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Steve Read Wins Sydney's Summernationals Crown |
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Saturday, 17 February 2007 |
 Queensland Top Fuel driver Steve Read captured a lucrative Summernationals crown at the Western Sydney International Dragway tonight, marking another major milestone for his young team in just their second outing as a privateer outfit.
Consistency proved the key in Read’s assault of Australia’s number one drag racing category resulting in a finals win over reigning Australian champion Phil Read.
Continuing his white hot form that had been evidenced throughout the entire two days of racing, the Ipswich based driver locked in a 4.931 second effort in the decider which was too good for his opponents 5.767 second elapsed time over the quarter mile journey.
“Right from the start when we were putting this deal together we wanted
to make sure we had a consistent racing package at every event,” said
Read.
“We went into this weekend with a simple plan and managed to cut good
lights at the start and everything just slotted into place.
“It’s very gratifying to reap some rewards after all the time and
effort that has gone into getting this race team up and running.
“Of course as a new team we are still chasing lucrative sponsorship
dollars but hopefully we can now kick on from this and come up with a
budget that could see us compete during the Perth round on March 30/31.
“Once again the crew performed admirably in hot and humid conditions
and made sure the turnarounds between rounds were first-class.”
Steve Read’s progressive assault began in earnest with a first up 4.8
second pass straight off the trailer in qualifying on Friday night,
which provided the Read Speed Racing crew crucial time to check on
glitch with the fuel system.
“We had a look at things but there wasn’t a great deal we could do
other than limit our fuel consumption by shortening our burn outs.
“So we settled for just the one qualifying run and everything went smoothly from there.
“There were no dramas at all with the dragster and once again we didn’t hurt anything so that’s also a major bonus.”
During earlier rounds of eliminations Read was forced to dig deep to
take the win against rookie driver Phil Lamattina during a
scintillating side-by-side challenge.
Just a tenth of a second was all that separated the two in qualifying
and both drivers pulled out all the stops to orchestrate a monumental
dogfight to the delight of an appreciative Sydney crowd.
The Queenslander took the honours courtesy of a 4.840 second pass against Lamattina’s 4.998 second effort.
That set up another greatly anticipated showdown with Allan Dobson in
the semi-final and again the margin was in the thousandths of a second
in favour of Read, which booked his place in the final against Phil
Read.
Summernationals – Top Fuel (WSID)
Round One
Terry Sainty 5.238 def Darren Morgan 6.610
Allan Dobson 6.680 (BYE)
Phil Read 5.346 def Bob Shepherd (red light)
Steve Read 4.840 def Phil Lamattina 4.998
Semi Final
Phil Read 4.612 def Terry Sainty 5.155
Steve Read 4.819 def Allan Dobson 4.829
Final
Steve Read 4.931 def Phil Read 5.767
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