"VAN" (Sports Desk - 10.06.2025) :: A difficult Winternationals campaign where strong potential was thwarted by breakages sees Hydraulink Jim Read Racing looking for vengeance at the upcoming Top Fuel final.
The weekend’s event at Willowbank Raceway marked the penultimate round of the 2024/2025 NDRC Top Fuel Championship chase and kicked off with the first of three qualifiers on Friday June 6, in which a missed set-up saw the team run down a 7.150 second pass at 91.34mph.
Come Saturday’s Q2 and Q3, things were starting to get back on-track, but the team was haunted by bad luck.
In Q2, driver Phil Read was blazing down the 1000ft before the car tossed a brand new blower belt to result in a 4.316/185.31mph run.
This was followed by a 3.985 second pass at 212.19mph in the late afternoon for Q3 which again would have been much stronger, if not for a part failure that led to a engine fire, seeing them qualify 4th on the ladder ahead of Sunday’s three round all-run racing format.
On Sunday’s race day, the team came out swinging to lay down a 3.776 second pass at 286.86mph in the first round, before in round two things were looking fantastic only for the team’s luck to again drastically disappear – after crossing the line at 3.792 seconds at 311.34mph, the throttle stuck open, causing weekend-ending damage to the internals of the dragster.
“This weekend was much like our last round at Sydney Dragway, where if we were able to get it down the track, it ran really well!” Phil Read lamented.
“We wanted to come out and put on a brilliant show here at the Winternationals – it is the event of the year and the crowd was brilliant, but it just wasn’t our day.
“We have a lot to motivate us now heading into the season finale, here’s hoping that lady luck will start smiling on us by August 23!”
Hydraulink Jim Read Racing Crew Chief, Bruce Read, further elaborated on the issues the team faced across the weekend.
“On Friday night I didn’t get onto the conditions soon enough, and then on Saturday in Q2 it was on a tear, but then we broke a brand new blower belt,” Bruce explained.
“In Q3 the luck kept alluding us – on another good run we broke an inlet rocker and snapped the top of the valve which basically made an exploding hand grenade of the manifold and the blower, just like what happened in Sydney.
“On race day, and we were hoping to put all that behind us – in the first round it was a reasonable 3.776 run at 286.96mph – which is funny because not long ago a three seventy seven would have been amazing! It just shows how much Top Fuel is racing ahead these days that we call that ‘half decent’ now!
“Come the second round, we saw another thing that doesn’t normally happen cause our downfall – this time, on what was a really strong 3.792 second pass at 311.34mph, the bracket that holds the barrel valve to the injector – which never breaks – broke.
“That caused the throttle to jam open, which gave Phil a hair-raising extra second on full throttle across the line. Of course, you can’t run a Top Fuel dragster full noise for 4.8 seconds so it then kicked the rods out of the engine. After that, we had no more injectors and no more blowers, so it was time to call it quits for the weekend.
“Back to back three seventies had us looking really good and back to form, but it just wasn’t to be – we really needed some luck, and there just was none for us this weekend. Maybe as one fan told us today, we need to conduct an exorcism or something on the car!
“Now we put this one behind us, get back to work, and get ready for the season finale at Sydney, the Nitro Nationals.
“I can tell you this right now – we will be looking to wreak vengeance on August 23!”
Responses
Leave your comment