After a year away from the European scene, the Andersen Racing/Landmeco/Biltema team made a welcome return to Santa Pod with Thomas Nataas behind the wheel. Looking to “have fun and run fast”, the heat in the track resulted in a couple of up-in-smoke first attempts, but a third session 4.018/301.95mph (the quickest and fastest pass in Europe this season) demonstrated what we’ve been missing. A first round solo of 4.026/300 would stand as the quickest and fastest run on raceday, but a slight doze from Nataas (reacting with a 0.163s RT to Poutiainen’s 0.097s) meant an earlier exit from competition than we’d expected. However, Nataas and Per and Karsten Andersen represent one of the stronger shots at breaking up the Finnish dominance (the top five in the 2012 points coming from the land of the long drinks) of FIA Top Fuel next season if their long-term sponsorship talks come to fruition.

FIA Pro Modified

Micke Gullqvist managed to achieve the first back-to-back championships since Pro Modified joined the FIA fold in 2006, and took his own points title collection to three. The attempt to underline the championship with the event win would prove to be a far from straightforward and a lowly 13th spot on the ladder with a 7.2 best was someway off the pace. Eliminations would immediately see a dramatic improvement with a 6.038/234 win in the opening round accounting for Freddy Fagerström and taking low ET of eliminations. The struggles still weren’t over but a pair of wild mid-sixes lit the winlight against Norbert Kuno and Roger Moore, before a 6.152/230 accounted for David Vegter in the final. Gullqvist expressed his concerns and race day relief thus “we had problems getting the setup right in our qualifying runs, we just kept smoking the tires very close to the start line and our changes did not seem to make it better. I had an idea on what to do after qualifying, but was far from sure that it would work. I did not sleep very well so I went up at 3 am to run through data for a couple of hours and before getting back to sleep I felt much better about my ideas. We were all very nervous before first round and it was like a giant rock off my shoulders when I felt how the car accepted the changes and just went down the track without any problems.”