FIA/UEM Euro Finals, Santa Pod Raceway, England
The European season might have been battered by the elements during the early part of the year, but an astounding second half of the season came to a dramatic climax at the Euro Finals. No rain, hardly any oildowns (those that occurred were cleared up in astonishingly short order by the Santa Pod track crew), and the track, now in it’s 31st year looking in superb order with the newly installed grandstands on the pitside and big plans for redevelopment of the rest of the facility in the coming months. The pristine all asphalt 1320 saw some ferocious track action to decide the titles in the most international of drag racing series in front of a bumper crowd and barely slipped from schedule all the way through the weekend. We’d better leave the preamble here and get on with the bumper report before Burk cuts us off in our prime. Here’s to 2008!
FIA Top Fuel Dragster
Most punters had practically written off Urs Erbacher from the title chase, with Lex Joon and Andy Carter billed as the head-to-head match up and Thomas Nataas a somewhat distant third coming into the meeting. In a stunning series of first round races, Carter and Joon were both knocked out, with Nataas and now Erbacher back in the title hunt. When the Swiss driver took out Nataas (in the far lane) in the semifinals in a pedalling contest, Erbacher suddenly vaulted into the favourites spot given that he ‘only’ had to defeat Stig Neergaard in the final round to take the title by the most slender of margins. And take the win light he duly did, but not after a 4.817/291 was being chased down hard by Neergaard’s best ever figures.
Stig Neergaard was tipped in DRO at the start of the season as a potential dark horse in the title chase, but a DNQ at Mantorp wasn’t quite what we were expecting. At the Euro Finals he burnt up some stuff in qualifying and only made the field on his last attempt with a somewhat pedestrian mid five second clocking. Raceday was a different story when he pedalled his way past Andy Carter in the first round of eliminations, picked up a competition bye in the semi finals when Tommi Haapanen’s car refused to fire, and then gave Urs Erbacher one hell of a scare with a 4.879/308 to give the Dane new PB marks by some distance and round off “the best day of my life”.