The nine round Atura Championship Series at Sydney Dragway is heading towards a nail-biting finish following the conclusion of round eight as racers start to snap up the last few remaining championship points.
We will look at testing first with Mark Mariani sneaking in some testing time ahead of the East Coast Nationals – though the day did not execute quite as planned.
“So our intention today was to get this old girl to stop dropping cylinders and we achieved our goals,” said Mariani. “Everything was awesome and the car ran the fastest 60 and 330 foot we had run yet – on a damn hot track might I say.”
We planned for quarter to half track passes today to finally get this car to run on all eight cylinders, which we got out of the first pass – although dearest apologies to Sydney Dragway and all the competitors for the little oil down.”
“Actually, the oil pump came loose after I got off the throttle and spilt some oil on the bottom end of the race track. We got the car back to the pits and during the normal rebuild noticed some scuffing on one crank lobe due to loosing oil pressure during shut down, after a short discussion we decided to park the car and call it a day – the East Coast Nationals are more important than risking an engine on another pass.”
Paul Mouhayet had his own engine woes as well, the normally bullet proof Mustang was on a mission early in the day with a stout 5.77 – but a later run saw the car push a head gasket out that started a small fire, but no serious engine damage was done.
Emilio Spinozzi pushed his Pro Stock Camaro to a 7.03 in the heat after being off track for some months to rejuvenate the team.
The Top Comp field did not contest eliminations, happy just to test their machines for the day. The Top Doorslammers of Johnny Roso and Geoff Gradden took shots at the track – a 6.39 from the Roso Camaro the best number produced.
Young David Roberts continued to get the feel for his twin turbo powered dragster as well.
A nice field in Super Comp was reduced somewhat by eliminations time. Joe Culmone was again the class of the field in his C/G Pontiac smashing out a 7.78 on a 8.54 index to drive around Fred Soleiman’s equally impressive 8.47 on a 9.32 E/GA benchmark – talk about index bashing, with both runs a light year under their respective National Records.
The championship points standings have Soleiman dominating still.
Michelle Davies is killing the Outlaw 10.5 championship and was in the process of setting up another event win after qualifying with a 6.47 when problems struck. Following her win in a first round match up against Alex Cirtoski’s Skyline with a 6.48, the Torana pushed out a head gasket torching a head that ended her day.
Danny Makdessi hammered out a 6.72 in qualifying before Valiant chariot unleashed a 6.55 in racing, easily the new machine’s best ever pass. Makdessi finished off the event with a win mauling Nathan Hagenson’s Camry in a wild final with a 6.90 when both cars went door handle to door handle literally against the centreline.
Supercharged Outlaws were down in numbers with a number of cars possibly giving up championship hopes to race at the big Steel City Supercharged Shootout event. Arthur Yiannitsos had dominated the last few rounds but was a first round victim to Dave McGaw on this day – the results though should still yield the Capri racer the championship title.
Funny car racer McGaw went on to defeat Norm McCormack’s FED in the final with a 6.86 on a 6.83.
All the lead players in the Top Sportsman championship failed to make any significant move at their penultimate round. Sydney Dragway furniture piece Joe Sorbello was the last racer standing with his old school pro-charged Skyline when John Beckingham lit up the red bulb with in his wheelstanding Falcon ute.
That was not the case in Modified with Tim Neilsen making a statement with his third final round showing of the season. The dragster racer though was out-gunned at the tree and at the stripe this time by Andrew Musgrave’s 7.640 on a 7.62 to win the bracket in his altered – Nielsen still has one hand on the trophy leading by 50 points.
James Barnes made his move in securing the Super Sedan championship with a tough 9.462 on a 9.46 packaged win over Marco Tolomeo in an all Falcon final. Tolomeo has had a strong finish to the season a couple final round appearances – had he not missed round one he would no doubt be fighting it out for the title.
Modified Bike field was rattled by a qualifying accident involving Joe Khoury which required the Careflight helicopter to land on the track. Khoury suffered some serious injuries and was transported to hospital but from last reports is now on the road to recovery. A red light to Lorenzo Capogna decided the final at the tree with Peter Strudwick allowed to romp away with the win aboard his Destroyer – Brett Curnow and Robert Simmonds head into the final round locked together points wise.
Joe Catanzariti made is three round wins out of his last four starts to command the Super Gas track championship. In a double breakout dual against a valiant Naomi Lightowler, the Kansas Racing Torana stopped the clocks with a 9.88 to Lightowler’s 9.85.
Super Street saw Rod Hanckel hauled home his second winner’s trophy for the year in his block of flats sized C10 truck with a 11.34 on a 11.25 package against the hard to miss pink Commodore of Belinda Welch – a .023 to .105 holeshot to the truck proved the deciding factor with Welch’s 11.11 on a 11.07 the better deal in performance.
The Junior Dragster championship is anything but decided with top two contenders Toby Austin and Bradley Bishop eliminated early closing the field right up with one round to go. Sam Perri only completed licensing earlier in the day and made the perfect debut going on to defeat James Hazzard in the final.
Mark Roberts’ XR6 Falcon lit up the win light in the final of Street Fighter against Jason Dooms who has just started racing the introductory class with his Commodore Ute. The competitiveness of Street Fighter is evident with a three way tie in points going into the final around for Danielle MacCaskell, Holly Odgers and Wayne Smith.
Ron Welch stepped from a runner up finish in the previous round to win Street Bike – his second win of the year. Welch will now lead the championship after defeating Stefan Stivala in the final with a 13.588 on a 13.56 dial to Stivala’s 10.488 on a 10.41
There was no surprise to see Jeff Danglmaier in the HAMBster final, he has already contested four previous ones this season. Trying to stop him this round was Gerard O’Neil in “Gerty”, unfortunately O’Neil pushed Gerty to hard breaking out with a 13.50 on a 13.56 and Danglmaier clocked up his third win of the year.
The final round of the 2015 Atura Championship Series is slated for November 14.
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