Team Bray Racing has enjoyed a walk down memory lane and a semi-final appearance at the weekend thanks to the return of Top Doorslammer racing to Victoria’s Calder Park Raceway. 

On-track across Friday 4 and Saturday 5 April, Victor and Ben Bray were part of a 13 strong Top Doorslammer field for the Southern Nationals event which – despite being dogged by poor weather – successfully saw group one drag racing return to the venue for the first time in 13 years.

“It had been a long time since we had been able to compete in ANDRA Top Doorslammer at Calder Park Raceway , it was really amazing to see the category return to the venue,” said six-time back-to-back ANDRA Top Doorslammer champion Victor Bray.

“While the results might not have fallen our way at the weekend, just to see the realisation of the return of ANDRA Top Doorslammer action to Calder Park was very pleasing for Team Bray, we have a lot of great memories here.”

The racing at Calder Park Raceway was conducted over the 1000 foot distance with Victor and Ben sitting third and fourth following qualifying with just 1000th of a second between them. Qualifying was concluded on Saturday after Friday evening’s final session was rescheduled to race day due to wet weather. 

For the first round Victor Bray faced off against Grant O’Rourke, with a hole shot to the ex-pat West Australian seeing Victor left to watch his son Ben’s semi-final appearance from the sidelines. Soon after, ANDRA officials made the decision to abandon the event prior to the running of the finale as dropping temperatures raised safety concerns.

“In the first round I faced off against Marty Dack and I was really happy with the win, my blower belt started to disintegrate just after I shifted into top gear at around the 330 foot mark, so to take the win was a very pleasant surprise,” said Ben Bray.

“While the semi-final against our fellow Queenslander Stuart Bishop didn’t go my way, it was still a great weekend at the track for Team Bray Racing and it is just a shame that we didn’t get to see Stewie take on John Zappia in the final round!”

Team Bray Racing were joined at Calder Park Raceway by selected members of an Instagram group known as ‘Igers Melbourne’, uploaded images from their TBR experience to Instagram across the event using the hashtags #slammergramers, #teambrayracing and #hogsbreath. You can find out more about Igers Melbourne at http://www.facebook.com/IgersMelbourne or http://www.instagram.com/igersmelbourne

Image courtesy: Darren Bingham