Well after a disastrous weekend due to being rained out at Sydney Dragway we were keen to get an early start at the Rocket All Stars Series. Twice in the last 3years we have been only one race off taking out the Australian No.1 and in 2008 - 2009 we are determine to go that one step further. We had a good preparation except for the late withdrawal of our number one "Head Man" Allan Croft, who had the indecency of having a hernia operation on the Thursday. Arriving at Willowbank at 1.30am Friday morning after leaving Rocky Thursday afternoon, we had a good sleep in the truck and when the gates opened at 8am we were able to set-up in a prime position normally occupied by Team Bray situated behind the grandstand, thanks to Jeff Rice for the great position.

The crowd interaction was great and as you can see by the attached photo the whole display looked good. I had a late night visit from Victor Bray the legend who commented on the presentation of the whole Real Deal Motor Sports Insurance Team. On to business we are pleased to have one of our sponsors on tour, Des Brown from Des Browns CQ Cabinet Makers join us; he finally made it to the drags although he might need a short visit to rehab afterwards, I'm sure Des had a fantastic time.

Our first run in qualifying was against a good mate and nemesis John Ward, we were pretty happy with our run coming straight off the trailer with yet again another David and Goliath battle, considering we are 240cubic inches 4ltrs and Wardy has a big block Chevy. We recorded our best mph ever @ 179.14 and a nice 7.488et to go with it. The next qualifier was against Matty Watts who cut a red light even though it was a qualifier and Nathan let the Hot Rod rip to another impressive 7.53 @ 172mph, this was to be a bit poetic later on in the night. In the third qualifier we ran a 7.60 at 173MPH during the hottest part of the day.

Elimination round 1: First round of eliminations we had the beautiful Dragster of Bryan Marsden and Marsden Motorsports, who have become good friends of the Lexus Piranha Hot Rod Team. We managed to get a win there with Nathan having an excellent .476 reaction time and he trucked the car down to a 7.587 @ 174.62mph on a 7.55 dial in. The first David & Goliath battle was won, the 240 cubic inch Lexus Toyota victorious over the BAE 540 cubic inch big block. The real drama occurred after the run when a fitting on the gearbox broke off and proceeded to spray transmission flued all over the car, Nathan and unfortunately the track but we were able to clean up the mess, fix the problem and have the car ready or the next round.

Elimination round 2; This was a ripper Nathan against our great friend John Lloy in the Torana. The interesting part here is John had chunked his Mickey Thompson slicks and we had loaned him Nathan's spare rims and slicks, now if that's not sportsmanship I don't know what is. Although we did jokingly advise him to take a dive and gave a few suggestions like red lighting or breaking-out. Another interesting incident which we have learnt a valuable lesson from was we changed our dial in but unfortunately we weren't on the ball and didn't notice that the officials had not changed it. This meant that if John hadn't of crossed the centre line we would of lost, let this be a warning to all competitors, you have got to check those read-out boards, let's hope we never do it again. No wonder John Lloy did a massive burn out they weren't his tyres. Another big block this time 454 cubic inch defeated by the little 240 cubic inch 4ltr Lexus Toyota Hot Rod

Semi Final: When the semi final came around it was already 10.23pm and was redemption time against John Ward, the man who beat us for the Rocket All Stars Australian title at the Winter Nationals. Wardy got a bit out of shape but never the less he would have been absolutely hard pushed, Nathan trucked the Lexus Real Deal Motor Sports Hot Rod down the Willowbank surface coming up with a brilliant 7.468 on a 7.46 dial in, another good 175.85mph top end charge and yet another big block 454 bit the dust. This led us to the final against Matty Watts from Alice Springs, now Matty had a bit of a charmed run with a bye and then a freebie into the final when Christine Steffens pulled a rocket stud out and couldn't front.

Double red light final; unfortunately we were first, Matty had a 0.388 to Nathan's 0.390, but congratulations to the rookie Northern Territory team and the ex Daniel Reid car, it was hard to beat before and is still hard to beat now, a great package and a great family, welcome to Outlaws. We'll we move on in 3weeks to round 3 of the Rocket All Stars at the Palmyra Drag Strip at Mackay, looking forward to good field and some great racing.

On the way home we were super excited to say the least to pick up the Penguin F.E.D. The guru of paint Hans the Paint Doctor Kruezen has had it for two weeks applying another one of his magnificent paint jobs, if you have a look at Han's website you can see more details of his work. We are extremely happy with the F.E.D and are sure it will be a crowd favourite and look forward to doing a magazine article in the near future on this and the new transporter set-up as well.

That's all for now, see you at the drags.

PS. We had great fan participation with the Lexus Piranha Toyota Genuine Parts Hot Rod over the 2day meeting, with our youngest fan a 3 week old baby taking home one of the Toyota chooks. All up we gave 8 chooks away on the weekend to an appreciative audience, they are certainly crowd favourites and I was pleased to give Matty Watts his first Toyota Genuine Parts Lexus Piranha chook to take back to the Northern Territory. No doubt the Penguin car will have a similar following.

 

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