Thornton goes bang with broken conrods while Talbot goes bang with PB’s

Thornton goes bang with broken conrods while Talbot goes bang with PB’s

Top End Track Day 8 Eliminations

By Mark Humphrey

Hidden Valley, Darwin/NT. 23^rd July 2017. After a solid day of qualifying by the race teams’ things looked good for the Trek party to go some rounds with a finals appearance on the cards.

The juniors were solid in qualifying with the newest member to the Top End Trek Bradley Bishop qualifying well. Bishop along with Jake Berias and Daniel Carranza are seasoned competitors in the junior bracket are were quite capable of going the distance and putting the Top End Trek on the map. Young Nathanial Kuchel is just starting out and was excited to be among the action and no doubt learned from his experience at the Hidden Valley Drag Strip. And on that subject, what a fantastic facility the Northern Territory government has provided for the drag racing community in the top end. Both racer and spectator facilities are world class with one of the flattest racing surfaces in the country providing our poster boy Wayne Talbot the opportunity to set his PB in both ET & MPH, but more on that later. For the juniors, Nathanial went out in round 1 along with Daniel, Jake went out in round 2 and Bradley lost his round 3 encounter. Next weekend’s round at Alice Springs Inland Dragway will provide a platform for the experienced boys to go rounds with a finals appearance definitely on the cards.

The Top End Trek was represented in the Modified Eliminator bracket by Kingsley Kuchel driving the nostalgia type front engine dragster. To say Kingsley attracted his fair share of media coverage would be understating the fact as every time he rolled into the beams camera flashes were going off everywhere. Although Kingsley was a first-round casualty he made the point that this was the first time his car put together consistent runs over the whole weekend. He now heads to Alice full of confidence that the little green machine will take him rounds.

In my favourite category, Supercharged Outlaws, the Top End Trek was represented by both Dave Thornton and Tim Stewart. Both elected to sit out the 3^rd round of qualifying happy with the days qualifying. Dave had developed a small oil leak and after re-sealing the leak thought it would be better to sit out round 3. Both his qualifying rounds were in the low 7’s with a 7.037 @ 184mph and a 7.137 @ 186mph. Tim had two qualifiers in the mid 7’s posting a 7.66 @ 172mph and a 7.86 @ 164mph.

First up was Dave and after his bad run of luck on the Top End Trek journey we were hoping for a good hit out by the altered. A strong burnout went bang on the line and Dave slowly rolled over to the wall with the car shut down. That was the end of Dave’s Nitro Up North campaign and on further inspection, the end of his racing holiday with two broken conrods. A hole in the sump gave away the bad news early and has definitely put a halt to his racing program. Dave is the typical grass roots racer using a wage to support his racing career. After being in contention for the national series in the 2015/16, Dave started off his 2016/17 campaign by popping off the supercharger in round 3 of the series. After scrimping together enough funds to get the Poppy Daves Racing altered back on the track for round 7 which doubled up as the Nationals, he found trouble again this time shearing the timing gear off the big block chev. A total of 5 passes was all the Mildura based racer could manage for the 2016/17 series. After last night’s fiasco, Poppy Daves Racing could be laid up for some time with a season ending brakeage the most likely outcome.Dave picked up the "Hard Luck" award donated by the "Darwin Gang"

Tim was primed to go rounds after recently winning the Supercharged Outlaw event at Mildura’s Sunset Strip. The event is one of the premiere Outlaws events on the southern states calendar and was a big feather in the cap for “The Stang” racing team. After dialling in a 7.60, Tim found himself on the outer losing his round by a few hundredths posting a 7.77 @ 154mph. This was well outside his dial in and a shute release on the 1000ft mark wouldn’t have helped the situation.Picture perfect. Thanks to Sue Stewart

So after round 1 the Top End Trek had lost all of our racers with the exception of Jake Berias and Brad Bishop. This left “Mr Hollywood” Wayne Talbot to fly the flag for the group which he did in spectacular fashion.

Lining up for exhibition passes against Nathan Coles in a Nitro Funny Car, Wayne was keen to come away from the event with PB’s for ET & MPH and that is exactly what he did.

In his first pass of the night he posted a 6.411 @ 243.06 mph which was a mph pb. His second pass was aborted after direction from his aviation wearing sunglasses crew chief Jayden Talbot. Jayden was all over the program and was the mastermind behind Wayne’s 3^rd and final pass of the night. After inspecting the start line surface, Jayden signalled to the pilot to start off in 2^nd gear foregoing the usual 1^st gear selection. He got away from the line hard and shifted into 3^rd hauling all the way through the tapes to record a 6.187ET @ 243.77mph which was a pb for both ET & MPH. What a fantastic effort for the team and the Top End Trek travelling party with congratulations being handed out everywhere. Unfortunately for the travelling party, Wayne flew out today to take up his duties with the family vegetable growing business. He was good enough to send through some images of his flight plans although word around the traps was that Wayne wasn’t too happy with the seating arrangements. Can't understand what's wrong with the seating. Images courtesy Wayne Talbot

Jayden has now boarded the Top End Trek for the week’s journey down the Stuart Highway for round 2 of the Summit Racing Equipment Sportsman Series at Alice Springs Inland Dragway. Wayne will fly in Friday evening with the focus on the Modified Eliminator track record which he says is “soft”. Who know, after last night’s effort he could be the star of the show once again in Alice Springs.

Finally, after all the drama on the race track it was time to relax with plenty of beers going down and what “could have beens” being thrown around all night. One thing this Trek hasn’t gone without is delicious food and last night was no exception. Ms MasterChef Caroline Milics prepared a basted marinated chicken gyros that had been cooking for several hours while the racing was going on. The kebabs were accompanied with salad and were the perfect finish to what was a fantastic event.

 WOW. Dinner tonight. Image courtesy Caroline Milics

For racers or spectators who haven’t ventured to Hidden Valley in the past, I suggest you put it on your bucket list. Although Friday was a touch slow the venue facilities and racing were first class with the Nitro Up North event getting a big tick.

Well done to Scott Maclean, Ray Treasure and all the Hidden Valley Drags staff for a wonderful event that is only going to grow in statue over the coming years.

For the Top End Trek, it’s time to relax at the AM Cranes depot for a couple of days courtesy of the current Australian Supercharged Outlaw champion Adam Murrihy, and take in some of Darwin’s best places of interest before we make the trek back south to the Alice.

Video highlights of last night’s eliminations including interviews with Thornton, Stewart, Talbot and others will be posted over the next few days.

A highlight package covering all sportsman categories will also be produced over the next few days with the focus on Supercharged Outlaws where Justin “Spud” Russell took out the win and Top Sportsman where Jason Arbery backed up his Summit Racing Equipment Grand Final win earlier in the year with a win over Top Sportsman new comer Vlado Turic in the Turic Family Racing Nissan.

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