Drag Illustrated Issue 126, October 2017 | Page 86

With nearly 100 Top Sportsman cars on the final qualifying order, a 32-car Top Sportsman race was added to compliment the Elite 16 field. Canadian driver Louis Ouimette secured the Top Sportsman 32 event win when final round oppo- nent David Weedon red-lighted. TOP DRAGSTER Newly crowned Top Dragster world champion Matt Cooke capped off his season with a second event win in his fifth consecutive final round. Racing from the No. 8 spot, Cooke used a .003 reaction time and 3.968 pass on a 3.93 dial-in to beat Chase Beverly’s 3.924 on a 3.91 dial-in. Cooke in his ProCharger-boosted dragster began eliminations with a bye run before taking out Jimmy Sackuvich and Michael Galafaro. Beverly qualified seventh and defeated Bubba Turner, Chaz Silance and Randy Whitlock on his way to the final. The 2018 PDRA Tour will begin at GALOT Motorsports Park in Benson, North Carolina, with the PDRA East Coast Spring Nationals, April 5-7. A Q&A JOHN ZAPPIA By Nate Van Wagnen 86 PDRA660.com ustralian doorslam- mer hero John Zap- pia made headlines at Virginia Motorsports Park in mid-October when he recorded the quickest and fastest quarter-mile pass for a supercharged Out- law Pro Modified en- try. His screw-blown Noonan Ultimate Race Engineering ’69 Camaro lit up the scoreboard with a 5.424-second elapsed time at 265.33 mph on a test pass at the PDRA World Finals. Zappia, who said he began his U.S. tour in August with the goal of resetting the Outlaw Pro Mod quarter-mile record, had limited opportunities to take the Jerry Bickel Race Cars-built Camaro to the 1320-foot mark. The car’s early numbers at PDRA Drag Wars at GALOT Motorsports Park showed the potential for a quarter-mile record, but GALOT is a 1,000-foot track, leaving Zappia and team with one option: run the car to the quarter mile at the World Finals. Shortly after making the record pass, John Zappia shared the story behind the historic numbers with Drag Illustrated. At what point did you and your team realize this performance was possible? After running a 3.54 in the (World Finals) semifinals and losing by two hundredths, we were ready to go out PRO JR DRAGSTER Tyler Rudolph (far) defeated Dalton Hayes TOP JR DRAGSTER Kaylee Love (far) defeated Brayden Davis and try the quarter mile again that night, but the curfew wouldn’t allow it. So the PDRA allowed us to give it a try (Sunday morning). Did the run feel as good as it looked on the time slip? The car went .926 to the 60-foot, 2.40 at 330-feet, 3.54 at 218 to the eighth mile. On the 5.42 run, it was four hundredths slower to the eighth. After rolling the beams I lost three hundredths, ran 3.58 to the eighth. It moved a little to the right. I thought I was going to clip the cones, but I brought it back. It was awesome. It went 265 mph and I was ready on the ‘chutes. There’s no way I could’ve gone home and thought about what could’ve been for the next several months. Now that you know the car is capable of running re- cord numbers in the quarter mile, what’s the next step? We were three hundredths off from being the quickest doorslammer outright, but we know it’s there. This gives a goal to come back next year. ‘El General’ (Jose Gonzales) said last night, ‘If you break the record, we’ll get it back.’ They’re going to Vegas (for the Street Car Super Nationals), and we wanted to go to Vegas but we just can’t get back – too many commitments back at home. We’ll have to leave it for this year and see if we can come back next year and do the August to October swing – do the last three or four meetings with the PDRA, and possibly any of the shootouts like Shakedown at the Summit. We want to get prepared for that, whether we have to put weight in and drop the overdrive or whatever we have to do. That’s what we do in Australia – we run a 2,700-pound car with less overdrive and a D-blower, and that’s run 5.63 at 257 mph. Whatever rules they have here, we can adapt. We don’t really want to make this car 2,700 pounds. It weighed in at 2,405 after that run, so It’s a good 330 pounds lighter than what I’ve got at home. It’s got mid-5.30s in it, easy. wins over Tim Lawrence, Scott Duggins and Barry Daniluk.