LAMATTINA RETURNS TO TOP FUEL WINNERS LIST

Phil Lamattina jumped to the top of the Australian Top Fuel Championship standings last weekend with a drought-breaking win in Australia’s first 1/8th mile championship event at Mildura.

Lamattina won all three races on his home track in country Victoria, besting Wayne Newby.

“I think I forgot how good it feels to win!” said Lamattina after his first victory in eight years.

“Our team had success with Kelly (Bettes) when I was not driving but after the personal setbacks and to get through the COVID related delays and to get on the top step of the podium feels amazing.

“Massive thanks to the crew, this is as much for them as it is for me.

“I can’t thank Top Fuel Australia enough for the hard work they put into the Mildura round, the track and organisation was amazing.

“Out of all the rounds that I’d want to win, this one was it. I got to win the round in my hometown with my whole family watching from the hill!”

The first appearance of Top Fuel dragsters at Mildura in regional Victoria was a story of speed but no success for Phil Read and the Hydraulink team, who finished third for the round.

After running quickest through the qualifying rounds and re-writing the record books on Saturday, the team’s aggressive set-up was too much through the competition rounds on Sunday.

Even so, Jim Read Racing is still a solid second in the standings for the Australian Top Fuel Championship after a first-up win at Sydney Dragway in February.

“What a great event. The crowd was fantastic. We just got a little greedy,” says Phil Read.

“Saturday was excellent, but on Sunday we couldn’t get the car down the track. We over-powered the racetrack and spun the tyres.”

The Mildura event was packed with firsts, from the first eighth-mile race for Top Fuel cars to its debut in the new national championship and the first appearance by Top Fuel cars since a demonstration run in 2014.

The start of the weekend saw the six-car Top Fuel field battling hot and dusty conditions, as well as the challenge of the shorter eighth-mile course after usually running over 1000 feet.

Tuner Bruce Read got the full potential from the car and the result was a new track record at 3.199 seconds and 247 miles-and-hour, easily good enough to be the Number 1 qualifier heading into the three rounds of racing.

“It was great to re-write the records. And we put on a real show for the fans,” says Phil Read.

Things did not run as smoothly on Sunday, in a competition format where all six Top Fuel cars compete in three rounds of side-by-side racing.

A first-up win over Wayne Newby, who eventually finished the event as runner-up to hometown hero Phil Lamattina, looked promising.

But then the Read team went down to Peter Xiberras in the second round and fell again to Shane Olive in the third, both times as a result of over-powering the track and failing to get traction.

“It’s a shame we didn’t perform to our usual expectations. We had the speed on Saturday but didn’t tune for the track on Sunday,” says Phil Read.

“We got a little greedy in our last run, trying for a 3.0 second pass to get the record back. I was about a car length in front but couldn’t stay there.”

“We know what we’ve got to do for the next round of the series, but it’s going to be tough. We’re heading to Western Australia and we haven’t raced there for six or seven years, where the Lamattina and PremiAir teams both raced in Perth last year.”

The Burson Auto Parts Australian Top Fuel Championship continues at the Perth Motorplex on April 8-9.

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