5 November 2010
Sydney's Andrew Cowin picked up his first win of the 2010/11 ANDRA Pro Series Top Fuel Series with a win over Terry Sainty at Sydney Dragway. It was the second round of the Championship held over the October 30 & 31 weekend, and the second Sydney appearance of the nitro-burning, 8000 horsepower dragsters for the season.
The Rocket/AeroFlow dragster certainly made amends for its shock first round loss at the Fuch’s Australian Nationals in September. The team then went into test mode gaining as much valuable data as they could at their home track.
The conditions over the weekend were tricky with a hot track and high humidity and with the threat of rain on Saturday evening as well as Sunday; the pressure was on to gain as many points as possible, just in case the event could not be finished.
Qualifying produced some outstanding runs from the nine entrants. Andrew finished the three sessions with a solid 4.740 elapsed time at 318.32 mph which placed him in second place.
Race day saw no rain and in the first round of competition Andrew lined up against number seven qualifier Robert Shepherd. Both drivers struggled with the track and in a close race the Rocket/AeroFlow dragster took the win in a 5.22 to 5.35 decider.
The semi finals saw Andrew put away Philip Read in a huge showdown. The result saw a 4.79/318.17 defeat a 4.87 from Read.
Meeting Andrew in the final was number eight qualifier Terry Sainty. Andrew was just too strong on this occasion blasting out a winning 4.835 at 309.84 mph to an 8.24 from Sainty.
“Testing paid off adapting our Rocket/AeroFlow dragster to a hot track set up”, said Andrew. We had to slow her down a little, but making a bunch of consistent passes on a hot track really built a lot of confidence in our team, and gave us something we’ll continue to sculpt and etch away at. Our team gave me a safe car to drive all weekend and we’re all still very excited on our win and on our forward progression. We can’t wait to get our Rocket/AeroFlow dragster back out to race again.”
