The NDRC Gulf Western Oil Nitro Champs at Sydney Dragway marked Round 2 of the 2026 Australian Top Doorslammer Championship and one of the biggest weekends on the national drag racing calendar.
For John Zappia, the quickest run he’d make on race day came after his crew had pulled an engine, dropped in another, swapped a supercharger, and fired the FUCHS/Summit Racing Monaro back to life with less than an hour on the clock. He won that race. It just wasn’t the one he came for.
Zappia took the D-Final on Sunday with a 5.69-second pass at the wheel of his 1971 Monaro, running down Salim Matta in the second half of the track.
“It was a good result for the crew,” Zappia said. “They busted their ass to do that engine swap before the final, and got it started in 60 minutes. Everything ran like clockwork. Both motors ran within a hundredth of each other with two different superchargers. It was a pretty good way to end the day.”
Sixteen Top Doorslammers fired together in the pits at 11am on Saturday for the category’s signature piece of theatre — sixteen blown supercharged Hemi hand grenades making noise at once while the crowd pressed up against the pit ropes. Nothing else in motorsport looks or sounds like it.
Zappia and the crew worked from data. John looked through previous Nitro Champs results, identified what had worked, and made very few changes. With clouds hovering on Saturday and only one qualifying shot looking likely, the team set the tune-up early.
Light rain pushed Q1 back twenty minutes, but Zappia rolled out into the first cool air of the day with the car set the way they wanted it. The Monaro left clean and ran a 5.68 at 251mph. The speed was down a touch on what the car normally shows, but the run was money in the bank.
Q2 was where the weekend turned. On-track delays pushed the second qualifier deeper into the evening, and by the time the Monaro rolled to the line it was closer to 6pm than the scheduled 4pm. The air had quietly stiffened up. And Zappia had hotted the tune-up up in roughly ten places — nine too many, as he’d later put it.
“As soon as I staged, I pressed the trans brake, hit the throttle, the car jumped forward six inches and red lit, and then I let go of the button and it just rattled the tyres,” Zappia said. “It had way too much for the track conditions, the temperature and everything else. So we went, ok, let’s go back to our normal tune-up, so we put it all back to the way it was to come out for the first round on Sunday.”
At this event, Top Doorslammer would be running the All-run format, giving Zappia three chances to turn on win lights on Sunday. Round 1 opened with a win against Shane Catalano.
“We backed it off a little bit more where we thought it was just a little bit over the edge, and it come out, rattled the tyres when the lock-up came in, and wheelstood and went left and it was getting close to the wall. I didn’t realise, but I’d started to pedal it to get it back into the lane and it went 5.72. I was a little bit disappointed with that run, but it was ok considering the corrections and having to pedal it.”
Round 2 paired Zappia with rookie Brody Davies.
“Knowing that we had Davies, which is a 5.90 car, we didn’t think we needed to lean on it, but we knew that if we wanted to get into the A Final, we needed to have a mid to low 5.60 otherwise we’d be in the B-Final. So against Davies, we come out, we’re on the run. I never saw him, but then the car nosed over, banged the blower and he came sailing by for the win. So I was like ‘ah damn, I should’ve left it alone!’ But then when we got back to the pits and had a look, there was some mechanical damage, an insert had dropped out of the cylinder head, and made the blower go bang.”
Davies’ 5.95 to Zappia’s 6.22 — the rookie putting the eleven-time champion on the trailer on a number he’d run all weekend.
The crew had been running the spare blower all weekend after concerns about the primary unit. The spare engine sitting in the back was close enough in spec to make this a swap rather than a guess. Sixty minutes from teardown to fire-up. Engine out. Engine in. Blower swapped. Lines, linkage, plumbing, ignition, the lot.
The D-Final put Zappia alongside Salim Matta, a Sydneysider racing his home track. Matta had run a 5.73 in Round 1 and was sitting on a sniff of his personal best, Both cars wheelstood off the launch, the Monaro to the right hard enough to make Zappia work for it.
“It was close off the line, the car wheelstood to the right, and I’m thinking ‘come on,’ as I waited for the wheels to come back down, so I could steer away from the wall,” Zappia said. “It was close at the other end. As soon as I pulled the chute, I saw that black Mustang’s nose go past me and I’m thinking ‘oh hang on, I’m not sure who won this!”
The Monaro had it. 5.69 to Matta’s 5.71.
Zappia leaves Sydney sitting second in the championship on 28 points, eight behind Taylor on 36, and four clear of the cluster behind. Two rounds done. Four to go.
The Monaro now heads back to home base in Perth for a full freshen up across both engines and the rest of the driveline.
The next outing for the FUCHS/Summit Racing Monaro will be the biggest drag race of the year — the NDRC Gulf Western Oil Winternationals at Willowbank Raceway, Queensland over the King’s Birthday long weekend in June. The Winternationals has been a happy hunting ground for this team across the years, and Round 3 is exactly where you want to put a marker down if you’re chasing a title.
Zappia hinted earlier in the season at something special planned for the Winternationals. That hasn’t changed. Watch this space.
Zappia would like to say a massive thank you to wife Robbie and the entire Zappia Racing crew, who gave him a great race car this weekend.
Next Round: 2026 NDRC Gulf Western Oil Winternationals | Willowbank Raceway, QLD, June 4-7, 2026.
Sponsors:
FUCHS Lubricants Australasia
Summit Racing Equipment
IHRA
IHRA Australia
CP-Carrillo
Tony’s Auto Wreckers
JP Pallets
Crow Cams Australia Pty Ltd
Callies Performance Products
Striker Australia Pty Ltd
