Six-time champion Victor Bray held on to his title points lead at the third round of the 2006/07 Top Doorslammer series, the Golden State Titles at Perth's Kwinana Motorplex, despite just missing out on a place in the final. Bray now holds a slender 10-point buffer over Kwinana runner-up Gary Phillips, with event winner Peter Kapiris moving into third spot.

Bray arrived in West Australia with the news that local favorite and old friend, John Zappia had recently run his second sub-six-second pass and he knew that “Zap” would be hard to beat. As expected, Zappia was incredibly quick, posting two more five-second passes in qualifying and setting a new E.T. record for the Top Doorslammer category of 5.92 seconds. His luck didn't hold in competition, however, and he was eliminated in the first round by Kapiris when two spark plugs failed during his run.

Six-time champion Victor Bray held on to his title points lead at the third round of the 2006/07 Top Doorslammer series, the Golden State Titles at Perth's Kwinana Motorplex, despite just missing out on a place in the final. Bray now holds a slender 10-point buffer over Kwinana runner-up Gary Phillips, with event winner Peter Kapiris moving into third spot.

Bray arrived in West Australia with the news that local favorite and old friend, John Zappia had recently run his second sub-six-second pass and he knew that “Zap” would be hard to beat. As expected, Zappia was incredibly quick, posting two more five-second passes in qualifying and setting a new E.T. record for the Top Doorslammer category of 5.92 seconds. His luck didn't hold in competition, however, and he was eliminated in the first round by Kapiris when two spark plugs failed during his run.

After qualifying No. 4 for the eight-car field with a best pass of 6.20, Bray faced off against arch-rival Brett Stevens in round one of eliminations and took the race when Stevens red-lighted. Bray's elapsed time would have been good enough to down Stevens had the latter not jumped the start.

The pressure was off Bray slightly but he was up against an in-form Kapiris in round two, and Kapiris shaded Victor with a 6.136-second pass to the Castrol Edge '57 Chev driver's 6.207-seconds to advance to the final against Phillips.

Missing from the weekend's action was two-time champion, Ben Bray, who recently suffered broken vertebrae in a freak workshop accident. However, Ben was on hand to help tune Victor's car and while the Castrol Chev ran consistently quickly all weekend, the perfect engine/clutch tune-up combination just eluded the pair. That said, Victor was happy after qualifying.

"The track gets quite warm over here and when qualifying started at 6 PM it caught a few people out," Victor said. "Both Aaron Lynch and Grant O'rourke had altercations with the wall in the tricky conditions, which is a shame because they are both great drivers in good cars, and even Zappia got out of shape and that never happens.

"Our 6.20 in qualifying was all we could muster but placed us in fourth position which shows just how tricky the condition were. It was a long step from the 'six-ohs' at the Winternationals. In the second round, the track was a lot better and we ran a 6.24, but Zap ran 5.96 then it stayed good for the final round and John ran his 5.92 to set a new record, so congratulations to my old mate."

"We're going to miss some of the upcoming Top Alcohol rounds due to Benny's injury so we're just going to go back to the shed and work our bums off to find a new combination to take on Mr. Zappia in Sydney in February."