APSA at Sydney, Australia

Pro Street Cars

Words and photos by Jon Van Daal

Outlaw Radial champ, Perry Bullivant.

Run in tandem with the Aeroflow Outlaw Nitro Funny Car event was the fifth and final round of the 2016 APSA (Australian Pro Street Association) series at Sydney Dragway. Entries were down across the board with only one runner in True Street and one in Pro Street Unblown. Despite this, what the event lacked in quantity it certainly made up for in quality as despite the hot conditions a large number of drivers ran personal bests.

Sitting in the media room in the bottom of the Sydney Dragway tower, I am sharing the space with APSA race director, Ray Treasure. Ray is one of those guys that has forgotten more than most of us have learned about the straight-line sport and is quite at ease directing the action for this three ring turbo-nitrous circus. He is on a busman’s holiday as his day job is the Race Director for ANDRA and he is just one of those people who finds that more than enough is just right.

Working with the track’s meeting director together they thread the APSA brackets around the Outlaw Nitro Funny Cars and over the course of the day we see a full dance card of qualifying and eliminations being run. There are ten brackets on offer, however, with entries down in some they were combined to be included in others. By the end of the day nine 2016 APSA champions were crowned. In True Street it was Daryl Elliot while in X275 Mick Voase annexed the title.

Peter Alexander

Modified Street Unblown crowned Peter Alexander while in Modified Street Blown Johnny Habib worked solidly all year for the win.

In the Pro categories, Pro Street Unblown was won by Tony Nicolaci with Pro Street Blown going to Craig Munro. The most anticipated APSA bracket was Outlaw Radial and Perry Bullivant in his “Snickers” Camaro besting Marc Leake by only ten points to win the Australian title. The Outlaw 10.5 bracket was the province of Jeremy Callaghan while, even though he crashed and couldn’t make the final round of the championship, Outlaw Extreme went to Rob Taylor.