NEWS

June 1999 Hi Everyone

The Winternationals at Willowbank, QLD is one of the biggest drag race meetings of the year. Some 40,000 people made the pilgrimage this year to witness 530 entries battle it out. We were one of 17 Top Doorslammers entered and 13 starters, trying for the quickest 8 spots in order to get a run in the eliminations. We had 4 qualifying sessions to achieve it.

Qualifying Round 1 - Friday night. All the supercharged racers were suffering tyre shake. We lined up in the RH lane. The tree was partly obscured by the door post so I bent my head to the side to stage. Rob Broadbent was along side me in his Commodore with the big McGee DOHC job and Whipple blower. He was creeping through the lights so left early on a red light only to break the A bar securing the top of the diff to the chassis. The rear then turned the car hard right (yes, into my lane!) so I had to back off immediately. He missed me by a car length or so I was pleased he left early otherwise he may have hit me. The best thing to come out of the run was my best ever 60' time of 1.001 seconds.

Qualifying Round 2 - Saturday afternoon. The air was good and the track warm. Unfortunately we suffered tyre shake at the top of first and I had to peddle it to get going smoothly again. The groove was narrow so it was easy to move out of it, particularly if you had a bit of tyre shake. The car started moving around on the track from about 300' and just grazed the 1000' marker causing the run to be disallowed. I recorded a 6.49 @ 218mph, which I was happy with even though it didn't count towards qualifying.

Qualifying Round 3 - Saturday evening. The air was real good now (showing 500' below sea level) so we dropped the blower overdrive and richened the mixture up a bit to tame it down. It didn't make much difference to the power - we got tyre shake at the top of first again peddled and rocketed through (straight!) for a 6.50 @ 220 mph. This made us 3rd quickest qualifier with the fastest speed so far.

Qualifying Round 4 - Saturday night. The air was still good but the track was cold. We hung back in the staging lanes and didn't run, deciding 4th qualifier was as good a place as any to be.

Sunday Eliminations...