The vote by the majority of the FIA Top Methanol Dragster drivers to race on the Sunday is perhaps destined to be one of the most controversial calls in recent years, and intra-class relationships were not assisted by some very odd calls during qualifying and eliminations. Whilst a view on these is required from those on a far greater paygrade than ours, Dennis Habermann would take low qualifier with a 6.135/246 that would have taken a lot of bottle. Habermann would eventually improve on these numbers to defeat fellow countryman Peter Schöfer in the all-German final round with a 6.023/249.81.

In contrast to the earlier rounds where A/Fuel cars had taken both of the event wins where eliminations had been completed, there was simply no way to back down the injected nitro outfits to get down the track, even with the experience of European veterans Krister Johansson (pictured) and Dave Wilson, and Jerry Darien (who was newly installed as the crewchief on Christopher Polidano’s entry).

UEM Top Fuel Bike

In contrast to the bulk of the FIA classes, the UEM riders decided to enter into eliminations; a decision which may herald an unfortunate split in the two championships. However, track conditions were still very tricky, with Ian King managing to take low ET (with a 6.857/209 to a 7.227/177 victory over Peter Svensson at the semi-final stage) and the event win in an all Anglo match up with Steve Woollatt with a 7.188 to a 7.304 getting around Woollatt’s slight holeshot. The event win gives the Gulf Oil/GPO team a pretty significant lead in the points chase.