Top Fuel Slam Race Report

January 27th and 28th at Sydney Dragway was an epic event in many ways. Sigra entered our 1959 Chrysler Saratoga in Top Doorslammer and all eyes were on this class as we raced in memory of Sam Fenech and paid tribute to his career and the tragic loss of Sam at the Top Doorslammer round in Queensland earlier in January. RIP Sam - we spent a lot of time over the weekend thinking about Sam, his family, and all our friends from his team at Fabietti racing.

With daytime temperatures exceeding 97F (36C), track temps up to 140F (60C), inside the car over 120F (50C) and water in the air off the scale we had our work cut out for us to make power and get it to the ground. We’re also told it was a full house, it’s the biggest crowd I’ve seen – maybe 15,000 or more, all silent as we paraded the Top Doorslammers on track and staged a track side memorial to Sam a short time before racing on Saturday.

Friday qualifier number 2 was postponed until Saturday morning due to rain, so we had 4 runs on Saturday in the hot and humid conditions. Turnarounds in the pits were short and difficult with quite a few issues not seen before including a CO2 line bursting in the staging lanes just minutes before we were due to run. With me strapped in and unable to help - David Gradden, thanks for your sprint back to the pits to get the parts and crawling into the back of the car behind me to repair the line with only seconds to spare. I’m please to say that we had a couple of 5.9 second runs and a couple of wins over the weekend, qualified 5th and finished in 6th – mid field, and under the circumstances very happy with that. Sigra crew includes Bill, Waldo, Jason and Vince – thanks for your hard work in difficult conditions. Thanks also to the amazing efforts of workers and volunteers at Sydney Dragway.

2023 is a big year for Sigra in many ways. After appointment to the role of General Manager in 2022 (with my transition to Managing Director), David Gradden now also steps up to more hands on responsibility in our part time Drag racing program. We’ll be racing the Saratoga Doorslammer only in Sydney for the foreseeable future, and only at National events, so maybe 2 or 3 more meetings this year, with the next being Nitro Champs in May plus monthly rounds of Extreme Bike for the Hayabusa. I will continue to drive and tune the car and ride the bike, and also continue to oversee all Sigra operations, although David takes responsibility for all day to day management of our growing business, supplying and maintaining  Brake, Suspension and Draw gear components to our Rail customers as we celebrate 33 years of Sigra since 1990.
 

Click here for a video link of the roof camera on the Saratoga to experience 0 – 100km/hr in 0.97 seconds and 0 – 400 km/hr (250mph) in under 6 seconds, followed by the tow back to the pits:

Also took the Hayabusa out for round one of Extreme Bike NSW championships on Feb 11th. Another hot day and a midfield finish. Added more NOS (around 360 Rear Wheel HP now), and as a result had gear shifting issues. I’ll work that one out before the next round, which is Extreme Bike NSW champs round 2 in Sydney, 4th March.

Geoff Gradden

Sigra will be racing in the Sydney Dragway Top Fuel Slam 27th-28th Jan 2023

Top Fuel Australia is running another round of their series at Sydney Dragway on 27th and 28th January. This will be the biggest 2 days of racing Sydney has seen for a while.

 
Sigra’s Saratoga is entered in Top Doorslammer hoping to continue our recent good form, finishing in second place at the recent East Coast Thunder event in November 2022.


Qualifying on Friday 27th and racing Sat 28th, all tickets include entry to the pits.
Drop by and say hello if you get a chance. More details here:

 I’m also pleased to report that I entered the Hayabusa in Extreme Bike at the final round of the NSW championships later in November and came away with another 2nd place and a new PB 8.38 at 175mph. Slowly creeping up on that elusive 7 second pass.

Cackling Pipes photography managed to get a shot of an early qualifying run with both wheels of the ground after shutting off to get the front wheel back on the ground. Not uncommon on these bikes but rarely captured on film.

 

Gradden places second in Pro Slammer at the East Coast Thunder

Very happy to get a result in Sydney on 4th/5th November. Sigra’s 1959 Saratoga and the Sigra crew proved again that they’ve got the goods to mix it up with the fastest sedans in the country.


Friday night was qualifying and racing Saturday. We qualified well, ending up in 3rd spot on Friday evening with a 5.73, and that gave us a good pairing with lane choice for round 1 Saturday.
As a 3 round series, we needed win points in rounds one and two, and also needed to collect enough points for elapsed times to get into the final. Round 1 we won against Craig Hewitt, and round 2 we win again against Craig Burns. Round 2 we also ran a 5.79 to boost the points and landed a spot in the final.


Being in the final at a national event is not something we are used to or prepared for. This was our 3rd only appearance in a final in 12 years of Slammer racing with a win in 2014 and a second in 2020. We’re running Emilio Spinozzi and our two cars will be pretty evenly matched based on recent performance. It’s Emilio’s first Pro Slammer final and we know his team will be setting up to repeat the string of 5.70’s passes he has been running all weekend. As always, you need to decide what the rapidly cooling track will take, how quick you need to go and then try to tune for that without overpowering the track.


This time I chose a bit too much power and rattled the tyres at the top of first gear with the car stepping sideways, a quick pedal and time of 6.0 was not good enough for Spinozzi’s flawless 5.75 and we run second. Well done Emilio, Michael and crew we know how hard you guys have worked these last 5 or 6 years to get the car to this level.

Michael Ryan builds 1/10 scale Nitro powered remote controlled drag cars and he came to see us in the pits with a replica of the Sigra Saratoga. There’s an aluminium chassis, a Nitro motor and some big tyres under that body. Thanks Michael for choosing our car to build.

 

Thanks Sydney Dragway, 400 Thunder and to RDW Excavator parts the class sponsor. Biggest thanks go to the Sigra crew and to Sigra Rollingstock Components for their support over many years of drag racing. Thanks also to all of our friends that came out to watch us race and drop by in the pits.
Next on the calendar for the Saratoga is Jan 27th/28th in Sydney as part of the Top Fuel Australia series.

I’ll be racing the Hayabusa next Sat 19th November in Extreme bike, Sydney Dragway NSW Championships and have a few spare tickets if anybody is interested in going.


2022 Sydney Nitro Champs Race Report

Sydney’s 2022 Nitro Champs was run on 6th and 7th May and we entered the Saratoga in it’s first event for 12 months. As expected, we had a few issues. After 2 rounds of qualifying and another 2 rounds of racing, there was a fair bit of spin and shake to deal with plus a couple of red lights but we were getting back on top of the tune-up. We did not make it into the A final, but still ran the final round at 9:30pm Saturday, on a cold track, and we could see other cars struggling to get cleanly down the track, but we felt that the track could still hold a fast tune and sent the car out.

The result was a new set of PB’s – 5.673 ET at 252.19 mph, 3.726 at 200.55mph at half track and a 60 foot time of 0.956. This is just fantastic for a car that weighs over 2760 lb and has boost limited by the class rules. Only a few cars in Australia in this class have run a better time and not too many in the US.

Sigra crew - Bill, Mick, Waldo and David worked themselves into the ground for this result and Sydney Dragway did a fantastic job keeping it all going with huge crowd and a number of serious incidents throughout the meeting. Special thanks goes to Maurice Fabietti from the AC Delco ProSlammer team, who lent us his spare set of rear wheels and tyres as our tyre liners were leaking and we were unable to reliably control our tyre pressures. Congratulations to Sam Fenech driving for AC Delco who went on the win the event.

The video below is from our track camera from Qualifier #2 and shows 0 – 100km/hr in 0.98 seconds followed by the car getting off the racing line and a bit sideways at about 200 feet out and 100mph plus.

Gradden finishes second at the 2021 Nitro Thunder, Sydney Dragway

Well, its been a long time since we made it to a final at a National event. In 2014 we won the Australian Nationals but since then the competition has been intense and wining times have dropped from 5.9 to 5.7 or even 5.6 seconds for the quarter mile. 

Sigra’s Saratoga Doorslammer is one of the last cars running a clutch, 3 speed Lenco and Magneto ignition, with most teams now running 5 speed, Torque converter and Coil on plug ignition, but we are still improving by small steps and knocking on the door of a 5.6 pass. 

Sydney’s Nitro Thunder on Saturday 8th May was a rain affected meeting, with no chance to have scheduled shakedown runs on Friday due to rain all day. 

So we lined up for Rnd1, with new tyres and no track data on patchy track with bald spots all over. More like drifting than drag racing, but a very untidy 5.86 took the win. 

The track did not get better but Rnd2 we managed 5.79 at 250mph with a heart stopping slide towards the wall and a pedal to edge out Emilio Spinozzi for another win and in to the final. 

Sam Fenech and I go back nearly 20 years since we raced Super sedan, both driving white LJ Toranas and it was great to line up against him in his return from a huge crash a while back and now driving for the AC Delco team. Sam is a great driver and the track conditions ensured that nobody was going to have an easy ride. Another untidy 5.86 by the Saratoga lost an early lead and Sam took the win with a 5.74. 

Thanks as always to the Sigra crew – on the start line and in the pits – makes my job as tuner and driver much easier. Congratulations to the Sydney Dragway team – big spectator numbers, and a huge effort with the track and scheduling in very difficult conditions, losing a whole day to rain. 

We’ll take a winter break and be back in the spring. 

A couple of nice photos from Ian Elliot Photography are attached and lots of videos of our cars and bikes over the years in the YouTube link below. 

https://www.youtube.com/user/Graddo2/videos

East Coast Thunder Race Report 1st & 2nd November

The Sigra crew are feeling pretty pleased with a very satisfying set of results at Sydney Dragway’s East Coast Thunder 1st and 2nd November. 

Qualifying fourth to make it into the 8 car field was a highlight and progressing through to the Semi finals was a bonus. 

Over 3 qualifiers and 2 elimination rounds we managed amazing consistency with elapsed times all in the 5.8 slot -  5.88, 5.87. 5.84, 5.82 and 5.80 with variable and hot conditions. 

The Semi Final loss to Steve Ham who went on to win the final put an end to our run, and congratulations go to Steve and his crew. 

It was our first Group 1 semi final since 2014 and I’m confident we can step it up a bit more January 17th/18th 2020 for the Summer Thunder meeting in Sydney. 

Thank you Sydney Dragway, 400 Thunder and especially the hard working Sigra team for making this possible. 

Photo below is courtesy of Ian Elliot Photography and shows us at about 1000ft, 230mph on the way to our round 1 win against Mark Hinchelwood in the AC Delco Monaro. 

When too much drag racing is barely enough, have a look at Sigra’s Youtube channel - lots of videos we have put together over the years using the cameras we use to help tune the car:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5fmv-g4HEDmJ00H97dZaMg

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Sigra Racing At Atlantic Oils East Coast Thunder 1st & 2nd November, Sydney Dragway

The East Coast Thunder is on again for 1st & 2nd November 2019 Sydney Dragway. Sigra will be racing in Pro Slammer for the 400 Thunder Series at Sydney Dragway. It will be a big weekend with Top Fuel, Pro Alcohol, pro Slammer, Top Bike, Pro Stock, Pro Bike, Pro Radial, Supercharged Outlaws, Modified Bike, Super Gas & Top Sportsman classes running over both days.

For event information and tickets visit the Sydney Dragway Events Page here:

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Rocket Industries Fuel Altered Race Report - Sigra Wins Pro Extreme

Saturday 21st September was the Rocket Industries Fuel Altered Challenge at Sydney Dragway, and we entered the Pro Extreme class to get some testing time leading up to 400 Thunder in November.

The event was rain affected and we only got down the track twice all day, but on a points count back our round 1 win with a time of 5.866 put us in first place and took the trophy Luck was certainly on our side against some proven very fast cars.

Thanks to Sydney Dragway, Rocket Industries and all the other sponsors as well as Sigra Rollingstock Components and the Sigra crew. Thanks also to the other Pro Extreme teams we met for their enthusiasm and warm welcome.

On Saturday in the pits, I met Ian from Ian Elliot Photography and he gave me the photo below, taken in May 2019 when we had a supercharger explosion 3 seconds into the run at 166mph (265 km/h). Ian tells me that his camera was taking 7 frames per second and the frames before and after this one showed no smoke or flames, so he nailed the explosion just at the right time. You can clearly see the indent in the windscreen from the blast out of the rear burst panel and the cloud of compressed fuel and air escaping from under the blower as it is lifted off the inlet manifold. The mounting bolts are designed to break in case of such an explosion and the blower is held in place by seatbelt type restraints.

Here is a short video from the roof camera:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W27HQ5bPueE.

This unfortunately happens when I get the tune up wrong, melt a piston or two and get a backfire through an inlet valve. There is a lot of fuel compressed by the blower waiting in the inlet manifold to be delivered and it makes quite a bang. In the past this has resulted in a broken windscreen and another time the roof camera blown off the car from the force of the explosion – video here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq9VrpAxjic

Photo below was taken by Ian Elliot, it’s a great photo for our archives and takes away some of the pain of rebuilding that motor.

Next event for us is the East Coast Thunder in Sydney 1st and 2nd November. Event information can be found here on our events page.

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