Steve Read Racing Debuts at Mildura, Finds Answers Before Record Storm Shuts It Down

Thursday, 5th March, 2026

Steve Read Racing contested Round 1 of the 2026 NDRC BLAHST Top Fuel Championship at the Sunset Strip in Mildura on February 27–28. 

It was the longest tow of the team’s young existence, hauling the Walker’s Turf Supplies Top Fuel Dragster from Queensland to country Victoria for two days of racing that would deliver tyre smoke, a critical mechanical discovery, and one of the most dramatic weather cancellations in recent NDRC history.

But first, the Friday night scene. 

Lightning splitting the sky over the Sunset Strip. Nitro thick enough to taste. Families up on the hill with their chairs and eskies. Ten thousand horsepower sitting in the staging lanes, ready to rip. Mildura turned it on.

Now, let’s talk about the on-track result, because there’s no point dancing around it. 

Two tyre-smoking passes. Two idle-down-the-track 9-second eighth-mile ETs. Fourth in a four-car field. That’s the scoreboard and it doesn’t make for great reading. But the scoreboard doesn’t tell you what the crew found on Friday night after the second qualifier, and that changes the entire picture of this weekend.

Some context first. 

The team closed out 2025 at Sydney Dragway on November 8 with the car 60-footing and 330-footing well. The tune-up was heading in the right direction. 

Over the off-season they put everything they could afford back into the car: pistons and rods, cranks, clutch plates, seals and gaskets, a completely new all-valve fuel delivery system which is standard in nitro racing now, a new firesuit for Steve, and adjustments inside the cockpit to better suit the driver. 

The trailer got a fresh paint job and new signage too, with every member of the crew chipping in their own time to get it done.

For a small-budget team, that’s not just a parts order. That’s a team building a race car to win.

They rolled into Mildura knowing that NDRC’s head of track preparation Justin Simpson was handling the surface, which gave them confidence. After walking the strip on Friday morning it was clear Simpson and the Sunset Strip crew had done a brilliant job. Hot weather and a fine layer of dust would be a factor all weekend, but the local crew did everything they could to give the teams a fantastic surface.

First qualifier, Friday afternoon. Too aggressive. 

The Walker’s Turf Supplies car went straight up in smoke off the line, Steve pedalled it, and it idled through to a 9.617 over the eighth. Not the start anyone wanted. 

The team dialled it back for the second qualifier on Friday night, paired against Phil Lamattina with lightning cracking across the sky around them. Didn’t help. The car smoked the tyres again off the hit and Steve idled it down track to a 9.590. Fourth of four.

Two runs. Two smokers. Same result both times, even after changes between sessions.

But here’s the thing about a good crew. They don’t pack up and feel sorry for themselves. They go looking for the problem.

“The first qualifier, we found a few little things that led us to believe we were too aggressive for the track,” Steve Read said. “So we made some adjustments and it just made no difference, blew the tyres off again. At that point we realised we had a problem, so we went looking for it on Friday night and found it in the clutch department.”

“The hydraulic cannon that controls the clutch movement didn’t have enough oil in it. At the time, we didn’t know why,” Read explained. “So when you hit the throttle, it threw the cannon back and instead of just engaging the primaries, it engaged another four clutch fingers. Way too much clutch for what was happening. We took it all apart, replaced the seals in the cannon and bled it through. It would’ve been ready for a solid pass in Round 1 on Saturday.”

For those unfamiliar with nitro machinery, the clutch cannon is a hydraulic mechanism that controls how quickly the clutch engages. It sits between the engine and the rear tyres and determines how much power gets delivered, and when. If the cannon isn’t holding the clutch back properly, you’re feeding ten thousand horsepower to the rear tyres before they can take it. The result is tyre smoke, every time. That’s exactly what happened to Steve Read Racing on Friday, and they didn’t know it until they pulled the cannon apart after the second qualifier and found the seals were gone.

Crew chief Ray Ward and consultant Rod Bailey had it sorted by late Friday night. They were confident the car was good for a 3.30-second eighth-mile pass come Saturday. For the first time all weekend, the team felt like they had the thing figured out.

Then the sky opened up. And it didn’t stop.

What hit Mildura on Saturday evening was the leading edge of a tropical low-pressure system that had been tracking south through the interior for days. 

Twenty minutes before the first round of eliminations, with the car ready to roll, rain started falling. Light at first. Then heavy. Then sideways. NDRC’s Andy Lopez and Kevin Prendergast had no choice but to abandon the event roughly an hour later. 

It was the right call. 

Over the following 48 hours, the system dumped around 150mm on the region, smashing a daily rainfall record that had stood since 1894, triggering flash flooding, knocking out power to thousands of homes and devastating the local table grape harvest at the peak of picking season. It was the second consecutive NDRC event cancelled by weather in 2026.

“It was shaping up to be a fantastic Saturday night,” Read said. “The Mildura crowd was extremely enthusiastic. We had fans come by to tell us they’d driven all the way from Bendigo to see the Top Fuel cars. It was such a shame we couldn’t give them a show.”

Before the rain came, Steve spent a good part of Saturday shaking hands with fans who hadn’t seen him race since the Calder Park days in the 1990s. Old stories, old memories, the kind of conversation you only get when people have been around the sport long enough to remember what it sounded like at Calder on a Saturday night. You can’t fake that.

“Racing in regional Australia is a fantastic initiative,” Read said. “The people, the hospitality, the atmosphere. It’s all great. Mildura really turned it on for us.”

On the way home, the race trailer suffered serious axle damage on the run back to Queensland, partly from road conditions left behind by the same storm system that shut down the event. The damage was bad enough that the team will be converting the entire suspension system to airbag to stop the trailer beating the race car and spares to bits on future trips. Car and trailer are back safely now, and the team is working through the repairs.

“It was certainly an eventful start to the 2026 season, one we won’t forget in a hurry,” Read said. “For now, we’ll get this car turned around, sort the trailer, and get back on track. We’re getting closer to getting this race car to the potential it’s been trying to show us.”

Steve Read Racing is targeting the Riverbend Nationals at The Bend Motorsport Park in Tailem Bend, South Australia on March 28–29, pending trailer repairs.

The People Behind the Car

No small team goes racing without people who believe in the program. Steve Read Racing wants to recognise:

Walker’s Turf Supplies: Ian, Sue, Trev, Nick and Harrison. Everything you do for this team matters. The belief, the commitment, the memories we’ve already made together. We can’t thank you enough.

Velocity Sport Design: Dan from Velocity handles the team’s media, communications, branding and commercial development. He wears a lot of hats and we couldn’t do this without him.

Phil Lamattina: Massive thank you to Phil for organising the open house at Nitro Golf on Thursday night, for his work behind the scenes getting this event off the ground for the Mildura region, and for connecting us with Davidson Motors Mildura and the loan of the new Dodge Ram tow vehicles. The whole Top Fuel field looked the business rolling in with matching Rams.

Bison Aerospace and Sealy of Australia: Welcome aboard. We look forward to the road ahead and thank you for believing in the program.

BLAHST: Thanks to Leigh for his belief in the Top Fuel championship. Great to meet you in person, and the support as naming-rights partner means a lot to the whole category.

Andy Lopez, Kevin Prendergast and the NDRC: Thank you for putting on a quality event and for your efforts growing the sport.

WildInk: Dave and Jodi, you supply the team with the best race kit in motorsport. We were gutted to see the storm damage to your merchandise area and we’re glad you’re safe.

Sunset Strip, Mildura: What a track. What a town. What a crowd. You showed up despite the forecast and gave us an atmosphere we won’t forget. We’d love to come back for redemption.

And to Team Orange, the crew. Still learning. Still gaining confidence. Getting better every time the car fires up. Thank you for making the trip to Mildura. We’re getting closer. That’s the whole point.

ENDS

Media contact:

Dan Bennett

Velocity Sport Design

info@velocitysportdesign.com