Top Fuel Australia has announced the bulk of the calendar for its breakaway series in 2022. Dubbed the Australian Top Fuel Championship, the series will see the nitro dragsters return to both Calder Park Raceway and Heathcote Park Raceway for the first time in many years.

The series will kick off with a new event at Sydney Dragway, 21-22 January, before moving to Calder Park Raceway in drag racing-starved Melbourne, 5-6 February for the 52nd Nationals. The circus will then headline the Westernationals in Perth, 5-6 March before heading back to Victoria to Heathcote Park Raceway, 9-10 April. Even with all of the improvements that have been done to Heathcote so far this year, it is hard to imagine the track hosting Top Fuel, but it looks like it will happen!

Heathcote will be followed by another round in Sydney for the track’s traditional Nitro Champs meeting, 6-7 May. The date and location of the final round are yet to be confirmed. While it is unlikely Willowbank Raceway would form a part of the series at this stage, there are plenty of other tracks capable of handling Top Fuel, including Springmount Raceway, Hidden Valley and Alice Springs Inland Dragway, but at the moment it’s anyone’s guess.

“We’ve held back announcing the last round because it’s a bloody big show with a lot of moving parts,” says series promoter Andy Lopez from Out There Productions. “But it’s worth the wait, and it’ll be a motorsport festival the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1990s.”

All events in the series will be over two days, with qualifying on Day One and an all-run format racing on Day Two. This will see the most Top Fuel cars racing throughout the event as possible.

“We deliberately haven’t announced other brackets as yet,” Lopez says. “We wanted to get our dates out there so people could understand our plans.

“The Australian Nationals, Westernationals and Nitro Champs are established events with an existing program, and we’re proud to be part of them. If your group wants to be part of top-class racing at an awesome festival in front of big crowds at our championship opener in Sydney or Round 4 in Heathcote, we’d love to hear from you!”

ROUND 1, 21-22 JANUARY 2022

Sydney Dragway

ROUND 2, 5-6 FEBRUARY 2022

Australian Nationals, Calder Park Raceway

ROUND 3, 5-6 MARCH 2022

Westernationals, Perth Motorplex

ROUND 4, 9-10 APRIL 2022

Heathcote Park Raceway

ROUND 5, 6-7 MAY 2022

Nitro Champs, Sydney Dragway

ROUND 6 – DATE TBA

Grand Final, location TBA