Drag Illustrated Issue 126, October 2017 | Page 86
With nearly 100 Top Sportsman cars on the
final qualifying order, a 32-car Top Sportsman
race was added to compliment the Elite 16 field.
Canadian driver Louis Ouimette secured the Top
Sportsman 32 event win when final round oppo-
nent David Weedon red-lighted.
TOP DRAGSTER
Newly crowned Top Dragster world champion
Matt Cooke capped off his season with a second
event win in his fifth consecutive final round.
Racing from the No. 8 spot, Cooke used a .003
reaction time and 3.968 pass on a 3.93 dial-in
to beat Chase Beverly’s 3.924 on a 3.91 dial-in.
Cooke in his ProCharger-boosted dragster began
eliminations with a bye run before taking out
Jimmy Sackuvich and Michael Galafaro. Beverly
qualified seventh and defeated Bubba Turner,
Chaz Silance and Randy Whitlock on his way
to the final.
The 2018 PDRA Tour will begin at GALOT
Motorsports Park in Benson, North Carolina, with
the PDRA East Coast Spring Nationals, April 5-7.
A
Q&A
JOHN
ZAPPIA
By Nate Van Wagnen
86 PDRA660.com
ustralian
doorslam-
mer hero
John Zap-
pia made
headlines at Virginia
Motorsports Park in
mid-October when
he recorded the
quickest and fastest
quarter-mile pass for
a supercharged Out-
law Pro Modified en-
try. His screw-blown
Noonan Ultimate
Race Engineering ’69
Camaro lit up the scoreboard with a 5.424-second elapsed
time at 265.33 mph on a test pass at the PDRA World
Finals.
Zappia, who said he began his U.S. tour in August with
the goal of resetting the Outlaw Pro Mod quarter-mile
record, had limited opportunities to take the Jerry Bickel
Race Cars-built Camaro to the 1320-foot mark. The car’s
early numbers at PDRA Drag Wars at GALOT Motorsports
Park showed the potential for a quarter-mile record, but
GALOT is a 1,000-foot track, leaving Zappia and team
with one option: run the car to the quarter mile at the
World Finals.
Shortly after making the record pass, John Zappia
shared the story behind the historic numbers with Drag
Illustrated.
At what point did you and your team realize this
performance was possible?
After running a 3.54 in the (World Finals) semifinals
and losing by two hundredths, we were ready to go out
PRO JR DRAGSTER
Tyler Rudolph (far) defeated Dalton Hayes
TOP JR DRAGSTER
Kaylee Love (far) defeated Brayden Davis
and try the quarter mile again that night, but the curfew
wouldn’t allow it. So the PDRA allowed us to give it a try
(Sunday morning).
Did the run feel as good as it looked on the time slip?
The car went .926 to the 60-foot, 2.40 at 330-feet, 3.54
at 218 to the eighth mile. On the 5.42 run, it was four
hundredths slower to the eighth. After rolling the beams
I lost three hundredths, ran 3.58 to the eighth. It moved
a little to the right. I thought I was going to clip the cones,
but I brought it back. It was awesome. It went 265 mph
and I was ready on the ‘chutes.
There’s no way I could’ve gone home and thought about
what could’ve been for the next several months.
Now that you know the car is capable of running re-
cord numbers in the quarter mile, what’s the next step?
We were three hundredths off from being the quickest
doorslammer outright, but we know it’s there. This gives
a goal to come back next year. ‘El General’ (Jose Gonzales)
said last night, ‘If you break the record, we’ll get it back.’
They’re going to Vegas (for the Street Car Super Nationals),
and we wanted to go to Vegas but we just can’t get back –
too many commitments back at home. We’ll have to leave
it for this year and see if we can come back next year and
do the August to October swing – do the last three or four
meetings with the PDRA, and possibly any of the shootouts
like Shakedown at the Summit.
We want to get prepared for that, whether we have to put
weight in and drop the overdrive or whatever we have to do.
That’s what we do in Australia – we run a 2,700-pound car
with less overdrive and a D-blower, and that’s run 5.63 at
257 mph. Whatever rules they have here, we can adapt. We
don’t really want to make this car 2,700 pounds. It weighed
in at 2,405 after that run, so It’s a good 330 pounds lighter
than what I’ve got at home. It’s got mid-5.30s in it, easy.
wins over Tim Lawrence, Scott Duggins and Barry
Daniluk.