John Zappia lost fifth gear on his very first pass of the 2026 NDRC Top Doorslammer season – He never got it back. He won the race anyway.
Piloting his FUCHS/Summit Racing Monaro to three straight round wins at the Riverbend Nationals, Zappia collected the A-Final trophy and the championship points lead at Dragway at The Bend on Sunday, March 29.
In the final against Peter Lovering, Zappia drove to a 5.792 at 241.53mph with an 0.019 reaction time, holding off Lovering’s charging ’55 Chevy in a side-by-side drag race that had the fans applauding.
“Look, it’s fantastic. I’ve had so much pressure on my shoulders,” Zappia said. “It’s great for the sponsors, the crew, everyone involved that supports me. To come out in the first race of 2026 and win the trophy is just incredible.”
Nothing about it came easy. Saturday was a total washout for Top Doorslammer — no qualifying passes, no rubber laid down. The entire field would have to figure it out in a single compressed Sunday, with no weekend data to work from. Every pair of cars that went down the track was a scouting mission for the teams behind them.
The Zappia crew had set their tune-up on Saturday before the rain came, and John made a decision that would prove to be the difference all day: he backed it down. Just a little. Enough to keep the car under it on a track that had nothing on it.
When Round 1 rolled around on Sunday morning, the lack of weekend rubber showed immediately.
“I’m watching all the cars in front of me smoking the tyres, moving all around the race track and I’m getting nervous,” Zappia said. “We set the tune-up on Saturday, where I’d already decided to back it down a little, and kept it the same.”
On the burnout, the gearbox showed its first sign of trouble when fifth gear wouldn’t engage. Zappia pulled a gear manually and did a first-gear burnout on brand new Hoosier tyres that barely got scuffed. After trouble finding reverse, he got back to the line, found first, clicked into stage, and launched.
The Monaro went dead straight off the line, started to wiggle slightly around half track, then at the top end the engine was sitting on the rev limiter. Zappia lifted and rolled through for a 5.805 at 238.27mph on a solo pass.
Nobody else in Top Doorslammer made a full-powered clean run in that round. That pass earned him the Crow Cams Australia Top Qualifier Award. When the rest of the field was tip-toeing or fighting the car, Zappia trusted his Saturday homework and put the Monaro into the number one spot.
Back in the pits, the crew went looking for an electrical fault in the fifth gear circuit but everything tested clean. They sent the car back out for Round 2 against Jack Danaher, and from that point on, Zappia was diagnosing the gearbox in real time from the driver’s seat.
The crew fired the Monaro and got nothing. The car wouldn’t engage — no air, no trans brake, no forward gears. Before Zappia had even reached the burnout box, the team was troubleshooting on the fly.
“I thought ‘I’ve already pulled a gear before, I’ll do it again,'” Zappia said. “I pulled into second gear, did a second-gear burnout, went to back up and couldn’t get it into reverse.”
The crew pushed the car back into position. Credit to Danaher and his team for their patience while it all played out. With no trans brake to build revs, Zappia popped it into second and the car started creeping towards the staging beams. He came in, staged, the tree dropped, and he drove off the footbrake with whatever the car would give him.
“It sat on 10,400rpm for three-quarters of a second. I thought ‘Jack’s miles ahead of me, I’m done!’ I got off the throttle and rolled through for a 6.66.”
The scoreboard showed 6.668 at 166.10mph. At the top end, Zappia was filthy — he thought the round was lost.
“I had no idea we’d won. It wasn’t until we were back in the pits that we were told Jack red lit.”
That 6.6 came at a cost. The over-rev had dropped a valve, and the crew pulled the cylinder head to find a big hole in the piston.
What followed was the kind of between-rounds thrash that separates race teams from blokes with fast cars. New head and new piston fitted from the spare engine, torqued down, buttoned up, and the Monaro fired again with minutes to spare.
By now the afternoon conditions were settling in at 23 degrees, 54% humidity, and 1,363ft density altitude. Good air. The crew read the numbers and put more power back into the tune-up.
In the A-Final, Zappia fired up, and clicked the shifter into fifth. Nothing. Again.
“That’s when I realised it wasn’t electrical. It was a mechanical problem with fifth gear. Had I known that, I would’ve put another gearbox in it.”
Too late for that now. The A-Final was loading. On the other side of the track, Peter Lovering, 24 years in the sport and still chasing his first NDRC Gold Christmas Tree. And for the old-school fans, this one had a look about it: Zappia’s ’71 Monaro lined up against Lovering’s ’55 Chevy. No modern body shapes. No carbon-fibre silhouettes. Just two classic slammers, the way this category was born, about to go side by side at 240mph.
Zappia did a third-gear burnout at roughly 10,000 revs. “Oh, that’s a bit high,” he laughed.
Pulling forward to stage, the car started rolling before Zappia realised he was moving. He looked up and saw he’d already double-bulbed. Lovering was pre-staged. Zappia got on the trans brake, set himself, foot flat, and launched with an 0.019 light to Lovering’s 0.033.
The Monaro hooked up and bolted out of the gate. But from 1,200 feet, the engine was back on the limiter in fourth gear at 10,400rpm with nowhere left to shift. Zappia lifted early, and as the chutes came out, he caught the blue nose of Lovering’s ’55 Chevy just behind him.
5.792 at 241.53mph. Lovering’s 5.876 wasn’t enough. Win light to Zappia.
“Had we had fifth gear, we would’ve got down to about a 5.73 or so,” Zappia said. “We were definitely racing with one hand tied behind our back all weekend.”
The win caps a strong start to a season that already looks different to 2025. During the off-season, Zappia signed on as an official ambassador for the IHRA, a natural partnership given the sanctioning body’s deep-roots in fast Doorslammer racing. It was Zappia’s first event in the role. Now in his 46th year of competition, Zappia’s mission is a 12th NDRC Top Doorslammer championship. Zappia finished second in the 2025 standings, and he wants that top step back.
Making things tougher, Perth Motorplex is currently closed for upgrades. Great news for the future of WA drag racing, but it means Zappia and his crew have zero access to local testing. Every interstate round has to serve triple duty: test session, data mission, championship round.
It’s now back-to-back A-Final victories at the Riverbend Nationals for Zappia, who also won this event in April 2024 after a similarly wild between-rounds thrash. Some things don’t change. The car breaks, the crew fixes it, and Zappia finds a way to the win light. He heads back to Perth with the trophy, the points lead, and a gearbox that needs sorting before Sydney.
And after the Nitro Champs? Zappia hinted at something special planned for the Winternationals. Watch this space.
Zappia would like to say a massive thank you to the crew, who worked their tails off all weekend.
FUCHS Lubricants Australasia
Summit Racing Equipment
IHRA Australia
IHRA
CP-Carrillo
Striker Australia Pty Ltd
Tony’s Auto Wreckers
JP Pallets
Crow Cams Australia Pty Ltd
MoTeC
Hoosier Racing Tire
NGK Spark Plugs
Callies Performance Products
Noonan Race Engineering
Kounis Group
Specialty Metals
AVTRAC
Taylor Tyres Pty Ltd
Aviation Composites -AVC
Fineline
Final Drive Engineering
Ty-Drive
Applied Automotive Performance Engines
Total Seal Piston Rings Australia
