Reigning Top Fuel champ ready to rumble in Adelaide

Adelaide will come alive to the sound of 8,000 horsepower nitro burning engines this Saturday as reigning champ Darren Morgan rolls into town for the 1st round of the ANDRA Top Fuel Pro Series.

Back in April 2012, Darren took out the inaugural Pro Series 1000 event at Adelaide International Raceway and is looking to repeat the feat this weekend, when the team goes head-to-head with Top Fuel pilots Phil Lamattina, Luke Shepherd and Queensland's Steve Read.

“The team and the car are ready to rock,” said Darren. “All the long hours in the workshop preparing for this event will be worth it when the throttle cracks open for the 1st time in front of a packed house of fans.”

A key ingredient to the team’s success Saturday is tuner Ben Patterson, who’s responsible for getting Darren from A to B in the quickest possible time. As Ben explains, “Adelaide International Raceway provides some unique challenges for Top Fuel tuners. It’s one of the few tracks that are all bitumen so you really have to finesse the power to the ground. Too much and you go into tyre smoke, too little and you are not going to win the race.”

Darren Morgan Racing will also have a secret weapon with them this weekend, a blonde bombshell by the name of Madeleine Jevic, who plays Brianna Wheeler in the new eight-part comedy series Upper Middle Bogan.

“Our Top Fuel dragster was used in the recent filming of the series,” said Darren. “Madeline enjoyed herself so much that she decided to come along this weekend and be our guest at a real drag race. Fingers crossed we can convince her to take on the backup duties, which will be a breath of fresh air for the fans I’m sure”.

Without a major sponsor for this event, long time friend Theo Pavlomanolakos of Pavtek Performance has stepped up to provide a helping hand financially for the team.

“Theo was actually my crew chief when I won my first Top Fuel championship and we set records together.  He retired from racing Top Fuel so he could concentrate on his business,” said Darren.

Pavtek have been in business for over 20 years and are known for building hundreds of high performance street and crate engines.  They have a complete range of V8 engine machining facilities including an engine dyno and 5 Axis CNC porting equipment.  They have a ton of V8 crate engine packages from 400 to 1000 HP. Pavtek also manufactures many products in-house including billet alloy main stud girdles, manifolds & actual cylinder heads.

What some people don't know is that Pavtek are now ‘more than just about engines’.  They ‘re the Victorian distributor of Aeroflow billet products and many other high performance leading brands like Holley, Edelbrock, CVR, Scat, JE pistons... the list goes on and on. Make sure you come over to our pit area and pickup a free Aeroflow catalogue.

Darren Morgan Racing would like to thank its major associate partners; Shannons Insurance, Victorian American Imports and Pavtek Performance along with their many associate partners.

The ANDRA Top Fuel Pro Series gets underway on Saturday, October 20 at Adelaide International Raceway, before heading to Sydney for the Australian Nationals from November 2-4 in two weeks time.

Press release prepared by Just Drag Racing.