Queensland racer, Russell Pavey would be the first to tell you that he and his crew try and do a lot with a little so when their little yellow Corvette ran its first five second pass (a 5.984) on its maiden qualifying run the crew were excited. Imagine their surprise when a 5.898 came up on the scoreboards on their next run down the track – outstanding. Unfortunately all his good fortune came to a sudden end after his first round burnout when the clutch pedal broke. Being pushed back and watching eventual winner, Mark Belleri take the win would not have been easy to watch after such a great start.

Despite running in the 5.80s of late Ben Bray has had a hard time of it and Ben also endured some tough times in Sydney, with the blower belt coming off and damaging the motor’s front seal on his Sidchrome Top Doorslammer at the 1000ft mark of his first qualifying run (6.052s at 243.33mph). The crew then worked tirelessly to ensure Bray Jnr and his machine were ready for the second session, where tyre shake intervened for a 6.334 second result. His third attempt of the day saw a best effort of 6.022 seconds, which was unfortunately not enough to make the highly competitive race day field."It was a pretty hard day at Sydney Dragway for us for sure, but it wasn't all bad - we made some good progress on battling the tyre shake issues and also the problems we have been having with the car turning right that has bothered us for some time," said Ben.