Current Australian champion, Darren Morgan was off his usual pace with his car unable to get down the track on of his runs. Despite this he took solace in a semi-final win.

Expatriate Australian, David Grubnic nearly had the perfect weekend, being robbed in the final by a broken blower belt. Still it all came down to good preparation with a serious face reflecting his intensity in the warm up.

The third driver in the Uplift Cranes stable had a weekend that he would rather forget with a first round loss to team mate Luke Shpeherd.

The second qualifier opened with Grubnic running a 4.82/305 against Phil Read (the new owner of the car).  Read in the other lane ran a 6.23 hazing the tyres at half track. Current Australian champion, Darren Morgan, was up next against Luke Shepherd. Shepherd had his front wheels flop over to one side while backing up from his burnout and when he straighten them they ended up being “toed in” and was shut off in the interests of safety. Morgan on the other hand left hard but like Read smoked the bags from half track and shut down to a 6.75 time.  The last pairing saw Luke’s dad, Bob Shepherd up against the Sainty-engined rail of Terry Sainty, but Shepherd’s car wouldn’t fire and then Sainty couldn’t get his car out of reverse after his burnout so they both missed out.

Talking of missing out, the aforementioned problems with crew numbers saw Kalitta miss the session (the Uplift Cranes team has three cars with Luke Shepherd, team mate Steve Read and Scott Kalitta but just two and a half crews). Soon after Kalitta was allowed to run by track management and he didn’t disappoint. Despite pushing out a head gasket which lead to a small Kalitta ran a 5.80/297 which took him to the head of the class. The final session saw Phil Read record a solid 4.89/284 mph qualifier with the only other four-second run coming from Dave Grubnic when the transplanted Australian ran low ET of the whole event with a 4.65/321.58 for the top spot.

On raceday there was an opening ceremony to introduce all the drivers, and once the festivities had run their course Phil Read faced Darren Morgan with Read taking the more favoured left hand lane. Though Read left last he had a strong first half leading Morgan before both went up in tyre smoke almost simultaneously. At the other end Morgan squeaked by Read – 6.11 to 6.27. The next pairing saw Grubnic choose the left lane in his match up with Bob Shepherd. Shepherd may have not been in the same league but “the quarter-mile smile” (as he is known down under) tried to upstage Grubnic with a holeshot (.118 to .136) start. It soon became apparent that the pink and black StriVectin-SD dragster took the smile right off Bob’s face with a 4.809/315.19 taking out a second best 5.318/220.87 win. 

Like Grubnic, Kalitta also chose the better left lane in his tussle with Terry Sainty. On the green Sainty was out first but it soon became apparent that Kalitta was on a march and had passed his opponent by the 60-foot marker extending it all the way to the finish-line. There his superior 4.95/302 was more than enough for a subpar 5.40.Next up the two Uplift entries of Steve Read and Luke Shepherd faced each other and this was pretty much decided on the start-line. After a slight holeshot Read had a big flash of flame exit the back of his car however Shepherd was having problems of his own. As he approached half track the blower belt broke, leaving him to coast to a 6.18 to 7.39 win.