FIA/UEM European Drag Racing Championships, Sweden Internationals, Tierp Arena, Sweden

Words and pictures Ivan Sansom & Rose Hughes

The most eagerly anticipated stop on the 2011 European tour was the first visit to the brand new Tierp Arena, located just over an hour north of Stockholm.

The massive investment (in both cash and time terms) of the Tierp team headed up by Leif Andréasson and Lars-Erik Lindberg has delivered a facility that ranks among the very best drag strips in the world and, despite not being 100% complete (a number of jobs remain to be finished off thanks to the project building phase coinciding with the worst winter in Sweden for the last 150 years), many competitors on the Euro tour will be looking forward to the return visit in 2012 (with the facility looking for two events next year). In an event of firsts, the winner’s circle in the five car categories were picking up their first FIA trophies and a slew of European, Swedish national and PB bests were set over the course of the weekend.

With the Tierp team planning a series of additions for next season, including finalizing the main drag strip arena and adding onsite accommodation, do whatever you have to get to Tierp in the near future, this will quickly become the place to race in Europe.

FIA Top Fuel Dragster

Whilst a number of drivers had passed the 1000 foot clocks with three second tickets on their way to rapid quarter mile clockings in Europe, the barrier had yet to be broken at those FIA events where the shorter distance marked the finishline. The all concrete track was pretty much guaranteed to deliver such numbers although at this opening event it might have been a bit too much to hope for such performance levels from the off. However, these thoughts didn’t really take into account the determination of the Andersen Racing team with Tommy Johnson Jr behind the wheel of the Sunoco/Landmeco/Veidec backed rail on his second event on the European tour. Following on from the low qualifying effort at the previous (rained out) round in England, the Andersen playbook had the opportunity to run through a couple of tuning ideas after producing a 4.019/298.53 in the second session that wouldn’t be improved on during the rest of qualifying. Once Per and Karsten have a handle on the track it usually takes something major to knock them off their tuning stride; that something didn’t appear in eliminations with a 4.033/304.48mph accounting for Timo Lehtimäki’s 4.391, and TJ Jr nudged closer to the three second bracket in the semis with a 4.009/302 that drove around Urs Erbacher’s holeshot on a slower 4.248/288. After snapping the con rods at the finishline, a new bullet was loaded into the framerails and the American blasted into the threes in the final against Risto Poutiainen with a 3.956/307.83 to garner top speed honours to go with his first event win on the European tour.