FHRA Nitro Nationals, Alastaro, Finland
So the sun really does shine on European drag racing. After the washout at Santa Pod at the end of May, the FIA/UEM drag racing tour hauled the long distance to Alastaro in southern Finland and delivered an absolute belter of a meeting. The weather was great (apart from a couple of brief sprinkles), the track was in such a superb condition that it took a round or two for many of the racers to dial in, when they did, the track records took a tumble in six of the eight European Championship classes, and the record 35,000+ crowd in attendance over the weekend saw quite simply one of the best races in Europe ever.
FIA Top Fuel Dragster
Lex Joon was looking for consistency from his MPM Oil car and was the first driver to clock a four during qualifying and then improved to a 4.892/305.39 to take 3rd spot in the race day field. A sudden drop in air temperature on Sunday also made the track a little tricky, but the Dutch team ran 5.021 (over a non-moving Janne Ahonen), 5.190 (breaking the blower belt but doing enough to beat an up in smoke Urs Erbacher) and a 5.003 to take the event win over Micke Kagered. Joon was “very happy, especially to win here on this very tricky track” and now carries a lot of momentum into the remaining rounds of the tour.
After a couple of seasons in the doldrums and blowing up a lot of stuff, the Bacho Express of Micke Kagered made it through to his first final in quite some time after qualifying fourth with a 5.055/268.89 and then defeating Jari Halinen and Andy Carter. The blowing up stuff still curses the team and there were a couple of spent bullets lying in the pits at the end of the event, but, with his home town race at Mantorp to look forward too at the end of month, Kagered has a spring in his step not seen in a while.
Once again the Lucas Oil team of Andy Carter and Per and Karsten Andersen had a real performance edge over the rest of the field. The bump in the right hand lane down track was causing some head scratching from the visiting American crew chiefs (Wayne Dupuy for Urs Erbacher and Jim Brissette lending a helping hand to Joran Persaker), but the Andersen’s had it’s measure rocketing to a new track record 4.767/309.38 and then recording low ET of eliminations with a 4.798/289.29 to defeat Persaker. However, the bump may not have been a problem, but churning the slicks off the startline in the semifinal match up against Kagered certainly was.