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The NZ Nationals has finally after three years produced weather conducive to drag racing.
Reports of showers in the Auckland area may have kept a few away but the numbers attending on the Saturday and Sunday were not put off by the weather reports and where welcomed with nice sunshine.
With exception to a couple of minor hold ups the meeting ran very smoothly for the 5000 plus crowd and with six records falling and many personal bests the fans had plenty to see, most notably the Chevrolet powered dragster of Chris Johnston and Ray Peterson running their first 5 second pass after many 6.0’s, also taking the nationals Castrol Top Alcohol win in the process. Another team frustratingly close to the 5 second barrier is the RPM dragster of the Vincent family, with a number of 6.0’s keeping spectator interest high with which of the two teams would do a five first.
Carnage was quite high in the group one classes with the Digga Dragster of John Neilan dropping a valve in qualifying which meant a mad thrash to make eliminations, Morice McMillin’s Teng Tools funny car pushed a head gasket and bent a rod in his qualifying attempt and Grant Rivers was the other suffering major damage to his Pontiac funny car. Doorslammer with it’s over subscribed field quickly reduced it’s self to the right number when Dave Tully suffered lifter damage and Mark Thomas in the Fuchs 56 Customline had a spectacular fireball pushing a head gasket and a fair amount of alloy with it.
It was not all fire balls and carnage though in the doorslammer division, every round counted for championship honours and after rolling the beams in round one Ross Taylors chances of a second championship went rolled away giving the Kiwi Eftpos 55 Chev of Steve Batey a chance at making at least two rounds at the Prestone Nationals. The battle for position in the championship would have been no harder anywhere than between the STA Falcon of Squig and the Wittz Automotive Ferrari of Mike Witterveen, with only twenty points between them for the championship lead now that Taylor was out, each round was going to be as important as the next. Witterveens consistency prevailed against Bob Owens in the first round and Batey in the second going through to take runner up in the event and winning the Century Yuasa Championship in Top Doorslammer. Wayne Hussey made a brilliant come back after missing the first round in the championship to win this event and end in third place overall and if he had only had those valuable points from the first event who knows what might have been.
At the other end of the spectrum Fast Parts Super Street was another class that went down to the wire with qualifying points at this event handing the championship win to Gary Ellis from last years winner Rob Chesham. These racers may not be running fast but the rounds required to accumulate points makes it double hard to win a championship.
The Yuasa Modified bike championship was a done deal with Bill Hamilton not even needing to turn up to the event but he had already put the hard work in before hand and the Prestone event was taken out by Rob Findley keeping Ross Donaldson back in the runner up position, another division that is not easy racing.
Super Gas has struggled all season to get the numbers but Prestone winner Phil Hargreaves not only took the Nationals win but the Century Yuasa Championship also, good job by the Super Gas rep.
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