The last qualifying session was a beauty as twelve of the twenty entries wouldn’t be appearing on race day. In this pairing New Zealander Chris Tynan in his ’55 Chev took on Sean Misfud’s ’41 Willys. As can be seen here Tynan suffered a fire in his orange tri-Chevy while Misfud’s Willy’s also missed out on the Top Doorslammer field by a mere six thousandths.  Tynan best of 6.26 was nearly two tenths off the bump.

 I must admit I have a soft spot for this beautiful purple ’57 Chevy Nomad that has run 6.18 in the past. The car has a very potent 521 cube BAE blown combination but for some reason the car wants to stutter off the line. Despite trying very different suspension settings on the first two days the Nomad was to end up second last on the qualifying roster with a best of 7.90 being only good enough for 19th spot.

Ivan Skaramuca had come from the Australian import scene, swapping small displacement turbo power for that of a BAE 511 blown combination. It proved to be a handful initially as seen by this banging the blocks out of shape pass. Despite this a later 6.164/230.45 qualifying pass ended up being not that far off the pace. This run placed him 11th out of the 20 runners and augers well for any future Top Doorslammer participation. Kapiris

Peter Kapiris is a seasoned Top Doorslammer chauffeur who has been around since the early nineties but despite the best of equipment and a brains trust of a crew the Victorian driver suffers continual shake. This usually means that he cannot get down the track two runs in a row. A 6.013 on one of his four passes was enough to make it into the Winternats field and he received a lucky break in the first frame when Maurice Fabietti couldn’t start his GTO. His luck ran out in the semis when a better reacting 6.39 was caught and passed by Robin Judd’s 6.07/246.08 in an all Studebaker stoush.