Sydney racers had their first chance to blow off the New Year cobwebs with the first test and tune of the year ahead of this weekend’s Santo’s Summer Thunder event.
While the weather was hot, humid, windy and wasn’t scoring well on the comfort-meter, a few new car-driver combinations showed up for licensing in the professional class ranks.
Brett White made his return to Pro Alcohol now behind the wheel of a funny car, the ex-Wayne Newby steed to be exact.
Not making a full pass, the car dubbed “Carlos” looked and sounded strong in the less than ideal conditions.
The Sainty team brought out their new ride – the ex Paul-Madill driven funny car – with Alf Sciacca Jr in the seat.
Sciacca Jr is familiar with Sainty machinery, running one of their powerplant’s in ASR Supercharged Outlaws Lamborghini.
Ironically the funny car offers improved vision of the racetrack for Junior over said Lamborghini.
Unfortunately the new car was proving temperamental and a dropped valve by the look of it in the burnout ending the team’s day, but they will be back this weekend for some more testing.
The long awaited return of Brett Gillespie’s rebuilt 1934 Chev Proslammer happened. The chassis has been completely rebuilt and stretched to a much more sane length for the amount of power it will be receiving by John Willard at Flatout Services.
The end result is another work of art from Willard.
Gillespie made several test hits with a fair wack of shake before finding a couple of little issues that needed addressing, so the team packed it away for another day.
Mark Drew was in town early with the colourful Fin Jaska Salakari to test the new fuel system on the Australia’s quickest nitro Harley.
The high wind limited the team to only one aborted pass that still netted a 6.77.
Also testing were the nitrous Top Bikes of Rod Barchet and Michael Dwinger. The Barchet team looked satisfied with a 7.08 best in the heat that looked very easy.
While Dwinger with the help of American Darion Guillory in his corner is still coming to terms with riding his new bike.
A number of sportsman racers fronted up in the yuck conditions. And we spied Bob Reischl out in a new Modified Roadster.
Check out our gallery from the day by Grant Stephens and Michael Wyllie at Cackling Pipes.
