated crew seen here and includes his 23 year old engine tuner, Ben Patterson. “Look out because because when Ben gets some real knowledge and experience we’ll really be hard to beat”, Morgan said at the winners presentations. “Winning my eighth ANDRA Christmas tree (our version of a Wally) was all down to an excellent track and my dedicated crew”, he went on to say.