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Rarely do sequels live up to the hype but the 2016 edition of
Nitro Up North surpassed its predecessor with even more nitro
and even more record performances.
Four Top Fuel dragsters were on display as Rapisarda
Autosport’s Damien Harris and Wayne Newby were joined
by Aaron Hambridge in the return of Lamattina Top Fuel
Racing and the Nitro Madman Mark Sheehan.
Hambridge and Newby punched out one of the quickest side
by side passes ever seen in Australia with dual 4.61 second
passes as Hambridge recorded the third fastest quarter
mile pass in the world topping out at 336 mph.
Damien Harris also went one better resetting his track
record from 12 months prior thrilling the capacity crowd on
a 4.581 second pass at 321.73 mph.
In the Championship nitro bracket, Top Fuel Motorcycle
made it’s return to Darwin following a two-year absence
with a new winner standing on the podium.
For Damien Muscat, the victory came after qualifying
sessions he would rather forget. However, it wasn’t enough
to hold him back from taking wins from Greg Durack and
Chris Porter on his way to the final against Mark Drew –
where his 6.514 at 218.94 mph effort would better Drew’s
7.020 at 228.65mph pass.
“This feels unreal. It couldn’t be better. We had a bad start
in qualifying, it took us a bit to get a handle on the tune-up,
but we just started stepping it up in eliminations and here
we are,” said Muscat, who was third fastest at the end of
three qualifying sessions on 24 hours earlier.
“The rest of the race day went pretty good. I am lost for
words as to what actually happened in our qualifying
sessions – we missed one run as we had a rookie mistake
lighting up b
the lense
Photos by: Mark Callaghan, Jeremy Horvath
– High RPM, Grant Stephens – Cackling Pipes