Words and photos by
Jon Van Daal

The past two seasons in Australia have for the most part seen the entire east coast blanketed with rain and flooding of unrivalled intensity. Blame it on La Nina or Mother Nature either way the tracks in Sydney and Brisbane have lost a huge number of events over this time but the recent drought breaking ANDRA Pro Series round at Sydney Dragway went into the books as a record-breaking event.

A large turn up of entries in both Pro Stock and Top Doorslammer (our version of Pro Modified) was supplemented by a field of seven Pro Stock Bikes. As it was the first sunny weekend in quote sometime unfortunately the expected crowd was down a bit on what hoped for still the track was prepared brilliantly and the officials worked their butts off to put on an outstanding event.

The event saw the very first five second doored eliminator and this event saw two non-qualifiers in the fives, Garry Phillips and John Canulli – both with 5.99 times. There were also some quick runners in the Aussie Pro Stock field (using 400 cube engines) with the top half of the 16 car field all in the 7.0s with three cars
At first, everything looked normal on Zac Peirano’s blown Lexus powered front engined dragster crosses the finishline but a few hundred feet later that was to change as Peirano recalled after the accident. “One breather line blew off and covered me in oil and another one got loose from the sump and oiled underneath the tyres”. As can be seen the car barrel rolled twice getting up close and personal to the right hand guard wall before catching fire and coming to a stop. “I’m OK, lost a few more brain cells, not that matters but I walked away thanks to the ISP safety gear – I’ll be back”, he concluded.
As can be seen in the first frame everything looks normal on Zac Peirano’s blown Lexus powered front engined dragster crosses the finishline but a few hundred feet later that was to change as Peirano recalled after the accident. “One breather line blew off and covered me in oil and another one got loose from the sump and oiled underneath the tyres”. As can be seen the car barrel rolled twice getting up close and personal to the right hand guard wall before catching fire and coming to a stop. “I’m OK, lost a few more brain cells, not that matters but I walked away thanks to the ISP safety gear – I’ll be back”, he concluded.