Day one of Hidden Valley Drag Strip’s Nitro Up North has hosted qualifying today (Friday July 8, 2016) for the first ever Summit Racing Equipment Sportsman Series event to be held in the Top End.

Qualifying was held for all brackets today, with fields now complete for all but two categories who will run a final qualifier each tomorrow afternoon ahead of the beginning of racing.

Top qualifying today were Clive Mainland (Modified Bike – 8.064s/162.90mph), Vlado Turic (Super Sedan – 8.651s/157.85mph), Bradley Hicks (Modified – 7.973s/164.59mph), Todd Knight (Top Sportsman – 6.832s/200.80mph), Adam Murrihy (Supercharged Outlaws – 6.574s/213.30mph) and Craig Geddes (Super Comp – 7.217s).

Tomorrow will host a final qualifying round for the Super Street and Summit Racing Equipment Junior Dragster categories, with these fields currently topped by Luke Veersma (8.027s/80.78mph) and Sam Campbell (10.115s/136.62s) respectively.

For full results from today’s proceedings, please click here.

For Supercharged Outlaws top qualifier Adam Murrihy – the current Supercharged Outlaws champion – today was all about running ‘the number’.

“We are wrapped to be the top qualifier. We have a new motor tonight, so we sort of snuck up on it and just slowly took the fuel away from it until we got our number – we were always wanting to run the 6.50s,” said the local Territorian.

“The reset of our day went well – it has been pretty casual for us actually, we have been working more on other cars than ours,” he laughed. “It feels good to see them doing well.

“As far as the plan for tomorrow – we will get that ‘6.50’ out again and hopefully we can put a few people on the trailer!

“We aren’t having or expecting any trouble with the conditions – we are pretty used to running up here so we have a pretty good idea of what it should do. But we will need to get used to that pro tree – I think that will be one thing upsetting the racers I think as they try and get their head around that, it could be a win/lose point for a few.”

Qualifying concludes tomorrow afternoon from 4.00pm with the final sessions for the Super Street and Summit Racing Equipment Junior Dragster brackets, before racing for all categories commences from 4.30pm. Also on the schedule are Top Fuel passes and an Outlaw Nitro Funny Car exhibition.

For results from today’s action, please click here. For full event information including a full event schedule, please click here.

Image credit: Grant Stephens / Drag News Australia