Willowbank Raceway hosted the first stand alone round of the 400 Thunder Sportsman Series with around 120 racers taking to the track for points as the inaugural season head towards finality.
South East Queensland delivered a pearler of a day weather wise matching the racing on track.
Results wise we saw Tony Bellert win Competition with his A/DA dragster over another A/DA machine of Caan Childs. Unfortunately for top qualifier Childs (6.88 -0.46), a red light was the reason for his demise in the final, though still ran the dragster out the back door with a sub index 7.007 showing he would had been a force on a clean green.
Wade Moran was on point in Super Stock after qualifying with his A/APA Monte Carlo edging out NSW’s Clint George by a tenth. Moran was looking to double up with the event win until the Monte Carlo made a move across the centre line handing the win to Craig Urquhart’s Oldsmobile Cutlass in the final.
In Comp Bike Matt Walker did complete the double on his B/AB Hayabusa by top qualifying and defeating Ace Edwards in the final and decimating the class index.
Sydney based heavy hitter Neil Constantinou made the journey North pay off with a win in Top Sportsman, the sleek late model Mustang was too good for Mark Smith in the final.
Andrew Constantinou – father of Neil – made it a family double in winning Super Sedan. “The Butcher” as Andrew is more commonly know as snuck home in a killer final against Brendan Edyvane who broke our by a mere one thousandth of a second – ouch.
Rob Harrington made a return to the track in Modified and reached the final, only to suffer a mechanical fault with the transbrake that red lit the dragster driver instantly on the activation of the tree, this left Rodney McAuley to cruise to a 400 Thunder Sportsman win.
Tammy Goldthorpe again proved she is the lady to beat in Modified Bike taking her Suzuki to another win in the bracket, this time strapping a holeshot on, and forcing the breakout from Daniel Sekli.
No surprises to see Rob Winterburn collecting the Super Street trophy. Winterburn’s domination of the category continued with a win over Angela Holz in the final on a holeshot.
Finally Christopher Schaper out drove Teanah Littlewood to win the Junior Dragster final.
Drag News Magazine robots Chris Wilcox and Mark Shields were on hand to capture the following video footage.
Check out the gallery from the boys at Dragphotos.com.au
