So for the Jim Read Racing team, it's signing off for now from the 2009 Winternationals at Willowbank Raceway. We hope you've enjoyed the live pit-side track coverage, and be sure to check back to the website for more photos from the event once I've sorted through them (including some low-rez on-track still video shots of the cars racing) over the coming weeks.

For full TF eliminations results, you can check out the Willowbank site here - Willowbank TF results

First pairing out was Stamatis against Terry Sainty, and after a .509 reaction, it was Stamatis all the way with a 4.73 at a slowing 284 mph while Sainty coasted through for a slowing 15.87.

Next out was Read against Phil Lamattina, and it was Lamattina who won the race with a 4.67 @ 329 mph against Read's 6.63.

For full TF eliminations results, you can check out the Willowbank site here - Willowbank TF results

As Phil stated in his blog, it has been raining out here at the track, but it has however stopped now and the scrubbers are out on the track, and I'm sure it won't be too long and we'll probably hear the jet dryer zooming up and down as well. We just had a look at the weather radar, and it looks like it was just a passing front, so hopefully things will stay cleared up from here, and we can get to the real business of racing.

It was a shame to see Phil struggle to get a decent lap in this weekend, and as is always the case with racing Top Fuel, there are always curve balls that come out of nowhere to throw a challenge at the team. Hopefully today may prove different, but time will tell. First round match ups see Martin racing Terry Sainty, and as Phil said, he is racing Phil Lamattina.

Over in the Stamatis camp, the guys were busy this morning checking out a few things on the car to try and find out why it isn't revving up off the start-line like it should, and there was a bit of head scratching going on as to what could be causing that. With these cars, they heavily rely on instant engine RPM to get the primary fingers on the first stage of the clutch to rocket them off the line, so if blower boost is down, or the fuel system isn't doing what it should be, they won't rev up like they are designed to do. But with all systems OK in that department, that only left the car's electrics that could be causing the lower RPM "on the hit" that the data showed from Martin's runs this weekend. So the guys replaced the coils, leads and magnetos to try and rectify the problem, so we'll see what happens this round of racing and whether the car gets its revs back again.

Well more reports soon after the first round of eliminations...

Currently it is raining pretty good here and it's dark all around. Hopefully it should clear up but it doesn't look good. Qualifying was a challenge as the gremlins we picked up in Sydney continued to plague us on all three runs. We all had a very late night last night and went through everything on the car and changed alot of parts ready for race day today. We have a good match up today first round with my mate Phil Lammas. Hopefully we can come away with a win first round and set up a good base line for the rest of the day.

Hope to report back a little later with some good news.