25 fastlane
AA/FA
OR AA/AM
WHY NOT BOTH,
SAY LEONARD BROS.
“We ran our personal best for RMR and qualified second for the
first event before Clint Neff, who is running for the championship,
was too good for us in first round – it was close but he took the
stripe.
“We made a couple of changes for the second event but we had
a bearing fail at about 500ft and we broke a connecting rod and
donated to the aluminium gods; and so it was farewell RMR!”
From RMR the team was off to Las Vegas for the NHRA Toyota
Nationals in late October.
“We went to Vegas with a goal of running 6.4 seconds and 210mph.
Right off the bat the car was running great, in each run we were
running personal bests,” Mathew said.
“For our first round we had the number four qualifier. I had a great
light with a .003 and we ran another personal best of 6.46s at
209.75mph for the win. We had run 210mph on a previous run so to
hit both goals was great. We fell off a little bit in round two, and
the person we lost too went on to win the event.”
So what’s coming up for the boys from South Australia?
“In 2019 we will start off by running Nitro methane in the NitroRat
altered at the March Meet in Bakersfield. We’ll then switch back
over to alcohol for the Vegas National event, then probably head to
Boise and see where we race after that,” Mathew said.
“I’ll fly back to Australia to race with Warren down there and he’ll
fly back to the states to race with me here. One big goal I have is
to bring my car to Australia and run it on Nitro at Whyalla. I would
also love to run it at AIR and whichever track would have me, we
just need to find the cubic dollars to make it happen!”
To follow along with all of the Leonard Brothers Racing action, be
sure to check out the ‘Mathew Leonard Nitrorat Racing’ facebook
page by clicking here.
Photos supplied by Mathew Leonard