At the Mac Tools U. S. Nationals at O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis Labor Day Monday, native Australian Dave Grubnic, driver of the Zantrex-3 Top Fuel dragster, unexpectedly saw his hopes of winning the world’s biggest and most prestigious drag racing event fade away in a cloud of tire smoke in round one of final eliminations.
Grubnic, the No. 5 qualifier, raced No. 12 qualifier Brandon Bernstein in the opening quarter-mile battle. Grubnic grabbed a slight. 004-second advantage on the starting line, but by 100 feet Bernstein began pulling away when the big rear tires on the Zantrex-3 machine started losing valuable traction and started emitting the ever-dreaded tire smoke. Bernstein had no such problems in his lane and got the win, 5.676 seconds, 210.24 mph to 4.525 sec., 324.90 mph.
“I really did not expect that, ” Grubnic, a 45-year old resident of Ennis, Mont., said. “Our Zantrex-3 car has been running really well and the last thing I expected it to do today was smoke the tires. The track evidently was not quite as good as we thought.
“I’m really encouraged with the way our car has been performing lately, so we’ll just get everything together and try to go win in Memphis (next event). ”
In early 2004, Grubnic was hired to drive for Kalitta Motorsports. Since joining Team Kalitta, Grubnic has posted consecutive top-five championship points finishes. In the fall of 2004, he won the lucrative and coveted Budweiser Shootout in Las Vegas, becoming only the fourth driver in the special event’s history to win its $100,000 prize in his first attempt. Grubnic picked up an emotional first NHRA national event win in May, 2005 in Topeka, Kans., to become the first non-native North American to win a Top Fuel trophy. He has one other event victory to date, the 2006 running of the famed Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla.
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