Scandinavian Internationals, FIA European Drag Racing Championship, Round Five, Tierp Arena, Sweden

And It Didn’t Rain!

Words and photos Ivan Sansom & Rose Hughes

Most of the race reports from the 2015 European season have been prefaced with comments about the weather, however this meeting was conducted under conditions that would have delighted Goldilocks as it wasn’t too hot nor too cold but just right. With the forecast set fair and the venue packed over the course of the weekend, the record books took a bit of a battering as has become something of a late August tradition at the state of the art venue.

FIA Top Fuel Dragster

Anita Makela (Ivan Sansom photo)

The mid season proved to be a bit of a slump in the fortunes of Anita Mäkelä and the Trade Parts/Auto Haapanen team, but a return to what has proved to be a happy hunting ground this year for the Finn delivered perhaps beyond her expectations, with the only mis-steps being a broken valve spring in the first qualifying session preventing a full sweep of points in qualifying and a propensity to shed the blower belt whilst trucking towards another 3-second clocking. The best (and it really was a good one) was a 3.8785/313.29 mph blast to place Mäkelä at the top of the heap not just in Tierp, but the first three eighty in Europe and naturally a new Euro ET record.

With a trio of three second tickets in qualifying, the rest of the field had to pick up another dose on race day as a 3.9457 accounted for a fiery 4.2840 from Stefan Gunnarsson (who held the bump spot of 4.2113 in the quickest Top Fuel field in European history), a 3.9151 exacting revenge on Liam Jones (a 4.2074 for his first round win in Finland a couple of months previously and a 3.9859 in the final against Duncan Micallef to put the wrapping on the event trophy and delivering it back to the chicken farm in Vilppula and providing a very big boost to Anita’s title aspirations.

Duncan Micallef (Ivan Sansom photo)