Kyle Putland was the top qualifier for the Competition class at the ANDRA Grand Finals. (Outlaw Images)

The Australian National Drag Racing Association and the NHRA will join together to give ANDRA members special benefits while also promoting the Australian series on NHRA.tv.

ANDRA members can purchase an NHRA digital membership for $50 (Aus) and get discounts on some products including an NHRA.tv subscription, tickets to select NHRA events, and NHRA merchandise.

NHRA.tv will promote selected ANDRA events beginning on Friday, May 10, with action from the ANDRA Summit Racing Equipment Grand Finals at the Perth Motorplex.   [05/09/19]

Ben Bray in his Corvette on the burnout pad to the delight of the fans at Sydney.  (Richard Smith photo)

Australia’s Team Bray, consisting of veteran Victor Bray and his son Ben, had a good news-bad new kind of outing at the Gulf Western Oil Nitro Thunder event at Sydney Dragway.

Working on new transmission set-ups, the team didn’t get in testing on Friday because of rain, giving them only one test session on Saturday morning before competition began.

In round one of racing, Victor would take a win with a 5.870 pass which was just shy of his 5.86 personal best (also set at Sydney Dragway) ahead of victory in round two despite his new transmission set-up suffering a solenoid failure when his opponent Emilio Spinozzi threw up a red-light on the startline.

The team worked quickly to replace the solenoid for round three, which saw him matched up with Ben in his own Gulf Western Oil Pro Slammer.

Unfortunately for Victor, another solenoid failure – this time due to a wiring harness issue – dashed any hopes for another win and Ben, who is also running the new transmission set-up in his machine but with different gear ratios, raced through for the victory. Ben’s round-three victory followed a round-one victory and round-two loss to Paul Mouhayet at the event, which hosted a big crowd for what became a one-day event.

Team Bray Racing will next be on-track for the 400 Thunder season-ending Gulf Western Oil Winternationals, to be held at Willowbank Raceway June 7-10.  [05/09/19]

Keeping you up-to-date on news the Agent has been following, on May 8 Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law the legislation to allow wagering on professional and college sports as soon as Sept. 1. The law legalizes the activity for adults ages 21 and older as of Sept. 1 and implements a 9.5% tax rate on those wagers.

The bill also will allow horse-track casinos to introduce live-dealer table games on Jan. 1, 2020, and allows new casinos in Gary and Terre Haute, IN.   [05/09/19]

Even with the NHL and NBA playoffs in full swing, the numbers for the FS1 coverage from the Atlanta NHRA event were strong. There were 475,000 viewers giving a 0.30 rating to the Sunday eliminations.

For comparison, the Kentucky Derby (the highest sports ranking of the week) on Saturday had a viewership of 16,341,000 with a 9.39 rating.   [05/09/19]