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31st July: The Silverstone Classic meeting, one of the most prestigious conventional race meetings in the historic racing
calendar, took place last weekend. The National Motor Museum at Beaulieu had been invited to display a couple of cars and decided to take the
Allard Chrysler dragster on one of its first trips outside the Museum for many years, writes Bob Roberts of Eurodragster.com sponsor
Andy Robinson Race Cars:
Brian Taylor of the Allard Chrysler Action Group organised some volunteers to man the display along with the Beaulieu staff. I was there on Friday and Saturday and there was a huge amount of interest in the car and in the project to resurrect it. Many people had seen the car running in the early 1960s but still more had only ever seen pictures. It's fair to say that most of the people had little experience of drag racing but were keen to see and hear the Allard running. As usual at these meetings there were many celebrities wandering around but we only managed to grab Murray Walker for a photograph (below left). Overall it was a very successful first public appearance for the car since the launch of ACAG and we received a lot of support from a section of the public who are not primarily interested in our kind of cars. ©Eurodragster.com 
Drag racing was also represented elsewhere in the meeting by a sample set of bikes from the
National Association of Super Twins as
part of the Harley Davidson display. They were not just static but also running on the
Club Straight where the Allard had some of its
first runs. Sadly they were hampered by having less than one hundred yards of track followed by a very short run-off area which ended
in a very solid barrier. The only static exhibit which caught my eye was the Historic Formula 1 Stock Car Association with a couple of
early 1930s Fords.
Thanks to the power of 3's mobile broadband and the excellent work of the Eurodragster.com team I was able to keep up with events at Mantorp Park and in facy I was able to update a couple of Swedes at Silverstone with the latest news. It's interesting that drag racing is far ahead of mainstream motor sports in its use of the internet; and a pity that some drag racing fans don't appreciate what they have in Eurodragster.com and complain about trivia (Hear, hear and thanks Bob - Ed). Mixed fortunes for Manners. 31st July: Ex-pat UK Top Alcohol Dragster racer Michael Manners of Eurodragster.com News sponsor Cosmo Residences had mixed fortunes at last weekend's NHRA Divisional event in Houston. "I got back from England on Tuesday night and didn't particularly relish a night race weekend", says Mike. "We did make two hits on the Friday at about 7.30 pm and 10.30 pm. We didn't get down the track so were seventh out of seven. We had also taken my Pro Mod-style Top Sportsman car and made one hit at about 4:00 pm. We didn't get that car down track either. "On Saturday we made another hit in the Top Sportsman car. It veered hard left, I didn't know where the other guy was so I pulled hard right and it went up on two wheels. I missed the wall on the right but the rear end slid over and tagged the wall. The damage was not too terrible but too much to fix and run again that day. In our third and final qualifying pass in the TAD I had to pedal the car but ended up qualifying fourth. ©Eurodragster.com "We won the first two rounds of eliminations which included setting low ET of the meet, and then lost in the final by about twelve inches on a holeshot; that race took place at 12.45 am. "Our next race is the US Nationals at Indy. We have never been able to do any testing in the TAD car so we intend to get out and do some testing in August. I am currently third in the points in my Division and seventh in the National points." Coming soon: Carter Q&A. 31st July: The next in Eurodragster.com's occasional series of Features presented in association with Stroud Safety and Andy Robinson Race Cars is planned to be a Fans' Q&A with reigning FIA European Top Fuel Dragster Champion and current Championship leader Andy Carter. ©Eurodragster.com As this is to be a fans' Q&A we need our readers to send questions for us to put to Andy. If there is anything you would like to ask Andy about himself, his career, his team, Top Fuel racing or indeed anything else relevant to Andy then please send your question with your name and country to editor@eurodragster.com within the next few days, and we will aim to post the Feature before the NitrOlympX. This Feature won't happen without your input so get those questions in! Swift snippets. 31st July: Many thanks to Yvonne Tramm and our very own Simon for sending us the post-Bug Jam points standings in the 2009 UK National Drag Racing Championships. You can check out the UK points on our Speedflow-sponsored Points Standings page by clicking here or by clicking on the Points Standings link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. 
Superbike magazine, the publication responsible for the legendary Ultimate Streetbike series of the 1980s which
launched the drag bike careers of many of today's riders, has done the sport proud in the August issue with an excellent five-page
colour feature on the Top Fuel Bike of FIM/UEM Top Fuel Bike Champion Ian King, who started his career in the Ultimate series.
©Eurodragster.com Ex-pat UK Top Fuel Dragster racer Smax Smith will be racing in the Leverich family's Top Fuel Dragster at this weekend's IHRA Northern Nationals at US 131 Motorsports Park, which starts today (Friday). As ever you will be able to stay in touch with Smax's progress on the Drag Race Central web site at www.dragracecentral.com, and stay tuned for Smax's account of his last event which is in the queue for tomorrow's news update. A big Get Well Soon to 1999 FIA European Top Fuel Dragster Champion and legendary Fuel FC racer Gordie Bonin who is nursing various unpleasant injuries after making an unplanned exit from a truck immediately followed by a not particularly soft landing. You look after yourself, 240, and isn't it about time you visited us again? Further to Wednesday's Swift Snippet, Mike Chadwick tells us that Eurodragster.com News sponsor Custom cruisers can now offer smoke and iridium visors for Assassin helmets. For more information check out www.simpson-helmets.eu or call 01773 835666. What's on this weekend. 31st July: Starting today and going on until Sunday is the Sunoco Drag Challenge at Gardermoen Raceway, Norway organised by Norsk Dragracing Gardermoen. The race is a round of the Top Doorslammer series and Sportsman racing will also take place for the TSDS SP. There will be twenty six Top Doorslammers and in nitro ranks Janne Ahonen, Risto Poutiainen and Jari Halinen from the Rune Fjeld stable will be match racing and Thomas Nataas will be making passes in the Batmobil nitro Funny Car. Eleven Supertwins will be competing for the Nordisk Cup. Racing started at 10:00 today and starts at 09:00 tomorrow and Sunday. More details at www.ndrg.no. Kiskunlacházá, near Budapest, Hungary hosts a meeting of the HNAA tomorrow (Saturday) comprising capacity-restricted and special classes of car and bike racing for round 3 of the Hungarian National Championship. More information at www.dragracing.hu or www.dragracing.ro and don't forget that you can stay in touch with all Central European drag racing courtesy of our buddies at www.cedrag.com. Breitenau, Nr Vienna, Austria is the location for a drag race including Pro Mods and dragsters. Breitenau is off the A2 about seventy kilometres south west of Vienna. Headlining the entry are the Pro Modifieds of Norbert Kuno, Rolf Amman and Ingo Rolla. More details at www.msc-mohw.at and check out the Austrian Drag Racing web site at www.drag-race.at. ©Eurodragster.com Tomorrow in Thisten, Denmark, a round of the Biltema Cup is being held organised by the NDCD. Bracket, Real Street, True Street, Pro Street are included and more details can be found at www.ndcd.dk. Round 4 of the UK Northern Drag Racing Championship is being held at the UK's York Raceway tomorrow and Sunday organised by the Pennine Drag Racing Club. Classes running include the 32 Annual Street Racer Championship, Modders/Tuners Shootout, HR Challenge, Air-Cooled Eliminators, American Super Stock, Wild Bunch Nostalgia Drag Racing Series and limited RWYB sessions. More details at www.york-raceway.co.uk. At Mende Areodrome, France a round of the Trophée Dragster is taking place tomorrow and Sunday. This 'Top of the Hill' event, set in the Parc National des Cévennes, near the A75/E11 in the south, includes RWYB, street bracket classes, Super Street, Super Gas and Super Comp and bike classes. More details at www.promotop.org/francedrag. Reflections upon Bug Jam. 31st July: Having dried off after the Bug Jam deluge, UK B&H Automotive/LA Racing Parts Street Eliminator racer Ian Hook put pen to paper, or two fingers to keyboard, to pass on a few thanks: Whilst I'd rather be writing to tell everyone how successful our first foray with the new engine was - it wasn't! - I have to say that we wouldn't have been there at all were it not for some superhuman efforts from the Fat Boys. I must single out Martin 'Brain' Kerr for his extraordinary efforts in getting the new motor built, wired, plumbed and installed within a very short space of time. And for those not aware, this task included a lot of fabrication as we are running with an electric water pump and a dry sump system for the first time - it took a lot of clever work to get the various lines, tanks and hoses into the narrow confines of the '34s engine bay. Another to be mentioned in despatches is new team member Matt Long. Matt had the misfortune to do some work on my extension at home and before he knew what was what found himself spending hours of his free time helping me with work on the FB bus. Although not 100% completed it was definitely usable and a lot better than the previous incarnation. A big thank you also goes out to Lee Sharples who did an awful lot of wiring and lighting work for us and to Clive Bond for dealing with some of the worst trans-Atlantic customer service ever seen and sourcing our parts against all odds! And what happened? Well, we took the '34 to the track without even having the chance to fire the new 598. Unfortunately when we filled it with water it proceeded to fill up the cylinders and sump as well! The cure was to completely strip the top end and sump, dry everything out, and then silicone all the waterways before putting it all back together. All this was achieved with a two inch deep deep river flowing through our pit most of the day - Martin now has webbed feet. By the time it was back together and we'd sorted an ignition issue the required temperature cycle meant that we weren't able to run on Saturday. Although we got close to getting out on Sunday - that Pod crew just don't know how to give up! - all we could manage was to load the engine against the converter. At least we got car and coach home in one piece and we're all looking forward to appearing at Shakespeare County Raceway on 21st-23rd August. And not just for SE Barbecue IV either! ©Eurodragster.com Web site updates. 31st July: Our good buddy Markus Ek has updated his gallery with shots from the Back to Basics nostalgia event which took place at Mantorp Park on the day before the Veidec Festival. Markus' shots are now showing at www.mek.nu. Eurodragster.com Photo Editor Roger Gorringe has updated his Nitro Exposure web site with shots from the Veidec Festival at Mantorp park including pictures not used in the weekend's Eurodragster.com event coverage. The Home and News pages have also been updated with some more vintage UK shots. Check it out at www.nitroexposure.co.uk. ©Eurodragster.com 
Eurodragster.com Reserve Photographer Peter Donaldson has updated his Fotopic gallery with
pictures from last weekend's Mopar EuroNationals at Santa Pod Raceway. You can find Peter's shots
at peterdonaldson5305.fotopic.net.
In the latest entry in his exclusive Racer Blog, Luke Bennett of the Bennett Racing blown-alcohol altered team describes between-rounds work on the Relentless altered and brings us up to date on work on the team's Bantam altered. As ever you can check out the latest Blog updates by clicking here or by clicking on the Racer Blogs link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. Hunting snow in the race season. 31st July: With it being August, what better time to think about the glorious white stuff? Be it reminiscing over last season's holiday, booking up some well-deserved piste time for the 2009-10 season or just dreaming of how much you'd rather be hooning around your favourite Alpine resort rather than looking out of the office window at yet another gloomy British summer? With this in mind, Steve Porter of Kai Selkämäa's Top Fuel Bike team and a few like-minded friends have decided to organise an evening of skiing / snowboarding / automotive discussion followed by a few customary aprés-ski beverages at the recently-opened Snow Centre at Hemel Hempstead, meeting in the café bar at about 5:00 pm on Saturday 29th August. ©Eurodragster.com "Any level of ability is welcomed", says Steve. "All that is required is that you can control your speed, link turns and are able to use a button lift unaided. More information about the Snow Centre including directions, lift pass prices and most importantly the bar tariff at www.thesnowcentre.com. "If you are keen to come along, or for more information, feel free to E-Mail me at steve@jestim.com." Editor's note. 31st July: Thanks to everyone for their patience whilst we work through the backlog of news which built up whilst we were away in Sweden. We have put the weekend aside to clear the remaining twenty six E-Mails so tune back over the weekend for news from Hans Olav Olstad, Per Bengtsson and Smax Smith, Lars Andersson's Veidec Festival review, the 2009 Swedish Champions, the latest European Top Gas round and Herman Jolink's racing trip to the Czech Republic, Mark Gredzinski's latest main d'oeuvre and a lot more, and please keep those news items coming to news@eurodragster.com. ©Eurodragster.com Maurischat's day at the beach. 
30th July: German Pro Modified racer and Eurodragster.com News sponsor
Marco Maurischat and his team were
very happy with and proud of their 6.3-second pass at the Veidec Festival. The tremendous run came
at a price, though, as Marco took a trip into the gravel trap at the end of the track damaging the
'Vette bodywork.
"This is our first real season with the Pro Mod car", says Marco. "We only made three shakedown passes last year at Hockenheim and at the European Finals. After running a 7.2 at the Main Event we were a little bit disappointed because our goal was to run a high six. So we were more than happy with the 6.69 in the first qualifier on Friday, and after that we were dreaming of something around a 6.5 for the next run. ©Eurodragster.com "In the next two sessions we had some bad luck. First I had to get off the throttle after a hard right turn, then the starter quit. So the bump spot was down to 6.51 for the last qualifying round . Our dream was to qualify in this very tough field, but we knew that it would be very difficult and would be like winning the race for us. In the last round we ran 6.36/365 km/h and qualified fourteenth in the quickest ever FIA Pro Mod field in history. This was more than we ever expected and I have to give my crew guys Carsten, Jakob, Sven and Christian - and Sven's girl friend Inge, who prepared us the very best food all weekend - a very very big thank you for all the help and time they put into this project. "The bad thing was that the parachutes failed at the top end. I don't need to describe what happened after that. As seen on the picture, the parachutes wrapped around the wheelie bar. There is some damage to repair right now, but we are working hard to get everything ready in time for our home race at the Hockenheimring with the many friends who will come to visit us." Gabbi's most exciting run. 
30th July: Home safe and sound from Alastaaro, Swedish Pro Stock Bike racer Gabriella Nikolovska
and the team were buoyed by their first-ever elimination round win. Preparations for the Veidec Festival started with a freshly-overhauled
engine, the chassis was checked over and a new tool was created to set the clutch switch. A sponsor bus was scheduled to arrive at Mantorp Park
on Saturday morning with no less than twenty five guests.
"We started with a 7.99 at a windy Press Day", says team member Henrik Roos, "then improved to a Personal Best of 7.76 on Friday. A lot of study of datalogging graphs resulted in a new PB of 7.62 on Saturday afternoon with at least four or five things still to improve! "We ended up in fifth qualifying spot resulting in a tight race on Sunday against Norway's Kenneth Wik. It was hard to tell how the track had changed from Saturday, so we made a few small adjustments and Gabbi was very focused. Kenneth started a staging war - not a gentlemanly move Kenneth - but Gabbi was not so easily fooled with a 0.0372 reaction against Kenneths' 0.0318. Gabbi had the better sixty foot time of 1.15 to 1.18, the ETs were 7.64/275 for Gabbi and 7.61/276 to Kenneth and Kenneth took the win by 0.0378. Gabbi's first comment back in the pits was "That was by all means my most exciting run ever"! "The team are very satisfied with this year improvement, as our bike is fifteen kilogrammes heavy and we have at five-speed V&H motor from 2002. Now we are out of funds for any more UEM events this year, but we will do some testing at Mosten in Denmark in September. "A big thanks to our always very nice and hard-working class host Mia." Swift snippets. 30th July: Many thanks to Andy Marrs of TSI Timers Europe for forwarding us the official timing data from the Veidec Festival. You can check out the Veidec Festival timing data by clicking here or by clicking on the Timing Data link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. ©Eurodragster.com Joanne Hollingworth tells us that Sport Babes Verena Twigg, Eve Lavelle and Morgan Lees will be at Santa Pod Raceway tomorrow and Saturday, the first two days of Maragoni Ultimate Street Car. Verene, Eve and Morgan can be found at the Auto Trader unit and will be available for autographs and photographs and will also be handing out goody bags. They will also be appearing in the Live Action Arena and will be performing lap dancing in the evening. "All three girls are really friendly and will welcome anyone wanting to talk to them", says Joanne. Everyone at the UK's Orange Pop Outlaw Anglia team has asked us to wish a big Happy 21st Birthday to team member Jason Yates. The team will be having a party at York Raceway at the weekend and everyone is invited. In the meantime have a great day Jason. York's toughest contest. 30th July: York Raceway hosts the 32nd Annual Street Racer Championship this Saturday, 1st August. Steve Murty tells us that this is the hardest Championship known for street-legal race cars as not only are racers' wits up against it but also the design and set-ups of the cars: Held at the end of a long day, the Street Racer Championship has one round of qualifying. The only rest these cars are going to have is whilst the ladder is prepared and pairing-up takes place. Once every thing is ready, the cars race. It's heads-up! Once a car wins it's straight round and into the fire up lane ready to go up against the next car in the next race immediately. No cool down time, the engines don't even get turned off. This continues until there is only one car left and that racer is crowned the winner. ©Eurodragster.com This is pushing the cars to the limit with the drivers having to use their best drag racing brains to ensure that their car reaches the final without overheating or breaking, which regularly happens. Last year, York's CJ sent out a warning, getting all the way in to the final with his Nissan Pulsar having beaten off a variety of hot rods and American muscle, first non V8-powered vehicle to reach a Street Racer final in the whole thirty one years it had been running. With the introduction of more Japanese- and European-powered cars this year the reign of V8 street-legal supremacy is under serous threat. You can find out more at www.york-raceway.co.uk. Webster comes out Best. 30th July: Eurodragster.com sponsor Jon Webster went even further than normal, literally and figuratively, as he took his street-legal turbo-assisted MG to Ten of the Best at Elvington Airfield at the weekend: TOTB VIII was a one-day street car shootout for proper street cars with floorpans and no tubs. There were three classes - front wheel drive, rear wheel drive and four wheel drive - competing in three disciplines, quarter mile drag, kilometre standing start top speed, and handling course. We competed there in 2006 and took the honours in RWD, we always intended on returning but our schedule hadn't allowed it until this year. With Shelby AWOL at the Global Gathering in Stratford Upon Avon, Jeanette and I set off at 5:15 am on Sunday. The weather looked good until an hour after arriving then the precipitation began. Pondering on whether it was worth staying I asked what the call time was. The reply was somewhat surprising: "No call time, we run in the rain, you're all on street tires aren't you?". I closed my mouth, mused for a short while, shook my head to bring me to my senses whilst I briefly weighed up the possible options on tuning. At the same time I was noticing the look on Jeanette's face which said "You're not even considering it are you?". I quickly suggested that we watch and see what happened with the -four wheel drive and quipped "At least it should be entertaining". Meanwhile Jeanette was still looking at me out the corner of her eye as if to say "You're going to do this aren't you?". ©Eurodragster.com The weather cleared up a bit by 1:00 pm and the RWD cars were starting to go straighter. Belinda and Wayne Nicholson surprised us by turning up and that moral support prompted me to have tentative go. I went in the left hand lane which would allow me to continue down the course to the kilometre timers, that way I'd get two for one. It was just damp by now with just spots in the air, so I told Jeanette that I'd take it easy and get a feel for the surface. No-one was more surprised than me, yeah it did spin and I had to be careful, but we ran 9.80/160 at the quarter and followed through to the kilo at 182 mph. The long and short of it was we played about with boost to reduce wheelspin and ended up Rear Wheel Drive winners for top speed and the quarter mile. We went into the drag shootout and had an ignition cut out in the RWD final (all that water) so it didn't all work out our way. The handling course didn't happen because of time but definitely next year. Thanks to Jeanette for her support and Happy 25th Wedding Anniversary for Tuesday. Thanks to Belinda and Wayne, and well done to Chris Mann, Trevor Duckworth and the team for their efforts. A great event which definitely got the blood pumping. We'll be back. Editor's note: Still working on the backlog, no less than twenty six pieces awaiting attention right now, but we think we'll have everything posted by Saturday's update at the latest. Please keep the news coming to news@eurodragster.com. Swift snippets. 29th July: The organisers of the next round of the FIM/UEM European Drag Bike Championships, which takes place at the Extreme Bike Weekend at Kunmadaras, Hungary on 20th-23rd August, have been in touch to remind racers that there are three more days left to submit their entries. "E-Mail is best but if you want to fax your entry and +36-36-323-052 does not work, then please fax your entry to +36-36-411-748", they say. "We are waiting to see you at Kunmadaras!". You can download the entry form from the Kunmadaras Motorsport web site at www.kunmadarasmotorsport.hu. Many thanks to FIA European Championship Points Co-ordinator Kjell Pettersson for forwarding us the post-Veidec Festival points standings in the FIA European Drag Racing Championships, and to FIM/UEM European Drag Bike Championship Co-ordinator Lars Andersson for sending us the post-Veidec Festival points standings in the FIM/UEM European Drag Bike Championships. You can check out the European points on our Speedflow-sponsored Points Standings page by clicking here or by clicking on the Points Standings link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. From Markku Poikajärvi comes a picture of a Dave Branch Engineering-framed Funny Bike which Seriouzpower Racing will be campaining in the FIM Championship in 2010. "We are modifying and painting the bike", says Markku. "It has Racecase HD aluminium cases, Innovative turbocharger, Haltech EFI and dry nos kit". Click on the picture below left for a rendering of the bike, and you can find out more at www.keledesign.fi/blogi.html. "Kele-Design is full service design and body shop in Finland, owned by Pasi Paananen", adds Markku. ©Eurodragster.com 
The latest T-Shirt on offer from C&P UK Nitro is another of the Vintage Gasser series (above right, click on picture for large version). The shirt is £15 plus £2.50 p+p and can be ordered from colinhotrodts@btinternet.com or call Colin Stevens on 07903 313384. Our best wishes to UK ACU Super Street Bike Champion Steve Venables who took a spill at 330 feet at today's 200mph Test Day at Santa Pod. We understand that a wheelie turned into a tankslapper which became too much. Ven got up and walked to the ambulance and the bike looked a little damaged but fixable. Collin Morrice says that the Morrice Boys Racing team are on the road to recovery after a small but unspecified mishap at the weekend's Mopar EuroNationals. "I would personally like to thank Jon and Donna Giles, Jon Morton and crew, Paul Foote's crew for the tow back, and those who showed concern - it was greatly appreciated", says Collin. "Finally a massive Thank You to the Santa Pod track crew." Adam Gleadow has been in touch with an urgent appeal for a set of 9.5" rear gears specifically for a Strange Top Loader axle, any ratio between 4.11 and 4.56. If you can help then please get in touch with Adam at aa_fuelaltered@yahoo.co.uk. Mike Chadwick of Eurodragster.com News sponsor Custom Cruisers is offering a special deal on Assassin helmets. "We have sold quite a few", says Mike. "A full SA2005 nomex for £199 is a great price but they are going fast. Also still got the three- and four-layer FIA-approved Simpson firesuits plus gloves, some nomex underwear and boots". You can find out more or place your order at www.simpson-helmets.eu or call 01773 835666. No news update yesterday so we were unable to say a big Happy Birthday to Eurodragster.com Pit Reporter and Blog Editor Simon. So Happy Birthday for yesterday Simon and we hope that you had a great day. Web site updates. 29th July: Richard Lindahl has poated no less than five hundred shots from last week's Gold Town Summer Nats at Skellefteå at race.ulkhyvlers.net. Richard says that you will just need to scroll down a short way to see the Gold Town pictures. Phil Steele has been busy with his Little Cherub Racing web site posting pictures of Rouge et Noir II at the VMCC Festival of 1000 bikes, some shots of the US' Walter Sprout in action in the UK, and some pictures of the new look of his own Super Street Bike. You can check all of this out at www.littlecherubracing.com. Our good buddy and goose mis-identifier Anders Envall writes to tell us of another epic drag racing video from Jonas Alholt. You can find nine minutes of hard-core drag racing at www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOWrWU8rH0A. Tobias Eriksson has posted some nice pictures of Sunday's action at the Veidec Festival on his web site at veidec09.gnestabilder.se. ©Eurodragster.com Eurodragster.com News Editor Tog was toting his camera at last Wednesday's Back to Basics Nostalgia event and Veidec Festival Press Call at Mantorp Park and you can take a look at his shots at www.togsdragracing.com or eurodragster.fotopic.net. Our good buddy Alan Currans has updated his excellent Acceleration Archive with a twenty sixth gallery of reader's own pictures. The latest update features nearly one hundred pictures taken by Bill Taylor between 1969 and 1972. You can check out Bill's pictures via What's New at www.theaccelerationarchive.co.uk. The Blackett Photography web site at www.blackettphotography.co.uk has been updated with a large number of pictures from the weekend's Mopar EuroNationals at Santa Pod Raceway. Editor's note: We do have a lot more news than this to bring you but your News Editor is still utterly shagged out from the weekend and it didn't help that most of the news forwarded from his home to his day job today did not arrive so some of the above news items have had to be done from memory. Stay tuned and we will catch up on the backlog over the next couple of updates, and please keep the news coming to news@eurodragster.com. Veidec Festival finals curtailed. 27th July: Yesterday's eliminations at the Veidec Festival at Mantorp Park were curtailed by rain with a few Sportsman finals and the eight Pro finals left to run. The track was close to ready twice before rain returned and then when the rain had gone for good the shutdown area would not dry. The Pro finals would have been: Top Fuel Dragster: Risto Poutiainen v Andy Carter Top Methanol Dragster: Dave Wilson v Timo Habermann Top Methanol Funny Car: Ulf Leanders v Dan Larsen Pro Modified: Mats Eriksson v Jan Gunnarsson Pro Stock: Jimmy Ålund v Magnus Hansson Top Fuel Bike: Sverre Dahl v Rikard Gustafsson Supertwin: Lorenz Stäuble v Per Bengtsson Pro Stock Bike: Kenneth Wik v Anders Abrahamsson Congratulations to the winners of those NDRS finals which were run: Comp Eliminator: Mats Wicktor (7.92) 7.4820/275.33 def. Mika Eloranta (7.75) 8.4961/187.62 Junior Dragster: Patrik Kivinummi (7.96) 7.9922/127.69 def. Mattias Edvinsson (7.98) 8.0540/130.98 Super Gas Bike: Robert Karlsson 9.5713/188.51 def. Asle Malvik 10.1128/212.90 red ©Eurodragster.com Subject to official ratification the following European records were set: Top Methanol Dragster ET: 5.301 seconds, Dave Wilson Top Methanol Dragster speed: 433.42 kmh / 269.31 mph, Dave Wilson Top Fuel Bike eighth-mile ET: 4.061 seconds, Peter Svensson Top Fuel Bike eighth-mile speed: 304.71 kmh / 189.34 mph, Peter Svensson The following track records were set: Top Methanol Dragster ET: 5.301 seconds, Dave Wilson Top Methanol Dragster speed: 446.92 kmh / 277.70 mph, Dave Wilson Pro Stock ET: 6.773 seconds, Jimmy Ålund Pro Stock speed: 328.15 kmh / 203.90 mph, Jimmy Ålund Top Fuel Bike eighth-mile ET: 4.061 seconds, Peter Svensson Top Fuel Bike eighth-mile speed: 310.97 kmh / 193.23 mph, Peter Svensson Supertwin speed: 286.22 kmh / 177.85 mph, Hans Olav Olstad Congratulations to Junior Dragster racer Sabina Jadersten who won the Eurodragster.com/Speedflow Perfect Light Award with a 0.0009 reaction during qualifying. The Eurodragster.com/Gold RV Perfect ET Award went unclaimed and will be increased to the Euro equivalent of £125 for the NitrOlympX at Hockenheim. You can check out our American Car Imports-sponsored Veidec Festival coverage by clicking here or by clicking on the Event Coverage link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. Editor's note: We are on our way home to England so the next news update will be posted on Wednesday, which will give us time to catch up on the backlog. Please keep those news items coming to news@eurodragster.com. Swift snippets. 24th July: József Hadnagy has been in touch to ask us to advise racers that due to problems with the organiser's fax machine, the entry deadline has been extended to 31st July for FIM/UEM classes at the Extreme Weekend which takes place at Kunmadaras, Hungary, on 20th-23rd August. "We suggest that you enter by E-Mail or by post", says József. "If your entry form arrives by the end of July, you will only have to pay the basic entry fee of €260 plus the price of electricity in the pit if you request it. Of course you can pay for it at the track. We are waiting for you!". You can download the entry form from the Kunmadaras Motorsport web site at www.kunmadarasmotorsport.hu. David Anniwell, who is working with Mantorp Park's timing crew this weekend, has asked us to post thanks to Swedish Supertwin racer Per Bengtsson and his wife for arranging next-day delivery of a circuit board to Mantorp Park from the UK. ©Eurodragster.com We have no less than three birthdays today. First up is a big Happy Birthday to our good friend and honorary Eurodragster.com staff member Grace Roaf who is tuned in to our Veidec Festival coverage. By an amazing coincidence it is also the birthday of Grace's mum Mary Roaf. Have a lovely day Grace and Mary. Happy Birthday also to another good friend Lotta Andersson who doesn't have to tune in to the Veidec Festival coverage because she has been spotted at Mantorp Park. Have a great day Lotta. Editor's note: Now that the Veidec Festival is underway, our event coverage will take up almost all of our waking time so please bear in mind that the daily news updates may have to take a back seat until the event finishes on Sunday. We will do the best we can so please keep the news coming to news@eurodragster.com and do let us know if the piece must run on a particular day, but please don't worry or repeatedly send the same news item if it does not appear as soon as you have submitted it. We will acknowledge receipt of news items on request. Swift snippets. 23rd July: We have a couple of birthdays today. First up is a very Happy Birthday to UK blown-alcohol altered racer Dave Grabham. Have a great day Dave. Happy Birthday too, with added love and hugs, to Tog's sister Kirsty Rogers who is currently holidaying in Australia. We think that that's an expensive way of getting to open your presents nine hours early, but have a lovely day Kirsty. ©Eurodragster.com Loving our home race. 22nd July: Lars Rodeblad says that reigning and multiple FIA European Pro Stock Champion Jimmy Ålund and Team JJ Performance are looking forward to this weekend's home race at Mantorp Park for several reasons: Firstly we want to show our best side and try to put on a good show for all our fans, sponsors and good friends in Sweden. Secondly it feels great to be at a track so close to home, and third it's a great event to participate in. 2009 has been great for us so far, with new European ET and speed records at Santa Pod earlier this year, and a new track record at the Nitro Nationals at Alastaro. We want to thank Bob Ingles for giving us a powerful motor to work with. Tuning is handled by Mats Appelgren between rounds, while Petter Greborn carefully tunes the ever so important clutch set up. Kalle Hrupa is responsible for the rear of the car. And of course driver Jimma is focused on doing his job as well as ever. He knows that the rest of the field is preparing hard to put him on the trailer. ©Eurodragster.com Meet our great sponsors: Klintberg & Way Parts, Exclusive Cars, Fragus Warranty Group, Nordea Finans, Cooper Tires, Ohlsson & Co, InfraNordic Shipping, Conoco Oil, Åby Fasad, Byggmaskiner, Jerry Haas Race Cars, Harley Davidson Norrköping, CFM Carburettors, MECA, Nitro Consult, Palace Hotel, Svensk Fettåtervinning, Vadstena Klosterhotell. We would also like to say welcome to our sponsors and 200+ invited guests. We're looking forward to see you all at the track. Please visit our trailer, we have all-new super-nice T-Shirts for sale! When the meeting finally happened... 22nd July: German Top Methanol Dragster racer Timo Habermann has been in touch with a review of Werner Habermann Racing's season so far, going into this weekend's Veidec Festival: The FIA Main Event was a very successful event for Werner Habermann Racing, even there was some confusion about a rule change for the blown cars in our class. This was sorted before racing started and we were ready to strike. Dennis in his new car qualified #4 with a 5.45 and Timo #1 with a storming 5.35. On race day we overjudged the track a bit with Dennis' car and he had to get off the throttle after about one hundred feet because the car was pulling to one side. Then it was obviously all in Timo's hands. We knew that the car could perform well and Timo is the man at the lights. In the first round we defeated the current European Champion Peter Schöfer with a 5.39 and we were delighted with Timo's performance. After servicing the car for the next round we where up against Krister Johansson who had taken out Dennis in the first round. Krister got away with the better reaction but then Timo caught him on the way to the finish line with another 5.39. In the final Timo was up against rookie Fred Hansen from Norway and we knew that this was going to be a hard one. Fred used to run in Super Comp and can also be very quick on the Tree. With a 0.034 reaction from Timo to Fred's 0.201 and an ET of 5.428 to Fred's 5.428 Timo was able to take the win which gave us the lead in the Championship after the first race. After we got back to our home base everything was checked and there was no major damage on either of the cars. During our preparations for Alastaro we found out that the rule issue from the FIA Main Event would become official for the race in Finland. We still can't understand how there can be an FIA Championship rule change during a race season which interferes with the performance of the cars. So the whole team was called together and we had to decide if it still would make sense to carry on running in the Championship because it would take a lot of work to change the whole set-up on the cars in order to conform to the new rules. The decision was made and we were go Alastaro. ©Eurodragster.com We knew that we wouldn't be able to get the same performance as in England after the rule change but we wouldn't give up. After the ups and downs with the weather we managed to qualify Timo in #2 spot with a 5.51 and Dennis in # 7 spot with a 5.65. The whole team was happy as we didn't know where we would stand after changing the whole set-up on both cars. The happiness didn't last long as father and Team Owner Werner Habermann explained to us that of course #7 qualifier will face #2 in the first round. So there we go, we knew it would happen some time, but we were hoping not that soon. This race in round one was the closest Top Methanol Dragster run ever in Europe so far. Timo took the win by only 0.003 seconds even though Dennis had the better ET of 5.50 to Timo's 5.54. Timo once again showed his quality on the Tree with a reaction of 0.030 to Dennis' 0.067. Check out the video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=MglN_PZqtJM. In the next round Timo had to face Dave Wilson, Timo took the win and went into the final. There was some small damage found on the car but not enough time to get it fixed in the short turn-round time. Unfortunately the damage was big enough to take fifteen per cent of the engine power away, so Timo had to hand over the event win to Derek Flynn: even Timos RT of 0.016 wasn't enough to compensate for the engine problem. After reviewing the data from Alastaro some changes have been made to both cars in order to compensate for the rule changes. Now the team and the cars are ready for Mantorp Park and we are going hunting for more points in order to extend our lead in the FIA Top Methanol Dragster Championship. We would like to a big Thank You to our sponsors Uni Fit Katalysatoren, Böhm Solartechnik, Autokrandienst Habermann , Exide Batteries and Norfolkline. Swift snippets. 22nd July: Many thanks to our good friend Andrea Kloss for telling us that Version 1 of the official entry list for the NitrOlympX, which takes place at Hockenheim on 14th-16th July, is now available off www.nitrolympx-racer.de/2008/mainframe.html. Entry closes on 31st July and the final entry list will be posted on 7th August. Andrea adds that the NitrOlympX team would be grateful if teams could bring any spare used slicks along to the event for use in track prep. Many thanks to Andy Marrs of TSI Timers for forwarding us the official timing data from the Bug Jam. You can check it out by clicking here or by clicking on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. ©Eurodragster.com 
The latest offering from Eurodragster.com News sponsor Tireshake.com is the 2009 T-Shirt for Swedish Top Methanol
Funny Car team and fellow Eurodragster.com News sponsor the Leanders Brothers. The shirts come in children's
size up to XXXL and sell for €15 either at the Leanders Brothers pit at Mantorp Park this weekend or at
www.tireshake.com.
Dicko of HAMC Ashfield has been in touch to let us know that this year's Bulldog Bash will go ahead at Shakespeare County Raceway as planned on 6th-9th August after an attempt by Warwickshire Chief Constable Bill Holland to stop the event was thrown out of court yesterday. That guy certainly seems to have a personal vendetta against the Bulldog Bash which surely ought to be investigated by the appropriate authority but doesn't it make a refreshing change to see democracy coming down on the side of the ordinary citizen, although doubtless there will now be unsubtle revenge in the form of the heavy-handed policing seen in 2008. You can find out more about the Bulldog Bash at www.bulldogbash.eu. The UK's National Association of Supertwins have asked us to congratulate the HA for not giving up and for coming out on top in their battle to hold the Bulldog Bash. "Fair play to the HA, they persevered and got the result at great expense", says NAST Chair Les Harris. "Had they lost then it would have been the thin end of the wedge. We will be at Shakespeare County Raceway as usual to show our support for the Bulldog Bash and the HA." 
Christoph Lange tells us that the Hanau Auto Racing Association
held a celebration at Offenbach near Erlensee, where everything started, to say Thank You to Jerry 'Big Daddy' Lackey who is celebrating forty years of drag
racing in Germany. "Jerry made the first races possible and founded HARA", says Christoph. "Jerry has supported drag racing all his life and is still a big help to every racer over
here. Thank you Jerry".
Charlie Chivers has been in touch to let us know that the UK's Pro ET class is now selling official merchandise. On offer are Pro ET flag with pole and pole holders at £30; Pro ET Flag without pole and holder £20, Pro ET T-Shirts in most sizes at £10 each; Pro ET decals at £1 each for small or £15 for a large pair (Oo-er - Ed); and End of Season Bash tickets at £18 each. "All items can be posted at additional cost (Post Office rates)", says Charlie. "To order your items please E-Mail proetmailorder@aol.com." Veidec Festival Perfect Awards. 22nd July: This weekend's Veidec Festival at Mantorp Park is the the latest event in the 2009 Eurodragster.com Perfect Awards scheme. 2600 SEK is on offer for perfect performance. 
The Eurodragster.com/Speedflow Perfect Light Award has been rolled over to 1300 SEK (£100) after it was unclaimed
at Bug Jam. The money will be awarded to the first racer this weekend to record a Reaction Time of 0.000 seconds. The Perfect Light
Award is available all racers in all classes during qualifying and eliminations, but will only be awarded for the first perfect light of the event.
If not won this weekend then the Award will be increased to the equivalent of £125 for the NitrOlympX; if it is won then it will be reset to
£50 for the NitrOlympX. The Perfect Light Award is presented in association with performance hose and fitting manufacturer Speedflow
whose web site you can find at www.speedflow.co.uk.
Although the Perfect Light Award goes to three places, we will not pay out for red lights with zeroes in the first three decimals since a foul is a foul however far in the first non-zero digit may be. So a reaction time of 0.0001 will win you the money (if you're first to do it), but a reaction time of -0.0001 will not. Decals are not formally required for the Perfect Light Award but of course we appreciate it: you can get Eurodragster.com decals at the track from any Eurodragster.com staff member. ©Eurodragster.com 
The Eurodragster.com/Gold RV Perfect ET Award has been rolled over to 1300 SEK (£100) after it was unclaimed
at Bug Jam. The money will be awarded to the first racer this weekend to run to the thousandth on their dial-in or index. The Perfect
ET Award is available this weekend during qualifying and eliminations in Super Comp, Super Gas, Super Street, Stock/Superstock (eliminations
only), Junior Dragster (eliminations only), Super Comp Bike and Super Gas Bike, but will only be awarded for
the first perfect run of the event. If not won this weekend then the Award will be increased to the equivalent of £125 for the NitrOlympX;
if it is won then it will be reset to £50 for the NitrOlympX. The Perfect ET Award is presented in association with RV sales and service
specialists Gold RV whose web site you can find at www.goldrv.co.uk.
Because we do not have any Award decals to take to Mantorp Park they are not formally required for this event only; however we would appreciate it if eligible vehicles would carry Eurodragster.com decals, which are available from any Eurodragster.com staff member, and if those eligible for his sponsored Award would cheer on Derek Flynn in Top Methanol Dragster! Web site updates. 22nd July: FIA European Top Fuel Dragster Champion Andy Carter's web site has been updated with reports of appearances at the UK Truck Show, Rotorstock and the Retro Show as well as some new photographs on the Media page. Check it out at www.andycarter.net. ©Eurodragster.com Grødem ensures return. 21st July: Norwegian Top Methanol Funny Car racer Arvid Grødem has confirmed that he will not be racing again until 2010, although he has revealed that he will be returning to the track in a new car. "The FIA Main Event became a drag for us and for the first time we hardly managed to get our Sunoco Mustang down the excellent track at Santa Pod", Arvid told Eurodragster.com. "There were probably many reasons for that - Jörgen Leanders most likely has the correct theory and a big thank you to him for sharing it - but to be really honest we became a bit fed up. The icing on the cake was a red light in the first round, after which the Sunoco Mustang was put up for sale. We had to do something! Maybe it was an impulsive act, but nevertheless it ended up sold. ©Eurodragster.com "It is funny, but you kind of develop a close relationship to your race car. It is possible, it does not shout at you or tell you to do this and that. I must admit that I felt a bit of grief when the decision was made to sell. But on the other hand I am sure it has ended up in good hands. Norwegian racer Jimmy Granlund is the proud new owner and his plan is to give it a bit more relaxed life in the future, as he will race it in an ET class. "However, after rain comes sun! When the decision was made to sell there were a few options: quit drag racing, build a new car, buy a used one, or something else. The first option was only an option for a very limited time, like minutes or a few hours, then the discussion went along the two last options. After some discussions with Mats Eriksson and many overseas E-Mails and phone calls, my crew chief Pål-Henning Sørensen and I flew to the great country out West and landed in Indianapolis. When the trip was over we had entered into a deal to buy another Mustang, as well as taking the chance to visit Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals in Denver and watching some great racing. "The new Sunoco Mustang is an NHRA-legal TMFC with a 2007 Prostart chassis and it will arrive in Norway in October or November this year. The whole team is excited and we are very much looking forward getting it to our garage so that we can prepare for 2010. To all our competitors, have a great 2009 season. See you all in 2010!" Prime Time NitrOlympX. 21st July: Andrea Kloss tells us that drag racing has finally made it on to Germany's top TV channel RTL: For the past two years Hockenheimring's staff member Hans Bringmann, a former mechanic of Funny Car Driver Peter Kruse, has been working hard to arrange a celebrity race during the NitrOlympX and also has been trying to find interested parties for this unique promotion. Hans stayed with it and pushed the idea, ignoring all obstacles, and now at last his dedication has paid off. Last Wednesday shooting started at the RTL studios in Cologne with cast members of one of Germany's most popular TV show Alarm for Cobra 11 (Germany's Miami Vice) - the title on the RTL web site reads "Cobra 11 meets NitrOlympX". Visitors of the RTL web site are invited to apply to race a quarter mile in Cobra 11 style. The two action heroes of the Alarm for Cobra 11, Erdogan Atalay and Tom Beck, are well known for their fast-paced driving style. Now the two TV action heroes want to race at one of the biggest drag races outside the USA. The RTL web site says that to take part in such a race one should have nerves of steel, and states that own action heroes are exactly that kind of real man, and they are looking for exactly that kind of race opponent. ©Eurodragster.com Viewers can win the race of a lifetime via the RTL web site. The winner will take the seat behind the wheel of a SEAT Ibiza Cupra (180 hp racing engine) on August 15th against RTL's TV action heroes. The winner can also take three friends along, and they will have access to the VIP Lounge where they can watch the race. Applicants must be eighteen years of age, have a valid driving licence (German class B), and give a very creative reason why they think that they should be the one to take the steering wheel in their hands. Information on this unique promotion can be found at www.rtl.de/tv/tv_969508.php. Apparantly advertising to promote the NitrOlympX is planned for prime time on RTL, and please be sure to check out the new NirOlympX trailer at www.rtl.de/tv/tv_988868.php?media=video1&set_id=23334. Swift snippets. 
21st July: Eurodragster.com News sponsor Simpson.se will as usual be providing trackside service at the Veidec Festival at
Mantorp Park. "Our trackside inventory is even larger than in previous years", says Jan Phersson. "In our trackside sales
area you can find Simpson products such as harnesses for Junior Dragster
to Top Fuel, helmets, window nets, driving suits, gloves, HANS devices, driving shoes and leasure shoes. In other words, we stock
what's needed for a safe and savvy weekend at Veidec Festival. We will be on site at Mantorp Park from Tuesday evening. As ever
we can be found in the Sportsman pits."
UK Top Fuel Bike racer Ian King would be pleased to hear from anyone travelling to Mantorp Park who would be willing to take a box to the track. If you can help then please drop Ian a line at ian@kingracing.com or call 07785 341099. Swedish Top Methanol Dragster racer Krister Johansson predicts a #1 qualifier of 5.37 and bump spot of 5.57 at this week's Veidec Festival. "This season started out well for us", says Krister, "PB of 5.44 at Santa Pod and #4 in the Championship, #1 qualifier in Finland with a 5.46 and #3 in the Championship, only one point behind Dave Wilson Dave. After Finland we had to change the ring and pinion, I think it would not have lasted another burnout, so we were very "lucky" to lose against Derek Flynn. At Mantorp we feel that we have control over some things that we didn't last year. Let's hope that the weather stays cool and nice, and I think that there will be another A/Fuel car in the final, hopefully a yellow one. Our team feels stronger than ever. See you all at Mantorp Park." Rob Lowe has been in touch to let us know that the first ever drag bike weekend in Scotland takes place at Crail Raceway on 22nd-23rd August. The event features a round of the Scottish Drag Bike Championships which has six classes, Run What You Brung, stunts and more. You can find out more at www.scottishdragbikeclub.co.uk. The latest spy pictures to arrive at the offices of Eurodragster.com (below) came with no words at all. If you know more, or if you would like to send your own spy picture, then drop us a line at eurodragster.com@btinternet.com. ©Eurodragster.com 
Congratulations to Patrik Larsson who won the 600 SEK Best Burnout Award posted by Eurodragster.com at the weekend's Borlänge Street Open at Dala Airport. Unfortunately your News Editor's crass incompetence and alarming ineptitude means that we didn't actually catch a photograph of the burnout in question but it was a good couple of hundred feet, fogged the start line, and drew a huge round of applause from the spectators. UK Pro ET racer Antony Wilkins made demo passes at the Retro Show at Santa Pod Raceway with a brief to run nine-second quarters (below left). "I could always stick a tow rope on the Jet Car", says Butch. "But we were treated like royalty, paraded down the old fire up road feeling like a Funny Car pilot at the Cannonball. The track was closed, swept and glued. Nobody was expecting much grip as the track had witnessed everything from Jet Cars to scooters. Was I wrong when the lights went down and I went up. The crowd loved it, I loved it and the old gal ran a PB of 11.10, nearly back in the tens. Here's to next year's event and big thanks to the Pod and the hardworking staff." 
News reaches us that the Mitchell brothers are to be reunited in a shocking new plot for UK soap opera Eastenders. But as the secret photo shows (above right), the two actors don't look best pleased that rumours have been leaked to the general public of a plot twist involving the love which dare not speak its name. A big Happy Birthday to our good friend and UK Comp Eliminator racer The Very Rev'd Sir Neville Mottershead ODE. Hope you have a great day Nev and it really is about time you were back out there. A breach of the peace. 
21st July: Gina Rumble tells us that her prayers were answered when the sun shone yet again for the annual Hot Rodders Bash held
at The Lamb in Theale, near Reading:
Rods, bikes and dragsters disturbed the quiet village and anyone fancying a nice Sunday lie-in would have been rudely awakened by Kenny Brooks blasting into the car park in Roaring Rat. The brilliant bands The Trashville Slammers and Jake Allen and the Trashcanz were on full form in the afternoon, knocking out some rockin' tunes in the sunshine. Three dragsters from the Wild Bunch were on display along with Wendy Baker and Paul Stubbings' Time Warp Nostalgia Funny Car. Dave Rowlands with Destiny's Angel and Chris Hartnell with Backdraft entertained the crowd by firing up their cars in the afternoon, which along with a bar and all-day barbecue kept the crowd quite entertained. ©Eurodragster.com Over £500 was raised in just five hours, although I think this was helped along by Scottie Durrant and Sean Fenlon sporting pink tutus...very fetching! All the money raised is being donated to The Thames Valley and Chiltern Air Ambulance, a worthy cause I'm sure you will all agree. Next year we are hoping for the Bash to be held at a bigger venue, and back on a Saturday. Scottie and I would like to say a huge Thank You to everyone who helped support the show and donate raffle prizes, thanks guys! Web site updates. 21st July: In the latest entry in his exclusive Racer Blog, Dutch Top Fuel Dragster racer Lex Joon looks forward to the Veidec Festival and discusses lane choice. As ever you can check out the latest Blog update by clicking clicking here or by clicking on the Racer Blogs link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. ©Eurodragster.com Gwynn Clark has updated his Slimboy Fat web site with pictures from Bug Jam, which you can check out at www.pbase.com/slimboyfat/bug_jam_23. Our good buddy Patrik Jacobsson has updated his Racebilder gallery site with pictures from Saturday's Power Hot Rod Reunion at Malmby Fairground, and pictures of Sunday's action at the Borlänge Street Open. Patrik's pictures can be found at www.racebilder.nu. Editor's note. 21st July: We have a couple of Veidec Festival previews lined up for tomorrow's (Wednesday's) news update and then we will be into our Veidec Festival coverage starting with tomorrow's Back to Basics and Press Call at Mantorp Park. Given our huge workload at the Veidec Festival, the daily news updates between Thursday and Sunday are likely to be limited. Please do continue to send news to news@eurodragster.com and we will run it as soon as we can; if it has to be run on a particular day between now and Sunday then it is of course worth asking. ©Eurodragster.com Frost reveals Street Pro Mod plan. 
20th July: The UK's Andy Frost has announced that he is to convert his Red Victor 2 Vauxhall into
a Pro Mod. The car, which has happily run sevens and over 190 mph on pump gas, will remain street-legal.
"It's going to be a bit of a long term project, unless of course I can get some outside funding to speed up the process!", says Frosty. "I did toy with the idea of using an American body but having spent twenty seven years with the Vauxhall it's hard to go away from it. With advice from Jon Webster on the body shape and length we've been able to keep the current car, albeit slightly modified (click on picture for different angle). "Power will come from my current engine, which makes over 2200 hp on pump gas, which we will modify with parts from Knight Racing Services. The Holset turbos which have served us so well will be replaced by bigger AET Turbo-supplied twin 91 mm Garrett turbos. The car will be dual fuelled (methanol for racing and petrol for the street with help from Aeromotive and with tuning help from Electromotive Inc. There will also be a Neal Chance converter in the car, whether it's an auto or a Lenco! The side skirts and front spoiler will be removable for the street. Almost everything on the car will be new as current European Pro Mod regs don't allow non fully floating axles, auto transmissions, 15" wheels etc. We are working on trying to get a concession for auto transmissions as it's a street car...hello FIA, can you hear us? "We have now secured a donor car and panels from various sources and will be starting the cutting, raking, chopping, lengthening and lowering etc within the next month. Once the body is finished the mould will be handled by Dale at DRE Glassfibre and will be a mix of glass and carbon components. Paint will once again be applied by Curbishley Automotive, the rolling chassis and tech advice will be ably handled by Jon Webster at Webster Race Engineering, whilst the turbo fabrication will be handled once again by Nigel at Altiss Engineering. Hutch Transmissions will be giving us advice if we have to go to a Lenco (I don't want to for obvious reasons!). Mickey Thompson will be supplying their latest 16" beadlock rear wheels and matching front wheels. Of course we'll be on the MT tyre. "I have had this idea for a while now but work and racing commitments with the current car have kept the idea on the back burner. Now, along with my current sponsors which include Mickey Thompson Tires, Electromotive, DEI, VP Fuels, Neal Chance Racing Converters, Aeromotive Inc, Mick Gould Commercials, Nimbus Motorsports, Knight Racing Services, Webster Race Engineering, LA Racing Parts and Kustom Consulting Ltd I feel the time is right to start on the new project.We feel that the European Pro Mod class will offer us even more publicity than we have had already (which is a lot!) and it'll bring the brands we represent some more welcome exposure.We also think that entering Pro Mod with a street-legal car will bring a new dimension to the class, particularly as we want to be in the mix so to speak. I would also one day like to go to the Orlando World Street Nationals with a car which could at least qualify and go a couple of rounds. With this car I think we can at least enter Pro Mod and go to Orlando and open some eyes to what the team is and has been about.. "I have to thank Craig Berry for the new vision of the car which was photoshopped in one evening! "I will keep Eurodragster.com posted with updates as they happen, and of course you can catch up with the team on www.redvictor1racing.co.uk." Bug Jam curtailed. 20th July: Many thanks to Sam Stretton and David Anniwell for sending us qualifying times for this weekend's Bug Jam held at Santa Pod Raceway. As well as VWDRC action, the race is a UK championship round for Super Modified, Street Eliminator, Outlaw Anglia, Sportsman ET, and Outlaw Flat Four. Martin Hill felt the need for speed too, running a 6.000/268mph in the Fireforce 3 jet funny car yesterday. After qualifying yesterday, there was a plan for two rounds of qualifying and eliminations today. However rain arrived this morning after VW Pro, Outlaw Flat Four and Outlaw Anglia had run their first qualifying session of the day. The track crew made a valiant attempt to dry the track but the rain came back again and the meeting was eventually called at 3pm. In association with American Car Imports we have posted a gallery of Roger's pictures from Saturday and Sunday.
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Bug Jam 2009. Santa Pod Raceway. England
TSI RACENET SYSTEM
QUALIFYING BY: ET Pro Ladder QUALIFYING LIST
18/07/2009 20:00:12 4 SUPER MODIFIED
Place CarNum Driver R.T. E.T. O/U INDEX MPH
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1 1962 NIGEL PAYNE +0.1336 7.5669 7.5669 00.00 178.55
2 68 TIM MUGRIDGE +0.0882 7.5851 7.5851 00.00 179.22
3 95 BELINDA BULL +0.0656 7.5951 7.5951 00.00 177.81
4 69 CRAIG GIBBS +0.1210 7.8149 7.8149 00.00 171.18
* = Disqualified
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Bug Jam 2009. Santa Pod Raceway. England
TSI RACENET SYSTEM
QUALIFYING BY: ET Pro Ladder QUALIFYING LIST
18/07/2009 20:06:37 11 STREET ELIMINATOR
Place CarNum Driver R.T. E.T. O/U INDEX MPH
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 56 COLIN LAZENBY +0.0150 8.5387 8.5387 00.00 175.08
2 504 JEFF MEADS -0.0372 9.1373 9.1373 00.00 159.09
3 406 MARK TODD +0.2100 9.3394 9.3394 00.00 152.65
4 33 DAVID MURDOCH +0.5188 9.7905 9.7905 00.00 109.09
5 472 MATS ANDERSSON +0.2198 10.1500 10.1500 00.00 105.71
6 500 MARTIN TAYLOR +0.3632 12.8171 12.8171 00.00 82.57
* = Disqualified
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Bug Jam 2009. Santa Pod Raceway. England
TSI RACENET SYSTEM
QUALIFYING BY: ET Pro Ladder QUALIFYING LIST
19/07/2009 12:31:46 20 OUTLAW ANGLIA
Place CarNum Driver R.T. E.T. O/U INDEX MPH
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1 82 RICHARD COLBY +0.0931 8.5041 8.5041 00.00 159.61
2 7 CLIFF GRIFFIN +0.2831 8.7794 8.7794 00.00 136.17
3 81 SIMON BARLOW +0.1169 9.3133 9.3133 00.00 143.92
4 8 MARK BRACKING +0.0955 10.5683 10.5683 00.00 129.82
5 84 DAVE SIDAWAY +0.1005 10.5716 10.5716 00.00 127.33
* = Disqualified
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Bug Jam 2009. Santa Pod Raceway. England
TSI RACENET SYSTEM
QUALIFYING BY: ET QUALIFYING LIST
18/07/2009 20:19:53 10 SPORTSMAN E.T
Place CarNum Driver R.T. E.T. O/U INDEX MPH
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1 61 SPENCER TRAMM +0.1768 15.9546 0.0246 15.93 83.02
2 442 RALPH YOUNG -0.0875 13.1181 0.0481 13.07 104.67
3 495 GEOFF COWLEY +0.0793 14.8444 0.0644 14.78 91.79
4 97 ABI TETHER +0.2105 15.1113 0.1113 15.00 90.69
5 716 NICK GAY +0.1140 13.8722 0.1222 13.75 97.76
6 92 TETHYS +0.2881 17.8681 0.1481 17.72 76.80
7 763 IAN JACKSON +0.2780 13.8100 0.1600 13.65 99.39
8 377 KEVIN LONG +0.1051 14.8267 0.5267 14.30 96.45
9 507 IAN PETRIE +0.2814 14.9788 0.5288 14.45 94.66
10 18 LUKE STEVENSON +0.2673 15.7298 0.7298 15.00 91.04
* = Disqualified
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bug Jam 2009. Santa Pod Raceway. England
TSI RACENET SYSTEM
QUALIFYING BY: ET QUALIFYING LIST
19/07/2009 12:31:17 23 V.W PRO
Place CarNum Driver R.T. E.T. O/U INDEX MPH
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 565 DAVID DOWNES +0.0911 12.5731 0.0231 12.55 104.05
2 1 JAMES HODSON +0.3617 10.9833 0.0333 10.95 129.48
3 86 MATT ATTWOOD -0.1901 11.8925 0.0625 11.83 112.08
4 714 DANNY WHARTON +0.1566 12.7129 0.0629 12.65 101.39
5 40 SCOTT EVISON +0.0996 12.3391 0.0891 12.25 106.03
6 98 IAN HUGGAN +0.0762 12.6030 0.1230 12.48 106.50
7 81 ANDY RAW -0.0242 8.9424 0.1924 08.75 138.61
8 10 RUSS FELLOWS -0.0027 9.5463 0.1963 09.35 148.07
9 321 RICHARD MERRIMAN +0.0984 13.1500 0.2500 12.90 100.94
10 53 BRIAN BURROWS +0.1477 12.5668 0.2668 12.30 104.80
11 259 MICHAEL GERAGHTY +0.1402 13.2574 0.2674 12.99 98.18
12 29 SIMON KHOURY +0.4431 13.1797 0.3797 12.80 103.27
13 79 STUART HODGSON +0.2203 13.1780 0.3880 12.79 100.80
14 112 JACOB BAILEY -0.0374 13.5944 0.6044 12.99 102.31
15 71 MARTIN CHARLES +0.0431 21.4221 8.4321 12.99 67.10
* = Disqualified
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bug Jam 2009. Santa Pod Raceway. England
TSI RACENET SYSTEM
QUALIFYING BY: ET QUALIFYING LIST
18/07/2009 18:44:33 24 V.W SPORTSMAN
Place CarNum Driver R.T. E.T. O/U INDEX MPH
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 44 CRAIG ALLEN -0.0212 15.2044 0.0044 15.20 85.36
2 36 LUKE STEVENSON +0.1661 15.0226 0.0226 15.00 90.87
3 888 HOLLY BALDWIN +0.0204 15.5227 0.0227 15.50 81.37
4 333 POLLY NAYLOR +0.0897 17.1766 0.0266 17.15 78.27
5 23 BEN PUTLAND +0.6116 15.0351 0.0351 15.00 86.01
6 123 KOEN FRAEYMAN +0.4422 19.9733 0.0433 19.93 64.89
7 49 CHRIS BRAY +0.0770 15.7240 0.0740 15.65 86.36
8 97 ABI TETHER +0.1756 15.0778 0.0778 15.00 90.11
9 176 PAUL PHELPSTEAD +0.1273 20.8292 0.0792 20.75 61.87
10 20 DEAN CLATWORTHY +0.2058 16.6928 0.0928 16.60 77.60
11 797 LUCY MATTHEWS +0.0662 24.1372 0.1372 24.00 54.54
12 90 DENNIS COX +0.2800 16.6652 0.1652 16.50 81.82
13 127 RICHARD JONES +0.3667 20.0730 0.1730 19.90 61.62
14 152 MICHAEL OUTWAITE +0.4945 16.6187 0.2187 16.40 79.37
15 8 MARK MALONE +0.1496 19.3448 0.2448 19.10 64.20
16 77 MARTIN AYTON +0.0731 14.7164 0.2964 14.42 91.21
17 92 LYNN COX LB3A 21.9957 0.4957 21.50 56.59
18 117 PAUL DAY +0.1540 15.7467 0.6467 15.10 81.82
19 82 MARK SKEEN +0.2150 14.7203 0.6603 14.06 91.39
20 188 HELEN WILLIAMS -0.1104 19.1824 0.7824 18.40 66.64
21 204 GRAEME FREEMAN +0.1264 15.4227 0.9127 14.51 83.94
22 26 PHILIP WOODWARD LB3A 17.4861 1.2861 16.20 63.85
23 64 THOMAS HERBERT +0.0805 15.4333 1.4333 14.00 84.89
* = Disqualified
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bug Jam 2009. Santa Pod Raceway. England
TSI RACENET SYSTEM
QUALIFYING BY: ET Pro Ladder QUALIFYING LIST
19/07/2009 12:30:54 12 OUTLAW FLAT FOUR
Place CarNum Driver R.T. E.T. O/U INDEX MPH
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 100 JAMES WOTTON +0.4920 10.2400 10.2400 00.00 134.52
2 622 BERNARD NEWBURY +0.2275 10.2507 10.2507 00.00 127.96
3 500 MARTIN TAYLOR +0.2758 10.4413 10.4413 00.00 135.72
4 600 PETER ENGLEZOS +0.8408 10.6568 10.6568 00.00 119.52
5 68 DAVID DINNING +0.5281 10.8866 10.8866 00.00 119.82
6 2332 PAUL BATE +0.2191 11.0583 11.0583 00.00 120.12
7 23 MATTHEW KEENE +0.4578 11.5074 11.5074 00.00 128.79
8 558 PHIL WEST +0.2974 12.0147 12.0147 00.00 108.46
9 666 GREG BISHOP +0.4180 12.2232 12.2232 00.00 107.28
10 621 ADELE WOODBRIDGE +0.3668 12.3074 12.3074 00.00 110.70
11 64 WAYNE HOWE +0.2702 12.4791 12.4791 00.00 108.05
12 360 ANTON MURRELLS +0.2980 12.6218 12.6218 00.00 105.30
13 259 MICHAEL GERAGHTY +0.1683 12.6557 12.6557 00.00 107.04
14 56 JASON REW +0.2736 12.7025 12.7025 00.00 100.51
15 67 FRANK HOFMANN +0.4723 13.0142 13.0142 00.00 99.67
16 739 JIM SMITH +1.3152 16.3165 16.3165 00.00 79.70
* = Disqualified
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kågered on home territory. 20th July: The Veidec Festival is Swedish Top Fuel Dragster racer Micke Kågered's favourite race of the season and with it also comes home advantage: So far this season, we have had a bit of bad luck and at Alastaro we lost to Risto in the quarter finals. He performed a reaction time rarely seen in Top Fuel racing and beat me although I had the better ET. We are on the same level as most of the other teams performancewise and it is going to be a tough game at Mantorp with eleven cars competing for eight spots on the elimination ladder. Any of us can end up outside the ladder really and nothing can be taken for granted. Fortunately we have not had to do anything to our car since Alastaro apart from the regular service. But in the championship, we need to win at Mantorp for sure. With all our second and third places over the years in the championship, a title is what we are still aiming for. Mantorp Park is my favourite track and race of the season. All my friends and family gather and have a good time together with the crew. We loaded everything last week and will drive our two trailers to Mantorp Park on Monday, one with the hospitality equipment and one with the race equipment. I am looking forward to it. Our full crew will be on site and we will also add some extra personnel to care for the invited guests. Urs' return to Europe. 20th July: Urs Erbacher will start with his Top Fuel Dragster in two races in Europe. All European fans can watch him at the next two rounds of the FIA European drag Racing championship, the Veidec Nitro Festival in Mantorp, Sweden, on July 24th-26th or at the Nitrolymp'x in Hockenheim, Germany August 14th-16th. Urs is not the only person at the Erbacher Raceteam. Lo Stauble (UEM-European Championship) and Noah Stutz [Juniordragster] are also competitors in Germany and Sweden. There will be coverage by photographer Wieger van den Bos on www.alpha-fotografie.eu. Islanders' shaky weekend. 20th July: Team member for Paul Ingar Udtian and the Islanders drag racing team Konrad Ree says the team had a shaky weekend in Alastaro: There were adjustments to the dragster before the race so it would fit the new rules in the TMD class, and the team was looking forward to a weekend with a lot of driving. Unfortunately, we only got two qualifying rounds because of rain and delays, and it got even worse for the Islanders when we lost one of the rounds because of an oil leak. We had to get a good time to qualify, so we tuned the dragster relatively hard. Unfortunately, we tuned it too hard, and Paul Ingar got a massive tireshake in our only qualifying run of the weekend. The time, 6.01, wasn’t good enough to qualify in the eight car field, and we missed the show for the first time in many years. A positive thing about the weekend was a new personal best to 60ft, 0.92 seconds. Before Veidec Festival we have a new clutch, and both the dragster and the driver are ready for the fight at Mantorp Park. Hopefully, we’ll get a tight TMD field, where many teams have the opportunity to take home the trophy. We’re feeling a bit down since we didn’t qualify in Alastaro, because it affects our position in the points standing in a negative way. We’re now eighth in the standings, and the fight for points will be really hard in the next races. We’re really looking forward to the Veidec Festival, and our 1000 km long journey from Frøya begins on Tuesday, 21 July. Hansen welcomes Hanna Snr. 20th July: US Top Methanol Tuner Will Hanna has sent us his view of his European season so far, his first working on both sides of the pond. In Europe he is Crew Chief for the Islanders' second Top Methanol Dragster raced by Fred Hansen who shone at Santa Pod with a runner up postion: our season so far? Talk about up and down! The car is running great and Fred is doing a great job of learning and driving. He’s really taken to this car like a fish to water. He learns from his mistakes and gives me the necessary tools to get the job done. That’s all I can ask for as a Crew Chief. Santa Pod was a great weekend for us. Then there’s Finland and their ’Thin Blue Line’....and I’m going to stop there...We were on a mid 5.40 pass in the first round when we dropped an exaust valve at 2.2 seconds and ran a 5.67. I’m not big on coulda woulda shoulda’s, we’ll see how we do the rest of the season. In terms of the championship, there’s no denying the DQ in Finland hurt us, but we have a good car, good driver and good team, so we’ll just do the best we can do at the remaining 3 races. You really have to take the season a run at a time. So our focus is on Q1 Mantorp right now... We serviced the car for Mantorp while we were at Alastaro. We have a new Spitzer wing we may debut in Mantorp or Germany. We also have something else new in store for Hockenheim. At Mantorp my dad, Rick Hanna will be acting as interim Crew Chief. We are bringing back American crew members Danny Main and Joey Ficca for the rest of the season as well. I will be tuning the car over the phone while I’m racing here in America. So my tuning day will start around 2 am and end whenever we get done on our end. Maybe I’ll call Dad and Fred in the middle of their night to return the favor. Will adds that he is available to help any TMFC or Pro Mod teams that are interested in his services as a consultant. Will is also looking for individuals that are qualified to organize a European chapter of Racers For Christ. "Head Chaplain Larry Smiley informed me there was a European Chaplain some time back, but there has been nothing since." In absence of a Chaplain, Will would still like to at least arrange some informal fellowship meetings of Christian racers and fans on Sunday mornings. "Of course we would need the blessing of FIA and the tracks to officially organize anything. If the track would allow us to use a grandstand or tent, and maybe make a few announcements on Saturday if so inclined. Nothing pushy, just informative." UK Junior Drag Bike Championship R3. 20th July: Thanks to Sharron Collier who has sent us this report of the third round of the UK Junior Drag Bike Championship held recently: Our third championship round was held last weekend at Shakespeare County Raceway and after a late start due to rain, we got three qualifying sessions in on saturday and by the end of the day the final qualifying ladder looked like this:
Dial In ET
Jordon Bissell 10.10 10.126
Scott Collier 9.85 9.877
Brett Cordelle 10.95 11.056
Joe Dear 11.62 11.793
Luke Argyle 9.00 9.389
Giselle Moor 15.00 16.468
one thousanth of a second separated Jordon and Scotts qualifiers, fantastic! The rain was back again saturday night and poured down most of the night and into sunday mid morning, so another late start. First round and Brett Cordelle went through on a bye run as Joe Dear was a no show. Scott Collier was up against Luke Argyle, Scott dialled in 9.75 to Lukes 9.20 and it was Luke that took the win light with a 9.262 run to Scotts 9.916. Well done to Luke, but we felt the pain for Scott as once again he could find no consistency in his current motor. Jordon Bissell was up against current champ Giselle Moor on her brand new bike, Jordon dialled in 10.00 to Giselle's 15.00, but just after the green lights fell both riders suffered engine problems and both had to be recovered from the track. After some discussion with the officials it was decided that this should be re-run, and Jordon went on to take the win light with a 10.162 to Giselle's much improved 13.00. Second round and we saw Jordon on a bye run while Brett Cordelle faced up to rookie Luke Argyle, Brett dialling in 10.95 to Lukes 9.20, and it was new boy Luke who took the win with a 9.327 against Brett's 11.220. So the final saw Jordon Bissell up against Luke Argyle, Jordon dialled in 10.12 and Luke 9.20, both riders really wanted this win and it showed, a great race which ended in Jordon taking the victory with a 10.143 to Lukes 10.036, very well done to Jordon! He has been so close to his dial in all weekend, a well deserved first win for him. The closeness of the dial-ins and the closeness of the racing was absolutely fantastic, the standard of machines and the professionalism of these young racers is something we are very proud of, adult motorcycle drag racing will have a some serious contenders in a few years time. Well done to all the lads and lasses, you are all stars. We would like to thank Shakespeare County Raceway for their help and support with this brilliant and upcoming little class, its going from stength to strength as we always knew it would. We would also like to thank Nick Argyle of Insane Motorcycles for sponsoring the Junior Drag Bike 2009 Championship, which we appreciate very much. All the parents are doing a fantastic job with these bikes, we are lucky that we have such interested and dedicated people in our club, thanks to you all! Here's to Round 4, which takes place at the Open Sports Nationals at Shakespeare County Raceway on August 21/22/23 POINTS AFTER ROUND 3 Jordon Bissell 965 Brett Cordelle 745 Scott Collier 605 Luke Argyle 565 Joe Dear 250 Giselle Moor 230 See loads of Info and pics on Junior Drag Bike on Facebook and join us as a fan, or look at our website www.juniordragbike.co.uk. Web site updates. 20th July: Already in Sweden for some R&R before this week's Veidec Festival, Eurodragster.com News Editor Tog together with Christer Abrahamson attended the weekend's Borlänge Street Open and was as ever made very welcome by Christer Gustavsson, Mats Eriksson and Lena Perés, and the Borlänge Drag Racing Club officials to whom many thanks. In association with American Car Imports we have posted a gallery of pictures from the Borlänge Street Open which you can view by clicking here or by clicking on the Event Coverage link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. On the way to Borlänge Tog and Christer stopped by Säter to enjoy the Cruise which takes place in the town every July and which happened to take place on Friday. Tog has posted a gallery from the Säter Cruise on his Fotopic site at eurodragster.fotopic.net/c1727450.html. Mantorp Park: circuit to blacktop. 
18th July:
Whereas it doesn't matter if you are black or white in drag racing, having a rubber black track is important when putting on a European Championship event. Mantorp Park is hosting the FIA, UEM and NDRS championships next weekend at the Veidec Festival 23-26 july. Kalle Brinell, Richard Johansson and John Svensson have under the supervising of Kjell Pettersson been putting in the hours since last Monday trying to add traction to the sand blasted drag strip part of the circuit and are planning to carry on doing so until Wednesday next week to hopefully provide good track conditions and a record breaking surface says project manager Emelie Carlswärd.
Veidec Festival having a record breaking entry level with 368 teams entered in the FIA, UEM and NDRS classes this year. Also in addition the event is hosting the ESRA Euro Nationals for Street and Hot Rods, together with the Iron Horse MC Road Show over the weekend. The weekend of speed starts Wednesday 22nd of July with a nostalgia drag racing day called Back to Basic. For more info visit www.mantorppark.com. Olstad looking forward. 18th July: Super Twin racer Hans Olav Olstad, currently fourth in the championship, believes going into the Veidec Festival four bikes will be fighting for honours at the end of the season: As expected, after two rounds it shows Lorenz, Bengtsson, Heezen and me as the top four. I think these four will fight for the championship, like I estimated before the season started. Of course I hope to be higher on the result list. I have had little pieces of bad luck when the belt broke in Santa Pod, and had a jammed throttle on Alastaro, but we still fight and one day it will be our day when things work out properly. For the championship, it was good Bengtsson win in Finland; it equalises the point, so it's 13 points between Bengtsson, Heezen and me and thirty points between the four of us. In order to have the championship more competitive at the end of the season, somebody needs to take out Lorenz early. I know my bike Lightning is very strong, I ran the best 1/8 mile in Alastaro with a 4.46. But I had a terrible bad reaction time... At Mantorp I expect three to four bikes to be down to 4.4, maybe one down to 4.3 if the track is good. Some of the smaller bikes can perform well on 1/8 mile, however the biggest bikes perform best on the 1/4 mile. About Mantorp track, I think we will see more scary moves in the right lane, if the track condition is the same as before. The right line leans right after 40 metres and makes the big bikes very hard to handle. I really hope nobody get hurt, and I also hope the track can be straightened up before something bad happens. The bike "Lightning" is in same condition as last race, strong. And it will perform better then last years big disaster. The new heads from Servex are still ready to be loaded. In short, we are ready for a new fight, as always. Persaker: Ian knows. 18th July: Speed shop owner and racer in Top Fuel Dragsters, Pro Stock, and now Pro Mod Joran Persaker's motivation for racing is undimmed in spite of the poor economy. I'm not running Top Fuel this year, and I hope I'm back in TF 2010. But I run FIA Pro Mod, so I will have fun, and the good thing is turbos have eventually been allowed in the FIA this year. I did run Pro Mod 1998-1999 with the same car and the same engine as now, but have made a lot of changes. Last time it was on gas and nitrous, but now I have a turbo and use methanol and air. The first year with a turbo for me was 2000, so I have had a turbo for ten years. In 2000, my Turbonetics Y2K was new, now it's ten years old. Some mechanical problems have hindered the development, but we did run 6.95 in 2002 at the Pod and it was the fastest ET for turbo cars in Europe until 2007. Now my best run is 6.86. Yes, we need to run faster, so now is time to "Sluta vela - ladda mera" in English, "Don't dilly dally - more boost!" See you at Mantorp, and it will be pang-pang-boom at the starting line; Ian knows... Rapp returns. 18th July: Thanks to Pro Mod racer Ulf Rapp whose whose ex-Jorgen Karlsson Mustang banged the guardrail at Alastaro but happily will be ready to race again at the Veidec Festival. The season has not as good as I had hoped, but nevertheless we have run some new Personal Bests, 1.06 sixty foot time in Norway and 1.05 at Alastaro. You must be grateful for all the pluses. Since Alastaro, we have repainted the right side blue of course, replaced one new back wheel, one new carbon fibre brake disk, some welding on the wishbone, and fitted a new right hand header collector. Also, we have had a total overhaul of the Lenco. But otherwise not much! The Championship is shaping up to be a thriller this season. It's very nice to race at my home track and for all of my sponsors and fans to come and see the racing live. We will arrive at the track on Wednesday and look forward to seeing everyone then. This is a bit of a test year for a new team and a new car so we will see what happens next season. We are hoping to get some sponsors for next year but I can't tell you about that just now. Swift snippets. 
18th July:
Benny Edvardsson of Eurodragster.com news sponsors Tireshake.com will be at Mantorp Park July 24-26. A brand new cap from Tireshake.com is part of a selection of products that will be available at the Leanders Bros Team pit.Tradition and distinction. 18th July: 2009 has been a great year for Cruisin’ Life Magazine. In January it organized the 1st Hot Rod & Custom Car Show International during the Bike Expo Show in Padua and in June took place the 14th US Car Reunion in Osoppo (Udine – Italy); this outstanding season was crowned the second weekend of July in Buccinasco (Milan) with the 6th Cruisin’ Rodeo that this year has broke every record becoming the first Italian US car meeting with more than 400 cars registered. The 6th edition of the Cruisin’ Rodeo (the Italian national big meeting dedicated to American car culture) has reached an unexpected result: 410 cars registered and more than 6000 visitors during two days, Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th of July. As usual at the entrance all guests received some products for car care offered by Wynn’s Italia and obviously a copy of the magazine Cruisin’. On Saturday in the evening there were already 120 vehicles, and the famous Rockabilly DJ “Lonelycat” entertained all presents with his music. On Sunday the beautiful location of the Santa Maria Lake (in Gudo Gambaredo, near Milan) was literally invaded by many sparkling American cars of the most important years of the American car production. A “Ford T” awarded the prize “Best in show”, then there were vehicles of the Forties, Fifties, Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, finishing with modern cars as the new and long awaited “Chevrolet Camaro 2010” that with its elegant black livery chose the Cruisin’ Rodeo for its first appearance in Italy. At the event were present also the most representative Italian Car Clubs and also teams from Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland and even four rods from Sweden. Two well known pinstripers, Explo and Danx, decorated different vehicles and accessories; there was even the exhibition of a Swiss dragster and a wonderful Kenworth Truck situated in the centre of the parking place. There were also many stands with clothes and accessories and the great music: on Sunday the visitors danced with the music of the travelling concert of the Tao Love Bus and Jhonnyboy & The Ice Cream that performed on the main stage. Cruisin’ Life thanks the thousand of readers and all US Car lovers who took part at the meeting, and all people who in many ways cooperated to the success of the 6th Cruisin’ Rodeo. We wait for you at the next edition in July 2010. FIA European Finals entry date. 17th July: Both Pro and Sportsman racers are reminded that the official closing date for the FIA European Finals, to be held on 10-13 September, for all classes is Friday 14th August. You can download FIA European Finals entry forms from the Santa Pod Racers Club web site at www.eurodragster.com/sprc or from the Power Racing web site at www.powerracing.eu. Forms may be e-mailed to paula.marshall@btconnect.com. Raisvuo's view. 17th July: Top Methanol Dragster racer Esko Raisvuo is having an interesting comeback season in his unblown nitro car to say the least. Following a non-qualifier 5.71/261mph (420 kph) at the Main Event, Esko qualified at the recent FHRA Nitro Nationals at Alastaro with a 5.97 only to become a DNS in the first round. So far this season our performance has been a little short of the competition (of course), but otherwise as expected. We are on the learning curve in all areas. We had a loaded gun at Alastaro, but it was a bit difficult to hold, so the other guys dodged our bullets this time. We were one step further in performance in comparison to the Main Event so we have made clear progress. We have had two bad things: not qualifying at Santa Pod and then not making the first round at Alastaro both for same reason, which will not occur any more. We didn´t notice, since it was not seen on checking between rounds, but our throttle cable core bracket was loose all the time. It finally died at Alastaro. Since Alastaro we have fixed a nuclear blast withstanding throttle cable core bracket. We also now have sparewheels and tyres for both ends of the car. At Mantorp, if and when the weather is nice and all goes smoothly, we should kick ass. The rest of the season, we will spend hunting low ET´s of the meeting and getting one little tin cup for the crew boys. We do have some pressure, since as everyone knows, that we have an ex NHRA National Record holder rail. (No matter that the engines are much smaller and nitro % is down). The points in the Championship and performance numbers so far are about as we expected to be shaping up for this season. However the "Whipple Circus" will for sure affect the points later in the season, and surely the best and most consistent performer will go to Monaco. Who will hold the record over the winter is guesswork, but any of the A-Fuelers can move it to the 5.2 level straight out of trailer and sometimes may be even quicker. My guess (based on runs we have analyzed from ourself and others) is that the European records will be 5.26 and 280mph (450km/h) over the winter. They may held by different cars. And probably or hopefully the new records will be set in Mantorp. For us, travelling to Mantorp is the second cheapest race. We will take the Tuesday night ferry and be at Mantorp on Wednesday afternoon if all goes smoothly. The ferry over and back cost about half of that from Holland to UK for example. For the Hockenheim race, however, all-in travel costs are triple those of Mantorp and both Santa Pod races are double those of Hockenheim. There are no changes in team personnel or sponsors. At Alastaro, Petri Liimatainen came to the other side of the oilpan and Jarski Hansalahti started working on the right head. We probably will have a spare man on the left head since Pekka may have issues in getting more holidays from his day job. We will see. For sponsors, we ourselves promised to sponsor some local guys with their band. After the end of the season we make big party and we have familiar music. Both our Sweden-legal junior dragsters are coming over to Mantorp in our trailer to see the world. It is a big thing for little kids to get life experience at this type of event, no matter what the performance. Kendall Top Fuel Bike Mantorp preview. 
17th July:
Sören Svensson, Crew Chief, Team Kendall Racing Top Fuel Bike says in spite of the class's best time so far this year of 6.22 from rider Peter Svensson, the team has had its problems:
Our first race was the Main Event at Santa Pod and as you may remember we had our hands full with work due to our problems with over powering the track. After Santa Pod, we had to do some major work with the bike such as a new rear inner axle with new bearings, a new rear sprocket and a new supercharger drive. We have also been spending some time to make new valve guides and ordering more intake and exhaust valves from Manley in USA to be able to have everything in order for the Veidec Festival at Mantorp Park. Special thanks to Stefan Junerud at Servex for helping us with rear sprocket, to Per Bengtsson at Bentec for helping us with the crank wheel of the supercharger drive and to Jarmos Custom & Auto in Costa Mesa USA for supplying the new valves from Manley. It’s hard to say how the Championship is shaping up this season, when not all teams can afford to travel to all the races and the champions will most likely be one of the teams that will run whole the tour. Mantorp Park is our home track. It’s no problem at all to travel there since we are a Swedish team and only have about a three hour drive to get there. It’s always great to run in front of all our fans and our sponsors and we are always trying to put on a good show for the crowd, with some extra long burn outs and good runs to please them. As you know, we have been more than lucky with our efforts to run some good numbers during the last two years and if the weather doesn’t play tricks on us we will be heading for some new good runs in the low four or the high three second range if we can find some good traction on the eighth. Even though it’s just a few weeks left until the races, we are still trying to find more financial back up to be able to go to Sunoco Drag Challenge at Gardemoen and to the European Finals at Santa Pod in September. Super Twins on Tour. 17th July: Dawn Watson has been in touch with a report of five members of NAST that made the journey to Holland for the Drachten Internationals hosted by Xplosion Drag Racing Holland. Arriving at what is normally an airstrip soon turned into an amazing drag racing venue. Showing the true dedication or obsession to this sport. Bringing in all the equipment, grandstand, fences and barriers for the three day event. Unfortunately due to weather conditions it turned into a Saturday only event. With the sun shining and the crowd growing, the buzz in the air started. Final preparations took place in the pits, engines roaring, adrenaline pumping and the smell of petrol. 
Joe Elliot and Simon Clamp ran in the Super Street Twins category, Les Harris and Andy Watson both in the Super Twins Top Gas category. Stefan Iwanowitsch ran in the Top Fuel category. Despite the weather a good weekend racing was had by all. A comment from the UK racers was “the experience of racing in another country, on a different track and against other racers was totally unbelievable.” The Europeans were pleased to see us there and made us most welcome. A big thank you for the help from Rene van den Berg and his family and team, loaning us a gazebo for the bikes, looking after and feeding us. Pictured are Joe, Simon, Les, Andy and Stefan. Swift Snippets. 17th July: Our good friend Gareth Evans has a number of die-cast models for sale. There are seven funny cars, six dragsters, one pro stock bike and one pro stock car. For details see our Jeff Bull-sponsored Swap Meet pages. Ian Hook says the Street Eliminator team will be appearing at the Bug Jam this weekend: "We haven't quite finished the installation of the new engine yet but are 99% confident we will finish it at the track. This will be a no-nitrous test session for us but, if all goes well, we'll be looking to go to Shakey at the end of August with a new nitrous system and look for some serious ETs." Web site updates. 17th July: The latest entry in FIA European Top Fuel Dragster Champion Andy Carter's Race Blog, written by Carter Motorsport's Marketing and PR Manager and Eurodragster.com sponsor Dan Welberry, includes Andy's recent victory at the FHRA Nitro Nationals at Alastaro and a trip to another form of motorsport you won't normally read much about on this site. Also included is news about Andy's son Albert's karting activities. As ever you can check out the latest Blog update by clicking here or by clicking on the Racer Blogs link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. Peter Donaldson's web site has been updated with 93 pics from Shakespeare County Raceway's Mini Showdown & Test & Tune last Sunday. Our good friend Christer Abrahamson has sent us a video preview of the Börlange Street Open, to which Eurodragster.com editor Tog is currently travelling. Selkämaa gets own record. 
16th July:
Top Fuel Bike racers DB-Team Selkämaa’s first appearance of the season at the recent FHRA Nitro Nationals at Alastaro in Finland resulted in their very first six second time. Kai Selkämaa made a great run in the second qualifying round on Friday with a 6.975s/311.55km/h and so he became only the third Finnish rider ever who has run a six second time.
The racing is always exciting and our record time at Alastaro didn’t come that easy. In the only qualifying round on Friday we ran an extremely soft setup as we just wanted to do some testing with the bike. However, during this run, oil pressure fell caused by a broken oil filter. That resulted in broken crankshaft bearings, so we had to take apart the whole motor and rebuild it. The team worked really hard overnight and during the next day and it was at the last minute we managed to get the bike in shape and ready for the second qualifying round on Saturday. On this run, Kai broke his own record and was finally placed fourth in qualifying. Before Sunday’s first round of eliminations DB-Team Selkämaa felt very confident. The six second qualifying time had been made on an extremely soft set up and there was still plenty of room for improvement. We faced Rene van den Berg from the Netherlands and Kai was clearly leading all the way up to the 1/8 mile. Unfortunately after four seconds, nitro pressure on the bike dropped to zero without warning due a failure of the cut off switch and so the engine didn’t get any fuel. So Rene passed him and won the run with a 7.650s. Despite not getting any further in the first round of eliminations and all the technical problems, we can after all be quite happy with our performance at Alastaro. At this race the bike was running straight and it’s definitely got potential for even better times. We’re planning to attend Mantorp in Sweden, NitrOlympX in Hockenheim in Germany and even the Extreme Weekend in Hungary. In case we could manage it financially, it would be nice to go to Santa Pod in UK as well! Photo courtesy and © Marko Pikkarainen. Spiderman gets "The Energy". 16th July: Following on from yesterday's news item, Martin Curbishley has unfortunately had to relinquish his driving duties at this weekend's Bug Jam in the Kick Energy Super Mod class and in his place will be Jon Webster. Martin said: "There was only one man for the job and we were thrilled when Jon accepted, we think Sumo is the only class he hasn't driven in! Big thank you to Jon and sorry for messing up your weekend off Jeanette." VMCC Festival of 1001 Bikes. 16th July: The Vintage Motor Cycle Club is the largest motorcycle club in the world, apparently, and organise many different events but one that is very special is the annual Festival of 1001 Bikes, held at Mallory Park Race Circuit every year, writes Ian Turburville. The event hosts many activities over the weekend, all of which can be seen on their comprehensive web site, www.vmcc.net/1000bikes/index.htm and there is something for everyone. The sprinting section of the club saw team Turboville in action last October at the 50th anniversary sprint at Santa Pod Raceway, and decided I was definitely on their wave length with my big ol' Harley Davidson type bike. The highlight of the festival each year is when they stop all the circuit action and put on a sprinting display along the main start-finish straight. They wanted something special this year to round off their straight line sessions and decided I was it! I readily agreed to do it as it promised to be a great biking weekend and a chance to do something a bit different. The festival turned out to be absolutely fantastic, great family fun, well organised and so much to see and do. The sprint section had a dedicated marquee with a display of historic racing machines from the formative years of UK drag racing and sprinting. The stars in the line up were the mighty 'Hog Slayer' of TC Christianson and its English counterpart 'Pegasus', both on loan from the National Motorcycle Museum. I felt honoured to be in such esteemed company. We made our pit just across from this display and got the bike ready to go, then I went and inspected the track to see what I had let myself in for. First I walked it a couple of times and then I rode up it on my 1960 Duo Glide to see just how bumpy it was. I decided that there was a viable line up the middle and that there was indeed no grip whatsoever, as expected. I had never done anything like this before and was very cautious about damaging my motor again, I have had my three incidents this year already. My good friend Brian Chapman spent some time with me and we talked over the options, after all, back in the day, when Brian was king, it was the norm for drag bikes to smoke the full quarter. Joe and I set about taking all the fuel and clutch out of the bike in order to get at least some power to the track and not over-rev the motor. We spent the whole of Friday and Saturday surrounded by curious enthusiasts, many of whom had never seen a drag bike before. We explained the sport and how the bike worked whilst handing out Santa Pod literature and displaying a pile of broken motor parts on our 'Offerings to the Gods of Speed' table. They all seemed genuinely impressed but most were convinced that we were just bullshitting, that is until we fired it up on Sunday! You could see the collective coin drop after that; quite funny. The first session was at 12.30 and the paddock cleared as people scrambled over the bridge to get a view point at the fence on the other side of the track. We wheeled the bike out on to the corner of Gerard's (I think) and turned it around to face back up the straight the wrong way. I suddenly became aware that there were rather a lot of people staring fixedly at us. Oh my god - this was a recipe for disaster, I could feel it in my bones. The track officials did not want me to do a big burn out as it would have left a sticky patch of rubber right on the entrance to the corner, not good for the following weekend's round of BSB. The VMCC Sprinters finished their display, most enjoyable, quickly removed the straw bales and fire extinguishers from the middle of the track, gave me the thumbs up, and ran like hell! The place went silent; no pressure then. I gave Joe the nod and we fired Mr. Spokehead up letting it sit and idle for a minute. Oh well, I had no idea what to expect but it was time to 'suck it and see' so I straddled the bike and Joe lowered me to the asphalt; it was show time. I grabbed a handful of front brake and flicked the throttle once to clean the slick. This just pushed the front tyre along the track until it smoked too. We backed up a bit and I waved Joe off, he looked nervous too. Oh well, here we go, visor down, wrist up, chest on backbone and snap the throttle to half way whilst holding my breath. The big 'Overkill' motor responded instantly and span the fat back slick right up, then suddenly got hot and started to grip a little. I shot down the middle of that track at a pretty good rate smokin' the tyre all the way to the bridge in a dead straight line leaving a great black stripe, awesome. I shut it off quick and gently fed on the brakes but the front tyre decided that it was just not going to hold the road and tried to wash out, eeek! I went down onto my mid chassis wheel for an instant and wrestled the bike back upright before coming to a stop at the apex of the intersection of the track that goes up into the hairpin. No way was I going to try to negotiate that. The guys in the ambulance were all clapping and laughing so I guessed that I did ok. On our return to the pits there was a rather large crowd waiting with even more questions. Time to turn the bike around and check it out. Brian popped in and with a big smile, gave me a pat on the back and said 'well done young man'; all was cool. Our second session was the closing act of the day and we decided to just repeat what we had done earlier as it worked so well. This time I was more settled as I knew what to expect. Just as we started the bike it started to spit with rain and, used to the strict regime at the drag strips where rain on a glued track is lethal, thought I was going to get shut down. Oh no, this was the VMCC and this was historic Mallory Park, we had a show to put on, so before it could rain proper, I nailed it again. Result, another perfect run exactly over the first black stripe, but no stopping issues this time. Now that was what I call fun! I just hoped I looked like Alf Hagon smoking the quarter again and was told that I did a fair impression. A brilliant event and a great weekend thanks to the VMCC Sprint Section, so thanks to them for inviting me. There were so many beautiful old bikes there that I couldn't start to tell you about them so just go to the web site www.vmccsprint.co.uk and check them out or, better still, go along to one of their events. Me, I am joining this wonderful organisation. Now where can I get a vintage drag bike from? Making ready the Assault. 15th July: Crew Chief Wayne Dupuy tells us that it has been very busy in the workshops of Swiss Top Fuel Dragster racer and Eurodragster.com News sponsor Urs Erbacher. "I have been here in the USA getting the new car back in shape for Urs to come back over here to try to get an NHRA win for all of Europe with Team Erbacher", says Wayne. "It's been a little bit of a struggle because of hard times around the world. We're still seeking sponsors and rebuilding besides writing press releases and packing containers for Team Erbacher's assault on Europe at Mantorp Park and Hockenheim with the 2007 FIA Championship car. ©Eurodragster.com 
"All in all it's been a tough month to make Team Erbacher a success. The container was due to arrive in Urs' shop in Switzerland yesterday and I will be there too to get things ready to go to Mantorp Park. Time is running out for those fans who want to be a part of the Kings of Nitro and Team Erbacher 2009 European Assault Tour in Sweden and Germany." An energetic Kicking for Curbishley. 
15th July: UK Super Modified racer Martin
Curbishley is pleased to announce that the team has secured sponsorship for the rest of the season from
Global Brands Limited, who produce and distribute the VK brand of drinks
including vodkas, beers and energy drinks. Martin will be sponsored under the Kick Energy brand.
"As you may be aware VK, as a brand, sponsor many other forms of motorsport and we are pleased that we are the ones to introduce Global Brands to drag racing in Europe", says Martin. "Steve Perez, the CEO of the company. is a true petrol head and he competes in the FIA World Rally Championships in a Ford Focus and the National MSA Series with historic vehicles such as Escorts, Porsche 911's and the Lancia Stratos. Hopefully, if his racing commitments don't clash with the FIA European Finals, Steve will be joining us to witness first hand Top Fuel and all the other FIA classes. ©Eurodragster.com "To show their commitment to us and our fellow Super Modified racers Global Brands have agreed to sponsor this round at the Bug Jam with the winner receiving £100. Global Brands will be sponsoring another round of racing later in the year where there will also be competitions to win product, merchandise and freebies for the crowd. "We would also like to say a big Thank You to Neil Hunter for all his help and encouragement this year. We are looking to pick up the pace this weekend as we have some new parts on the car." Another best for Maksar. 15th July: The popular Malta Drag Racing Association Night Event took place last weekend at Hal-Far Raceway, kicking off on Friday night with a thundrous event full of adrenaline. Vehicles from all over the island performed in front of a large crowd of enthusiasts who flocked to Hal-Far to watch the speed demons. Once again it was the Maksar Racing Team who stole the show with their record-holding drag truck, writes Martin Agius: With new modifications on trial, the team dedicated most of its time to set-up. From the first run things looked promising as a new speed record of 136 mph was achieved. On the second run of the day, elapsed times got closer to the nine-second barrier, with a record-breaking 10.1-second run. That's 0.3 seconds quicker than the previous record, and in a sport measured in milliseconds is considered as a huge step. ©Eurodragster.com Another amazing result was achieved when the team decided to challenge the clock running the truck on diesel fuel only without the use of Nitrous. The truck roared down the track and stopped the clock at 10.5/130. Judging by the truck's telemetry, the team is not yet convinced that they have made the most of the new modifications, and so will keep working to sort out a few minor issues and set-up changes to improve on their amazing results. As always, the MDRA night events provide a spectacle which gets everyone off their seats. The team thanks all those who showed up on the night and the MDRA Committee for a well organized event. They are looking forward to the next event on the 21st-22nd August and to hopefully edging closer to a new level and class. Kröger reverts to Super Comp. 
15th July: Germany's Ove Kröger originally planned to participate in the German
Super Pro ET Challenge this year, and in Super Comp at big events at Mantorp and Hockenheim. After gearbox
troubles at the Test and Tune at Luckau in April and ongoing trouble at Drachten, Hot Rod Ove decided to
drop his Super Pro ET plans and concentrate on Super Comp in 2009, writes Markus Münch.
After a great drag racing-style "We all help you to put your ride back on the track" at Drachten 1, where nearly every German participant plus some very helpful Dutch hands worked together to fix his gearbox an bring Ove back for qualifying on Saturday and eliminations on Sunday, he was very pleased even with a first round exit in Super Comp, cause the car was working well again and he only lost by a couple of centimetres. At the Grand Nationals at Luckau Ove also faced Gerd Habermann in the first round of SC and lost again against thhat weekend's Super Comp winner. ©Eurodragster.com Ove is now prepared for Mantorp Park where he will be mixing it up with the Scandinavians, and he is also aiming for Super Comp victory at the NitrolympX. Ove would like to thank his sponsors and supporters True Fan Merchandising, Exhaust Coating, BZ Automobile Lübeck, Geissler GMBH, and Engelage Bros Racing Engines. You can check out new picture galleries and other updates at Hot Rod Ove's web site at www.hotrodove.com. What's on this weekend. 15th July: The Gold Town Dragrace takes place at Fällfors, Skellefteå, Sweden this Friday to Sunday. Organised by SHRA Skellefteå, the race is a round of the Nordic Drag Racing Series and Toyo Scandinavian Dragracing Series High Five Points. Classes include Top Doorslammer and all NDRS Sportsman classes. Racing takes place on Friday from 14.00-19.00, Saturday from 09.30-18.00 and Sunday from 09.30-16.00. Admission is SEK 50 Friday, SEK 120 Saturday and SEK 120 Sunday with weekend admission SEK 200 and 50% off for under-sixteens and free admission for under-twelves. The entry list can be found at www.tsds.se/event/startlist/id/8 and event details and, after the weekend, results are at www.shraskelleftea.se. Also in Sweden Borlänge Drag Racing Club hosts the Borlänge Street Open at Dala Airfield on Saturday and Sunday. Classes include Junior Dragster, Super Street, Super Gas, Super Comp, Comp, Street Bike, and Super Gas Bike. The race is a round of the NDRS and more details can be found at www.dragracing.se. Eurodragster.com will be posting 600 SEK for the best burnout of the weekend. At Bitburg, Germany, on Saturday and Sunday is Summer Battle #5 organised by Flugplatz Bitburg. Cars and bikes will be racing in brackets and more details can be found at www.1on1-motorsports.de/mambo45. ©Eurodragster.com In Central Europe, Bechyne in the Czech Republic hosts Round 4 of Czech National Championship plus the Pazout Motomejdan Show on Friday to Sunday. This is one of the largest bike shows and the organisers are offering substantial incentives for race teams to join the show. For further details see www.motomejdan.com/en/dragster.php. Borsk, Poland hosts Round 2 of 4 in the Gecko Cup on Sunday. Borsk Airfield is surrounded by beautiful scenery with forests and a huge lake. Water sports (windsurfing, sailing, diving) and sandy beaches provide an opportunity to relax before and after race day. In the one day event, qualifying is from 08:00 to 13:00 and racing from 13:00 to 18:00. More details are at www.sss.org.pl. Bug Jam 23 takes place at Santa Pod Raceway on Friday to Sunday. Bug Jam hosts Championship rounds of Super Modified, Sportsman ET, B&H Automotive/LA Racing Parts Street Eliminator, Volkswagen Drag Racing Club classes, Outlaw Flat Four and Outlaw Anglia plus Run What You Brung and demonstrations together with a huge amount of off-track entertainment. You can find full details on the excellent official Bug Jam web site at www.bugjam.co.uk and you can check out the official entry list by clicking here. Swift snippets. 15th July: Racers attending Bug Jam please remember that if you wish to take part in the Run What You Brung sessions then you will need to present your DVLC licence at the signing-on office. Your Competition licence only covers qualifying and eliminations and will not be accepted for RWYB. ©Eurodragster.com Marc and Nikki Fossey have been in touch to ask us to wish a big Happy 19th Birthday for today (Wednesday) to Jamie 'Clutch King' Willis. No sooner said than done; have a great day Jamie. Web site updates. 15th July: Our good buddy Markus Ek has updated his photographic site with pictures from the FHRA Nitro Nationals at Alastaro. You can check out Markus' pictures at www.mek.nu. "Special thanks to Kendall Racing for the trip, and to Hägglund Racing for roof over my head and the food in my stomach", adds Markus. ©Eurodragster.com Rostgaard: End of the road? 
14th July: Danish Top Fuel dragster racer Tommy Rostgaard says that his participation
in next week's Veidec Festival could be in doubt. Tommy had an expensive start to the season when he suffered
a crash in licencing necessitating a rebuild, and after gaining his licence in Finland he did not win any
qualifying money.
"After my early exit at Santa Pod, there was a lot of work to do on the Top Fueller before running in Finland", says Tommy. "I lived in Stig Neergaard's garage for four weeks but with a great deal of help from Stig and the team I was ready to complete my licencing runs in Finland. ©Eurodragster.com "I got my licence in Finland but due to a communication problem I was not able to participate in the FIA event. It is a pity because the car was running well and I had the fifth best qualifying time in Finland. So now I have noticed that it is looking bad for my participation at Mantorp Park because the crash was expensive and I got no money in Finland. "If anyone would like to help with a little sponsorship support, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me at dat@private.dk. It is not a large amount I need so everyone is welcome. You can have your name on the car or whatever you want, Tommy 'Robin Hood' Rostgaard is ready to race for you and to take Sir Andy the King and the real Stig out of the game." 
HKS Drag Series lift-off.14th July: Everyone loves a good wheelie, and this video grab shows HKS Street racer Roy Ashby putting even Ronnie Picardo to shame. Rick Cuthbert of Santa Pod Raceway tells us that Roy's Toyota MR2 has treaded tyres and the original four-cylinder, two-litre engine, which makes this lofty wheelstand all the more impressive. After the run Roy said coolly "I don't think my launch control was dialled in quite right". Amazingly, nothing was broken and Roy went on to take the runner-up spot for the class at the weekend's Rotorstock. HKS Drag Series winners at the weekend were as follow: ©Eurodragster.com HKS Drag Series FWD Winner: Neil Knight, Honda Civic Runner Up: Douggie Gemmell, Honda Civic HKS Drag Series Street Winner: Jeff Ludgate, Nissan Skyline Runner Up: Roy Ashby, Toyota MR2 HKS Drag Series Pro Winner: Chris Impey, Mazda RX7 Runner Up: Leon Green, Toyota Supra The video of Roy Ashby's wheelie can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg4AZAgjsc4 but be warned that there is some bad language on the soundtrack, and you can find out all about the HKS Drag Series at www.japdragseries.co.uk. Swift snippets. 
14th July: Swedish Top Doorslammer and Pro Mod racer Adam Flamholc found
the twenty four-hour trip to Pite Dragway worthwhile when he won Top Doorslammer at the weekend's
Midnight Sun Internationals. "We qualified number one and went all the way to the final
against the points leader Niclas Andersson", says Adam. "We managed to beat him
with a 0.036 light and a 6.204/233. Now we are only one round win from the number
one spot in the Championship."
Johnny Nilsson and Kenneth Lorentzon have done a deal with King Knut Söderqvist to buy all of Knut's remaining race parts including the Carbon By Design trailer. Johnny and Kenneth will be bringing all of the spares to the Veidec Festival so if you need any parts then they can be found at the Tre Kronor Nostalgia FC pit at Mantorp Park, or E-Mail info@autoart.net. ©Eurodragster.com Congratulations to Stuart Meads who reclaimed the title of Quickest Mini in the World at Shakespeare County Raceway at the weekend with a 9.79/144 mph smashing Nathan Dobson's 2008 record of 9.9 seconds. "The car was not running well and was misfiring at the top end", says Stuart, "so hopefully if we can sort this out we will see some low nines." Our good buddy Alan Currans has been contacted by Nicky Angel, who would like to hear from anyone who has information, and better yet pictures, of his father Clive Angel. "Clive was active in the world of sprinting during the 1960s and 1970s, first on a motorcycle and then on a three wheeler after he lost his right hand!", says Alan. "Clive broke five world and national records in the 750 cc Cyclecar class. Nicky wants to put something together for his dad's 70th birthday which is coming up later in the year". If you can help then please get in touch with Alan at alan@currans.info. Editor's note: Today's news update was curtailed by someone in Tog's office who thinks that lunchtime meetings are a good idea. Tune back tomorrow for the latest from Urs Erbacher's pit, news of an astounding performance by the Agius Brothers' Maxr drag truck on Malta, what's on this weekend and more, and please keep those news items coming to news@eurodragster.com. Light the candles... 
13th July: The US' Jerry Lackey celebrated forty years in German drag racing at the MSTO Grand
Nationals which was held at Jerry Lackey Raceway in Luckau (near Berlin) last week, writes Andrea Kloss:
Jerry Lackey has been promoting drag racing in Germany very successfully since 1969. Jerry was one of the five men who got Hockenheim started in 1986 and this year he is returning to the NitrOlympX as Race Director. ©Eurodragster.com Over the years Jerry has managed very successfully to keep drag racing going in Germany. Whenever a track was closed down he always managed to come up with a new track. It all started in 1969 at the American airbase at Fliegerhorst near Hanau (Frankfurt); when the Americans no longer permitted drag racing at the airbase in the early 1980s Jerry moved the race operation to the American airbase at Giebelstadt near Würzburg. Later Jerry teamed up with German Jet Funny Car driver Sami Tosuner and started the MZA Racetrack in Luckau, which has since been named after Jerry. Jerry's team has been loyal to him for many years and the German drag racing scene hopes that Jerry and his team will keep promoting drag racing in Germany for many years to come. 
Smax hits Edmonton.13th July: Ex-pat UK Top Fuel Dragster racer Smax Smith says that after damage suffered at Tulsa, the Leverich family were not originally planning to take their Top Fuel Dragster to Edmonton for the IHRA Rocky Mountain Nationals in Edmonton: We got the call saying only seven teams had entered so it seemed a pretty good plan to get there and try to qualify for $10,000. Our team really needs the funds for spares and operating costs. I drove to Michigan on Saturday morning with my fresh trusty SSI blower and fitted it to the car, and went through as much as possible to prepare for Edmonton. After fitting the new clutch at the track we decided to do a 330 foot squirt to see where we were at. This went perfectly but we wore 180th off the clutch even with 135 g primary weight, so we decided to add fifteen grammes more to pick up the sixty foot time and reduce wear. We planned a half pass for the second session, but we only made it to 330 feet when the clutch exploded (again) and melted itself. We had my son Aidee, Gary and Dan Leverich, Bob and John and I thrashing to get the car turned around for the first round because we had qualified. ©Eurodragster.com We thrashed until 4:30 until the generator died, went for a couple of hours' kip and got up again at 7 am. Sooo tired. We had to cut the stands off to remove the clutch and cut off the weights on the lockups to remove them. We found six more primary fingers but didn't have lockups so removed them all and took off timers etc and hung 300 gramms on the primary fingers for the first round. We did the burnout OK but the throttle stop broke - I only planned short a burnout anyhow. All seemed OK in pre-stage so I staged against #1 qualifier Terry McMillan but at the hit we lit the tires and backfired the blower, so no there was no point pedalling but it was a bummer seeing Terry doing the same, but he recovered and ran a mediocre 6.50. It was a great weekend, a top crowd and we learned a lot. We're off to the local track at Grand Bend this weekend so stay tuned. Swift snippets. 13th July: The latest spy picture to arrive at the offices of Eurodragster.com (below left) came with the words "Nearly, almost, but not quite". If you know any more, or if you would like to send your own spy picture, then drop us a line at eurodragster.com@btinternet.com. 
Andrea Kloss sent us a sequence of pictures taken by HARA photographer Christopher Lange of Rolf Vogel's Pro Mod going for a wild ride at Jerry Lackey Raceway. Click on the picture above right to see the full sequence. Eurodragster.com kommer att dela ut 600 SEK till den som gör den bästa brunouten vid helgens Borlänge Street Open på Dala Airport. Vinnaren kommer att utses av speakern Christer Abrahamson tillsammans med Eurodragsters nyhetsredaktör Tog, som kommer att finnas på plats som fotograf. Vinnaren kommer att presenteras och belönas på söndag eftermiddag. De tävlande behöver inte ha Eurodragster.com-dekaler för att kunna vinna men om någon vill ha dekaler är det bara att fråga Tog på banan. Eurodragster.com will be awarding 600 Swedish Kroner for the best burnout at this weekend's Borlange Street Open at Dala Airport. The winner will be decided by commentator Christer Abrahamson and Eurodragster.com News Editor Tog, who will be photographing at Borlange, and will be announced and awarded on Sunday afternoon. Racers do not have to carry Eurodragster.com decals to win the award, but if you would like decals then please ask Tog at the track (Thanks to Erik Zettervall for the Swedish version). ©Eurodragster.com Eurodragster.com Reporter and Photographer Kirstie would like to thank everyone for their kind E-Mails, commiserations and words sent for her birthday on Saturday. "A very big thanks to Lizz McCarthy for the birthday serenade!", says Kirstie. "My house now resembles a florist-cum-balloon factory and reminds me on a regular basis that the twenties are no more. However I like to think I'm still clinging on...being twenty nine and twelve months is no different to being twenty nine, eleven months and thirty days!" (So you're saying I was right? - Ed). Bug Jam Perfect Awards. 13th July: This weekend's Bug Jam at Santa Pod Raceway is the the latest event in the 2009 Eurodragster.com Perfect Awards scheme. £150 is on offer for perfect performance.
The Eurodragster.com/Speedflow Perfect Light Award has been rolled over to £75 after it was unclaimed
at the UK Truck Show. The money will be awarded to the first racer this weekend to record a Reaction Time of 0.000 seconds. The Perfect Light
Award is available all racers in all classes during qualifying and eliminations (not RWYB), but will only be awarded for the first perfect light of the event.
If not won this weekend then the Award will be increased to £100 for the Veidec Festival; if it is won then it will be reset to £50 for the
Veidec Festival. The Perfect Light Award is presented in association with performance hose and fitting manufacturer Speedflow
whose web site you can find at www.speedflow.co.uk.
Although the Perfect Light Award goes to three places, we will not pay out for red lights with zeroes in the first three decimals since a foul is a foul however far in the first non-zero digit may be. So a reaction time of 0.0001 will win you the money (if you're first to do it), but a reaction time of -0.0001 will not. Decals are not formally required for the Perfect Light Award but of course we appreciate it: you can get Eurodragster.com decals at the track from any Eurodragster.com staff member. ©Eurodragster.com
The Eurodragster.com/Gold RV Perfect ET Award has been rolled over to £75 after it was unclaimed
at the UK Truck Show. The money will be awarded to the first racer this weekend to run to the thousandth on their dial-in or index. The Perfect
ET Award is available this weekend during qualifying and eliminations in Sportsman ET, VW Pro, and VW Sportsman, but will only be awarded for
the first perfect run of the event. If not won this weekend then the Award will be increased to £100 for the Veidec Festival; if it is won then it
will be reset to £50 for the Veidec Festival. The Perfect ET Award is presented in association with RV sales and service
specialists Gold RV whose web site you can find at www.goldrv.co.uk.
To be eligible to collect the Perfect ET Award, racers are required to carry Eurodragster.com/Gold RV Perfect ET decals, one on each side of the bike. If you pull this weekend's first Perfect ET but are not carrying decals then there will be no discussion; we will not pay out and the next person to pull a Perfect ET will get the money assuming that they are carrying decals. The decals will be available from the Signing On office as soon as it opens on Saturday morning; please note that, as is usual with contingency schemes, racers are responsible for requesting or picking up decals when signing on. A list of required decals per class is always on display in the Signing On office. Please note that because the Eurodragster.com staff member with the cashpoint card is in Sweden this weekend, winners will not be paid at the track. Details will be taken and a cheque sent to the winner after the event. Web site updates. 
13th July: Richard Smith has updated his Fotopic gallery with shots
from the latest event at York Raceway. You can check out Richard's excellent pictures at
richardsmith.fotopic.net.
©Eurodragster.com Also updating on Fotopic is Jeni Long who has posted pictures of Saturday's action at the Mini Showdown at Shakespeare County Raceway at www.jenilong.fotopic.net. Our good buddy Markus Münch has been busy updating his Lonesome Dragstripper Smugmug gallery with shots both from this year's first event at Drachten and from the recent Grand Nationals at Luckau. You can take a look at dragstripper.smugmug.com/Dragster. Another good buddy, Alan Currans, has updated his excellent The Acceleration Archive with a twenty fifth gallery of readers' shots containing thirty five pictures from yesteryear. The new gallery is available via What's new at www.theaccelerationarchive.co.uk. Euro Top Gas Round 4 review. 
11th July: The fourth Euro Serie Super Twin
Top Gas Championship round took place over the eighth mile at Luckau in Germany last weekend, writes Herman Jolink:
The whole weekend was very hot, over 30 degrees, but thunder and a lot of rain harmed the schedules on Saturday afternoon. We had some testing on Saturday and then two instead of three or four qualifying runs. Qualifying:
On Sunday we started at 10:00 because it was possible that we would get some rain although we were lucky and the whole day was dry. A good crowd gave racers some nice applause after each run and there where 104 competitors in the car and bike classes. ©Eurodragster.com Round 1: Thiel 4.843/229 beat Jolink 5.819/197 reaction Jolink 0.094 and from Thiel 0.183. At the start the Ducati's back tyre went to the right and the Ducati went to the left, Jolink did a lot of body leaning and had the Ducati under control, very bad traction all weekend. Niessen 5.278/208 beat Heitmann 5.483/200 reaction from Heitmann 0.099 and from Niessen 0.127. Niklas was first alternate in the ladder and came in for Olesen, Niklas 6.996/178 winning beat v d Boer 5.907/194 red light - the slider clutch was not set up right as it was all new for the v d Boer Team. v d Werken 5.675/196 bye run, Albers had damaged relays so the engine didn't started. Semi finals: Thiel 4.873/229 beat Niessen 5.342/206. v d Werken 6.281/178 beat Niklas 6.684/181, v d Werken had a lot of traction problems and got off the throttle almost crossing the centre line. Finale: Ronald v d Werken NL on 2622 V-Twin 5.763/182, Jesper Jensen Thiel had high revs after the burnout and shut off, after checking the engine it was found that a weld seam on the fuel injection tube was broken. So, as most of the time, a suprising winner in Top Gas. Top Gas Championship:
10th-12th July: Drachten NL 14th-16th August: Hockenheim D 21st-23rd August: Finals Drachten NL All the York winners. 11th July: Chris Murty writes that it was a fabulous weekend of solid drag racing action at the UK's York Raceway last weekend: The first ever Ladies' Race went perfectly despite one little incident, but on the whole it was fabulous. There were sixteen cars most of which were first-timers and included a wide variety of cars from American cars and Beetles albeit tuned down. It was run with a three rounds of bye-run qualifying then in to the elimination stages. Predictably the final was two regular racers, Clare Johnson in her Oldsmobile against Sam Carter-Chiles in her early Dodge pickup, with Sam taking the win. ©Eurodragster.com The American Power Tour round went to Dave Billadeau with a 10.1681 and a 10.0549. The Ford Shootout was a one-round qualifier with a trophy awarded to the fastest street-legal and fastest overall. Pel Norman in the Shogun Capri took the win for fastest overall running 10.2 whilst a blue Mustang from Team Taz took the win for fastest street-legal with a 10.6. American Super Stock was pushing for a thirty two car field on Sunday and surpassed that with thirty six cars, making it the largest all-American car field in Europe. Sam Carter-Chiles stepped up again to take the win. Richard Johnson took the win in Air-Cooled Eliminator, Howard Holmes got to the final of Super Stock but took the win in Sportsman ET in his brand new Dodge RT Estate. James Hughs took the win in Hot Rod Challenge. Andy Hadfield with his Model T and John Osborne with his 100E each took a win each in the National Street Car Challenge and Daz Chandler in his grey and black Beetle took the win in Pro ET. Swift snippets. 11th July: Santa Pod Raceway's radio station Nitro FM 96.2 is opening up its music libary - sponsored by Lucas Oils and Carter Motorsport - at next weekend's Bug Jam. To help your party and barbecues go with a swing, all you need to do is contact the studio with your two favorite party tunes or anthems with your name or club and Nitro FM will do the rest. Either text POD plus your selection to 88222, E-Mail nigel@nitrofm.co.uk, or call in to the studio. Nitro FM will be on the air from Thursday evening. ©Eurodragster.com UK readers with access to Motors TV (Sky 413, and other suppliers) will be able to see TV coverage of the FIA Main Event starting this weekend. The single one-hour programme is scheduled to be broadcast on Sunday 12th at 19:05; Monday 13th at 14:00; Wednesday 15th at 15:00; Thursday 16th at 19:05; Friday 17th at 17:00; Saturday 18th at 17:00; Monday 20th at 06:00; Tuesday 21st at 11:00 and 18:00; and Wednesday 22nd at 01.00. We have a birthday on the Eurodragster.com staff today: please join us in wishing Pit Reporter and Photographer Kirstie a very Happy Birthday. It is in fact one of those special birthdays but gentlemen don't ask, or tell. Have a lovely day Kirstie. Unlimited sponsorship for Bennetts. 
11th July: Thinking about the powerplant for their Bantam altered led to a new sponsorship deal for the UK's Bennett
Racing altered team, says Luke Bennett:
The original plan was a simple carbed Big Block Chevy. But a sensible decision was made to opt for a supercharged methanol-burning Chevy. It makes the most sense: by the time I added up the cost of a decent carb and a good inlet manifold we thought we might as well go blown. It also makes sense because we have a few spares knocking about and the knowledge to do it. The next step was to contact Kenny at Superpower Unlimited (also a sponsor of Eurodragster.com News - Ed) to enquire about some sponsorship for the altered. I had already struck up a good working relationship with him while building his new web site www.superpowerunlimited.co.uk, so I thought if you don't ask you don't get. So as of now Kenny has very kindly come up with a deal which suits us both: I get the use of a freshly-rebuilt 8/71 blower, inlet manifold and all the associated parts needed for a blower install, Kenny gets his company name on our race cars and on the Bennett Racing web site. ©Eurodragster.com Super Power Unlimited are no strangers to the drag racing scene, having been involved since with the Nostalgia Fuel Altered Association since its conception. They offer a truly American flavour for big inch engines and have built up a reputation for value and reliability within a diverse range of motor sports ranging from fast road cars to nitro-burning dragsters. All of their main parts are USA manufactured and assembly and building are carried out at their workshops to your specification. Their specialities include Big Block Chevy 454 ci to 706 ci and Ford 460 ci to 690 ci for street, strip or marine applications and also nitrous oxide injection, supercharging and turbocharging. For road car and club racing enthusiasts they have created the new Boss 302 ci engine with a displacement range up to 360 ci or 5.9 litres using the new Boss Motorsport 302 block as the foundation. All are custom built to suit many types of road or racing applications. They are also partners with most major supercharger specialists from the USA and can supply all their products with a full back-up service for all makes of Roots type Blowers from 4-71 street blowers up to Top Fuel 14-71 units. The aim is for the Bantam to be out early next year and it will most likely run in the Supercharged Outlaws and Super Pro ET, and at any other meetings at which we are not racing the Relentless Topolino in the NFAA. Web site updates. 11th July: Eurodragster.com Photo Editor Roger Gorringe has updated his Nitro Exposure web site with a small gallery of pictures from the second FIA and UEM European Drag Racing Championship round, the weekend's FHRA Nitro Nationals at Alastaro in Finland. The gallery features the Pro winners and most of the top qualifiers in Sportsman plus a selection of previously unpublished images from that event. Check out www.nitroexposure.co.uk. ©Eurodragster.com Sprout's Santa Pod sojourn. 
10th July: World AMA Pro Street Bike #2, the US' Walter Sprout, gave a good account of
himself and made many friends at the recent SPRC Summernationals at Santa Pod Raceway. Walter got in touch
with his report of his weekend at Santa Pod:
Things have been tough this year with the economy and less money in the kitty to get that Championship I should have had last year, so I've been taking some down time to reorganise, re-set the bike and get ready for the 2010 season. This summer though was special for me as I was given the opportunity to go over to England and race in their Super Street Bike class on Stephen Mead's US Pro Street-comparable bike. The rules for their SSB are more open than the US rules as they are allowed 2" ground clearance, no head light or tail light, multiple power adders, and no limitations to the power adders. They are allowed slider clutches, two steps, pretty much anything goes as compared to the US rules with 3" clearance, minimum bike and rider weights, one power adder, and working headlight. The facility we raced at was the world-renowned Santa Pod Raceway at their Summernationals event. They have a great facility comparable to any I have raced at, with a very top notch staff that have their stuff in order. It would be the first and only event I've ever been to where they were ahead of schedule! It was a bit confusing from what I'm used to as they Tech differently and use different terms to describe most of the process. For instance, we call it "Tech", they call it "Scrutineering". Kinda sounded like a bad doctor's visit, but it didn't hurt too bad. We call them "Test N Tune" days, they call them "Peak Performance Days". Lots to get used to in a hurry. The track itself was as good as any I've been on. It is actually a WWII airstrip converted so it has a few good bumps and a noticeable left camber about mid track. Traction was tricky and moved around as the day went on but was as sticky as any I've raced. The event coverage for bikes in the UK is second to none. Between Tog, Ian King, Ivan Sansom, Stephen Moon, and all the staff of Eurodragster.com and Dragracingonline.com, they cover everything equal from Top Fuel down to the bracket bikes, everybody gets exposure! Hell they even have a radio station (Nitro FM 96.2) with the best play-by-play I've ever heard with knowledgeable commentary and trivia of every class live all during the events! Great job guys! OK, now on to the bike. Stephen has a MoTeC equipped, home brewed turbo system (GT35R), AMS 1000, all the right chassis stuff from Terry McIntosh, Gann style clutch, Dave Beck turbo motor, with Worldwide Bearings specials in the bike. I met the crew during the week before the race and we could not have done it without them: Phil 'Paso' Steele, Bill 'The Fab Man' Chaplin, Terry Fear, thank you for all your help! 
We did the general set-up of the chassis and bike before the race and headed to the track for the TnT/PP Day. Friday was the teething day as a small
oil leak and a steering head problem took up most of our setup day as we sorted out the small problems and ran 7.60s while figuring it out. Saturday
qualifying started out with a spinning 7.71 and the steering locking up again. We sorted the steering finally and spent the next two qualifiers spinning
the tires trying to make bigger leaps in the qualifying order with the 7.71 taking us to #4 for race day.
After trying to overshoot it on Saturday, I did as I always do and settle in for a tune-up that I believe will go rounds as there is not enough time or runs to go quicker faster. I just need to be smooth, fast, and cut the light and we'll be OK. First round was a Nitrous bike, I cut a .05 light to his .10 and ran a smooth 7.56/191 to his 8.60 to win first round and get a base tune-up. Second round was Dave Smith's turbo bike, I turned the tyre off the line and cut a .09 light to his .13 and ran another 7.5/188.9 to Dave's 7.72 to win round two. Third round I had the multi-champion Steve "Ven" Venables for what they called "The match up of the event". Steve had ran a few .40s so I put a 7.4 tune-up in it and planned to kill the tree. We got up on the line, I dumped the clutch and "Wiiiiinnnngg!" to the Moon the RPMs went as it popped out of gear into neutral on the line! I looked down then looked over at the starter..."do-overs?" Our day was done with the potential round win as Ven ran off his pace with a 7.8. Congrats to Ven as he took the finals and the day to win the race. Great job Ven and a great racer! All-in-all now I think we had a fantastic weekend and it was a good race with great weather! At the time I was a little disappointed and expected to go faster quicker but as several wise people came by and pointed out "You're in another world, another time zone, on a bike you've never seen or ridden before, on a track you've never been to, giving up sixty pounds to the nearest rider, and were at the top of the field. What do you have to complain about?". Thank you for those kind words guys! I met so many wonderful people from the fans to the racers and track crew, they really gave me the Rock Star welcome! The food, the beer, I couldn't have asked for a greater experience and would go back in a heart beat! We are currently looking for sponsors for a return and a rematch, so if anyone wants some international exposure then here is your vehicle! ©Eurodragster.com French's new ride. 
10th July: UK Funny Bike racer Steve French very quickly got in touch to reveal that he
is the owner of the sleek-looking new bike featured in a spy picture on Wednesday. Steve explained to Eurodragster.com
that the old chassis was getting to be a bit of a handful on some runs, especially off a hard launch:
If there was any direction change or other problem then the chassis could not absorb it and the run became a bit too scary. Hence Chris Hall and I decided to glue some T45 together into a sort-of replica of his chassis. The chassis differences are hard to spot. My seat is one inch lower than his, or compared to my old bike, five inches lower. I sit in rather than on this one. The front loop is further forwards and a little smaller. The wheelbase is only 77" and Chris' is 80" but this will be changed up to 80" to suit the power output as and when required. ©Eurodragster.com The biggest and most obvious differences are the engine and body. Chris' are Suzuki, mine Kawasaki. The body was made by Dale Edmunds by chopping up of my original ZZR1100/ZX10 bodies to make a new mould. The tank shell is four inches longer, the seat five inches lower, and the rear section has lost some grooves to clear the tyre. The fairing is the top of a ZX12, aka Venables/Balchin Kawasaki. The engine will be my 1500 cc nitrous lump from last year. Once sorted high sixes are expected. The target race weight is 620 lb with the beer belly, much less without. Will hopefully be out on the new French Injection at the Open Sport Nationals in August or maybe a Run What You Brung before. Swift snippets. 10th July: Arrangörerna av Veidec Festival har bett oss publicera informationen om att inga husdjur är tillåtna på Mantorp Park under tävlingsdagarna. Vänligen lämna era husdjur hemma när ni kommer för att titta på eller deltaga i tävlingen. ©Eurodragster.com The organisers of the Veidec Festival Veidec Festival have asked us to remind readers that no pets are allowed at Mantorp Park during the race weekend. So please leave your pets at home when you go to watch or participate in the race. UK Supertwin racer Ian Turburville got in touch to remind us that Mr Spokehead will be performing at this weekend's Festival of 1000 bikes at Mallory Park. "Rain or shine it's going to be a great weekend with lots of drag race machinery on display along with all the other stuff!", says Turbo. More at www.vmcc.net/1000bikes/events_09.htm. The Allard Chrysler Action Group is now selling merchandise with all proceeds going to help the restoration of the Allard Chrysler dragster to fire-up condition. You can order your T-Shirt, prints, or other items at www.theaccelerationarchive.co.uk/acag/acag.html. Tog would like to wish his good buddy Malcolm Pellett a very Happy Birthday. Hope you have a good day Malc and we're very much looking forward to our cream cakes, plural. Web site updates. 10th July: In the latest entry in his exclusive Racer Blog, UK Top Methanol Dragster racer and Eurodragster.com sponsor Derek Flynn tells of an incredible bounce from zero to hero with victory at Alastaro. As ever you can check out the latest Blog update by clicking here or by clicking on the Racer Blogs link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. Bob Roberts has updated the web site of Eurodragster.com sponsor Andy Robinson Race Cars with a number of Pro Mod video clips from the weekend's FHRA Nitro Nationals at Alastaro. You can check out the video clips at www.robinson-race-cars.co.uk/indexfinland.htm. ©Eurodragster.com No Cacklefest at Goodwood this year but Sue Whyte tells us that NASCAR arrived at the Festival of Speed to mark the 50th anniversary of the Daytona International Speedway. Sue has updated her Fotopic gallery at suewhyte.fotopic.net with galleries of cars, bikes, Peter Fonda riding a replica of his chopper from Easy Rider and "Jesse James - well, being Jesse James". Enter the Fast Cat. 
9th July: Benni Voss tells us that last weekend's 21st Grand National Dragrace was a good event despite
qualifying being cut short by a thunderstorm which even broke the scoreboards after a lightning strike:
Pro ET had 21 entries, Super Pro had 13, these classes are really catching on. Pro ET had the top five within 0.1 seconds and the top seven in Super Pro ET within 0.7. No seven-second runs in Super Street Bike (yet), as both of the German Big CC bikes had problems. The event was won by Ondrej Klymciw from Czech Republic with his Big CC Turbo Busa in 8.3. The German Street Eliminator best was blasted into orbit when Micha "Fullspeed" Vogt ran 8.2/169 mph in his '55 Bel Air, on its second outing ever. There is more to come from the 554 BBC Procharged monster! Micha won SE with a 9.1 even though his first gear was not working. Junior Dragster had one of the closest races ever with a 0.0006 win margin in the final when Pirmin Schmid won over Thomas Weikum. ©Eurodragster.com Pro ET winner: Michael Maderer with SBC BMW Touring; Super Gas winner: Patrick Geng with Chevy Camaro; Top Gas winner: Ronald van de Werken (NL); Super Pro ET winner: Pascal Kohler with his Ford Thunderbird; PR winner: Werner Zudrell (Austria) with his Plymouth Barracuda; Super Comp winner: Gerd Habermann in his dragster; Comp Eliminator winner: Patricia Kaestner, who pushed her blown dragster over the start line when Björn Lähndorf's Le Mans didn't show up. Patricia's blown SBC motor would not start but she left the line "Under her own power". One of the highlights of the race was the roll-out of Zippel's Jaguar XKR doorslammer, he made some test runs which ended with a low eight and was very pleased. Power comes from the same 632 ci BBC which was in his Banana Too SG/SC Nova. To Zippel's and my knowledge this is the world's only Jaguar XKR dragster. Zippel won't be racing at Hockenheim because he will be crewing for Harry Sturhan's Pro Stocker, but he is planning more engine modifications for next season when he will enter Comp Eliminator with the Fast Cat. Down with a bump at Alastaro. 
9th July: The race track at Alastaro gave Norwegian Supertwin racer Hans Olav Olstad
some surprises and hard landings:
The entry list had eighteen bikes, six of those from Finland. It's nice to see the Supertwin class growing, welcome to all the new racers. With the good times from England we hoped to get a good grip. We got a good grip but also lost it. On the first qualifying run, the quickest time of the whole weekend at the eighth mile, 4.46/309 kmh. Then the wheel started spinning, lost traction and dropped a cylinder. Rolled from 250 metres to finish line and ended 7.06. Beaten by Per Bengtsson 6.92 and Lorenz Stäuble 6.89. Same story on the second qualifying run. Started to spin the wheel at 200 metres, lost traction and dropped down very hard, I hit the frame and cracked a rib bone. Job Heezen ran a nice 7.03 and pushed us down to fourth qualifying place. In the third qualifying run we took some power out of the engine, and we managed to hold traction up to 1000 feet. Then one cylinder dropped and we ran another 7.05. Lots of the bikes had problems this round and only Lorenz was faster at 7.03. Svein Olav Olstad managed to run quick enough to get in to the ladder in eighth place 8.35. In the first round of eliminations, Lorenz won when Svein Olav blew his engine. We had a thriller against Matti. Matti was first from the line and did a great sixty foot of 1.09. I was in front at the eighth mile, but had to let off the throttle because I was drifting towards the side wall. Matti was in front at 1000 feet, I gave it throttle again after straightening the bike, and crossed the finish line 0.004 seconds in front (27.05 cm - Ed). Matti broke his primary belt at 1000 feet. Ismo Mäenpää red light 8.630/235, winner Job Heezen 8.248/185. Martijn de Haas 8.799/174, winner Per Bengtsson 7.067/287. In the second round of eliminations Lorenz was first from the line, I tried to give it some throttle but something prevented me from opening it fully, and one cylinder dropped immediately. Lorenz had a easy win 7.16. Per ran a 7.16 and took out Job Heezen's 7.44. Per and Lorenz had another thriller of a race in the final. Lorenz was first from the line, but Per seemed to have a stronger bike and made a clean straight run, crossing 0.02 seconds in front of Lorenz. This was a really nice fight. We would like to congratulate Per on his first victory since 2003. Well done Per. At the moment Lorenz is 30 points ahead, Job 13 points, and Per 10 points. This is good for the Championship, which has three rounds left. The next event is at Mantorp Park in Sweden on 23rd-26th July, and we have faith in a for a good result as we race over the eighth mile at Mantorp Park and we had the quickest eighth mile at Alastaro. ©Eurodragster.com A Devil of a weekend. 9th July: After ten months away, UK Outlaw Anglia and Super Pro ET racer Lee Cohen made a return to the track at the FIA Main Event, but his first event of 2009 turned into a nightmare for The Devil as Lee ended up looking at the world upside down: On Thursday we completed all the checks and then she burst into life, such a great sound after ten months away! We noticed a couple of small leaks from the barrel valve but we got those sorted and then discovered an oil leak from the bottom pulley. While we pulled it all apart Kenny Coleman raced a new oil seal up for us (thanks Kenny) and we finally got it all back together at midnight, after which it was time for bed! Friday arrived, the car was finished and ready so we towed down the pairing lanes and into the burnout and the car stalled. I started it back up in gear and knocked my crew Nick flying, not a good start! So we took the car back and found that the inhibiter wires were on the wrong way round. We sorted that out and all seemed well. ©Eurodragster.com I came out for the next run and did a lovely burnout and went through on a 9.020 on an 8.99 dial in, good enough for #5 qualifier! Great! However, then it went off to the left, got out of control and ended on its roof for about one hundred and fifty yards. Luckily the repairs needed aren't too bad. We are getting parts together already, so it's just a matter of time. We have got another Pop body and the roof change is well underway. The engine is in good condition, which is the main thing - it just needs a major stripdown now! We raised £620 towards the rebuild which has come in very handy so The Devil will return! I would like to say a very big thank you to all the track guys and girls for all their help and assistance. Also to my sponsors Prolong Oil UK and County Wide Letting of Clacton-on-Sea, and last but not least to my crew, Nick, Martin, Josh, Andy, and Karen. Good's Rowland's Summernationals. 
9th July: Crew Chief Simon Rowland took over the driving duties of the
NGMotorsport Super Pro ET dragster at the SPRC Summernationals,
as usual driver Nick Good took on Crew Chief duties.
"As Simon was booked in for the Peak Performance Day on the Friday to put some shakedown runs on the new motor on his Comp Bike we decided to get the dragster to the track for an extra couple of passes prior to Saturday's qualifying", says Nick. "This proved a big advantage, as a 7.23 on a 7.20 dial-in and a 7.20 on a 7.18 dial-in on our last two qualifying runs put us into fourth spot in the ladder for Sunday's eliminations with some consistency. ©Eurodragster.com "Vince Gibbs had motor problems during qualifying so a first round solo and a tight win against Rod Harrison in round two meant that in the quarter-finals we were up against the man everyone is trying to catch this season, John 'Leadfoot' Everitt. Unfortunately Simon copied my performance against John in the quarters at the FIA Main Event and redlit. Not Simon's fault, as the car rolled on the transbrake which left him deep-staged. Needless to say John went on to win another event and, along with taking top spot in qualifying, he has left the rest of Super Pro ET chasing for second place in the Championship this year. Well done John. "Another great weekend's racing, great weather and great organisation from the SPRC crew to keep the racing ahead of schedule." Swift snippets. 9th July: 12:15 Due to late cancellations there are two spare places for tomorrow's (Friday's) Webster Race Engineering Test Day at Santa Pod Raceway. "If anybody is interested in some quality track testing then please contact us today on 01933 315236", says Ian Marshall. "Cars and bikes are welcome but on race tyres only." Many thanks to Yvonne Tramm and our very own Simon for sending us the post-UK Truck Show points standings in the 2009 UK National Drag Racing Championships and Santa Pod Racers Club Championships. You can check out the points on our Speedflow-sponsored Points Standings page by clicking here or by clicking on the Points Standings link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. 
The latest T-Shirt from C&P UK Nitro is this very stylish piece
for Gasser fans. The shirt comes in white, in sizes S to XXL, and costs £15 plus £2.50 from
colinhotrodts@btinternet.com.
©Eurodragster.com Anna Stanley and Joe Kellett will be representing the UK in Junior Dragster at the Veidec Festival at Mantorp Park on 23rd-26th July. "We have wanted to race in Sweden for some time now and feel that with his current standings in the UK Championship Joe has grown in confidence, so we thought we would give it a shot", says Joe's dad Pete. "I'd like to thank Paula Marshall for sorting out licences at short notice as it was only decided that we would go after the Summernationals." Pete and Kim Kellett also asked us to thank Richard, Julie, Peter and Holly Walters for inviting them to Peter Walters' eighteenth birthday party. "A truly superb weekend was had by all", says Pete, "especially the dip in the swimming pool which set a new trend as everyone was fully clothed!" What's on this weekend. 9th July: Malta's National Drag Racing Event 3, a Night Event, takes place at Hal-Far Raceway tomorrow (Friday) and Saturday. Organised by the Malta Drag Racing Association, the race includes car and bike and details can be found at www.maltadragracing.com. SHRA Luleå hosts the legendary Midnight Sun International from tomorrow until Sunday at Pite Dragway in Piteå, Sweden. The race is a round of the Toyo Scandinavian Drag Racing Series SP championship and a full field of all Sportsman classes is shown on the TSDS web site at www.tsds.se. Timo Lehtimäki's Top Fuel Dragster will be making demo runs at 14:00 and 19:00 on Saturday and 15:00 on Sunday and there is a field of fourteen Top Doorslammers making the long drive to the North. From tomorrow to Sunday at The Netherlands' Drachten Airfield, eXplosion Drag Racing Club hosts the Drachten International, its largest event of the year. The 237 strong entry list is available at www.explosiondragracing.com and includes twenty three Super Street Bikes and thirteen Funny Bikes; heading the bike list is the Battle of the Nitro Bikes which features René van den Berg, Sven Waalewijn, Mark de Jong, Martijn de Haas and Stefan Iwanowitsch. Pro Mod includes Rolf Vogel and David Vegter with new cars, Marcus Hilt, Robert Koper and Henri Joosten. Danny Bellio will be making demonstration passes in his Dodge Charger Top Methanol Funny Car. Coverage will again be available from Maikel Gloudeman's live action webcam which can be found at www.doyousee.me/explosion. Michael says "We have the main camera above track and our broadcast will include live coverage of timing data for the last six runs underneath the webcam video." ©Eurodragster.com Messini, Greece hosts the 4th Championship Drag Race 2009, organised by the Hellenic Motorsport Club as a round of the Hellenic Dragster Championship, on Saturday and Sunday. More details at www.greekdragster.com. Meidl Airport, Fertoszentmiklós, Hungary is the site for Central Europe's main race this weekend, the American V8 Cup - Muscle Car Drag Racing. This is a night race on 11th July with qualifying for US cars going through to 01:00. More details at www.dragrace.atw.hu. The 14th International Opel Meeting takes place at MZA Luckau between tomorrow and Sunday. Benni Voss tells us that this evebt brings lots of hot Opels to the quarter mile in a battle between RWD and FWD cars, nitrous and turbo, German and international racers. Billed as a Mini dragfest in every sense of the word, the British Mini Club's annual quarter-mile blast, Mini Showdown & Public Track Day, at Shakespeare County Raceway this weekend is both a unique event in itself to complement the Club's extensive 2009 show portfolio, as well as a celebration of fifty years of the humble little Mini. Believe it or not owners of classic and modern Minis take drag racing very seriously as they try for the top times against the clock in many of the event's road and race classes. Although the A-series engine is morally still king, there are more and more Vauxhall V-Tec and motorcycle powered Minis seen every year. Not everyone will try to beat the amazing sub ten-second run by Nathan Dobson last year. In fact he did it in 9.961 seconds, although the 434 ci Big Block Chevy in his Mini was running a full nitrous kit on this record breaking run. As well as watching all of the weekend's track action, enthusiasts can wander through the many show'n'shine entries and trade stands, as well as catching up with fellow enthusiasts to make a Saturday evening social a welcome release from the stresses of racing. New for 2009 is Dare The Dyno for the first ever Mid Point BHP Shootout! And for the girls the team will be looking for the Diva Of The Dyno. It's not just the super-powerful Minis which compete either. As it's a Public Track Day event as well, throw in a mix of European and American street cars and bikes, scaled down replica Junior Dragsters and Junior Drag Bikes for the kids to race, together with some awesome V8-powered nostalgia dragsters and altereds from the ever-popular Wild Bunch, and you've got the perfect mix for all ages. For further information and admission details visit www.shakespearecountyraceway.co.uk or call 01789 720180. Nitro Nationals FIM/UEM review. 9th July: This year's FHRA Nitro Nationals at Alastaro was a strange adventure, writes FIM/UEM European Drag Bike Championship Co-ordinator Lars Andersson: We arrived on Thursday morning to a very hot track and a lot of sunshine. Everything looked very good. The Sportsman categories qualified five times with some small oil problems but everything worked very well. Waking up on Friday and it was cold and raining. But is stopped around one o'clock and at two started the qualifying again. But due to some oil problems we started the first motorcycle round at five and managed to do it all. But time ran out so the cars could not do a complete qualifying cycle on Friday. On Saturday we managed to do two qualifying sessions with some luck. Some of the cars had just one round on Saturday. Sometimes is it good to start early because the weather can and will always change. One thing more to add to the general comments is that I hate synthetic oil. It is very hard to spot the oil on the track since it is often in very small drops and it is very difficult to clean them up. Sometimes it is just a small spray but the result can be very dangerous for a racer. So we must have people at the side of the track going out and checking the track after anything that looks strange. Also we need to find a very effective way to clean up the oil. We cannot spend two hours cleaning the track after one incident. It is not that the people's work is ineffective but that it is so hard to clean sometimes. I do understand that synthetic oil is here and we cannot ban it, but we must learn to clean it. This is a common problem, not just in Finland. A special thank you to the doctor and ambulance crew for taking care of my wife when she felt very sick on Saturday evening, and also to the people at the hospital in Loima who took care of her then she stayed there. In Pro Stock Bike there were seven riders entered, but Vesa Ratio has a gear box problem and could not race. After the end of qualifying we had Ulf Ögge as number on and Anders Abrahmansson, who now is back, at number two. Fredrik Fredlund from Åland was third. Since it was a ladder of six riders the two cylinder bike was on one side of the ladder and the Suzuki on the other side. But Fredlund managed to go to the final after a win over Martin Bishop and then Gabby Nikolovska in the semi-final. It is always nice to have some ladies racing and here did we have two. Both Gabriella Nikolovska and Mia Maria Vepsaalainen. Gabby won over Anders when his bike just jumped up three times and then straight to the right. In the final Fredlund took the win over Ulf Ögge who had a red light of a few thousandths of a second but that is enough. So this year we again had a Finnish winner in Pro Stock Bike in the Finnish race. In Supertwin it was very hard this time. Eighteen riders had entered the race for just eight places. We had riders from many countries and a lot of new Finnish riders whom I had never seen before. So many that I have difficulty understanding all the new names. But with some good help from our UEM member Jari Halonen it was no problem at all. Lorenz Stäuble was the number one qualifier followed by Per Bengtsson from Sweden number two and Job Heezen number three. In the first round all the low qualifiers went on. In the first semi final it was Stäuble against Olstad first and Lorenz took the win. In the other semi it was Bengtsson against Heezen and Per did took that win. So it was number one and two qualifiers in the final but this time the number two Per Bengtsson managed to take the win. That was good for the Championship. Something of note was that Jaska Salakari was back on the track with not one but two new bikes which still had some small problems, but when they were solved we will see some very good times from these two bikes. There are a lot of new things on these two bikes which if they all wors may change a lot of ways of handling such bikes. There is a complete new fuel system. I must also mention that Anders Karling also got his bike to work without the bangs of last year. Every time Anders improved the time of the bike so I am waiting for his next race. At Mantorp we will have a very good field, twenty riders have entered Supertwin for the eight bike field on Sunday. Top Fuel Bike is always something special in Finland. Not so many riders come to Finland due to the expense and that is always a problem. But we always get some local riders and some of them run good times. This time did we had eleven riders entered, and of those there were four Top Fuel Bikes and seven Funny Bikes. UEM member Ian King qualified first just before Sverre Dahl who was out for the first time this year. Rikard Gustavsson on his extremely fast Funny Bike was number three. Also we saw Kai Selkamaa again. Kai is missing a sponsor so unfortunately he cannot make so many races this year but I do hope that we will see him more often. He was number four and was in the race up against Rene van der Berg from Netherlands on his Top Fuel Bike. But the semi final was very strange. Ian King had problems with his blower and could not race at all. So Rene had to make a solo run. After a very good burnout and getting the green light nothing happened. The transmission belt was broken and the bike did not leave the start line at all. So nobody was in the final from the upper side of the ladder. In the other semi it was Sverre against Rickard. But Sverre had to shut off due to a small oil leak and Rickard had to make a solo run. Rickard also had the solo in the final and of course he did everything right and won the event. But even though Rickard had two solo runs he gave the crowd everything and made some very good passes. There is no doubt at all that this is one of the fastest Funny Bikes in the world and Rickard has sorted it out very well. That was the race in Finland. All of the facilities and the track are very good. Sometimes the track is very hard to read and you had to understand the adjustment of the clutch and ignition to be able to run good times. The bike pit was now divided in two with the Sportsman bikes on the other side of the track leaving the UEM bikes in the old pit, which was a very good thing. Now there was more space. With thirty seven riders in UEM classes was it almost full any way. A special thanks for the office that we had. This makes all easier at the race. I must say that the Finnish people take care of everything very well. It does feel good to come here. The only problem I had was that I again missed the UEM Congress which someone have decided to have in July. I never understand how a motorcycle organisation can have a Congress in the middle of the racing season. This is stupid. I have said it before and will say it again, move it to either spring or autumn because we are a motorcycle organisation and we have most of our races in the summertime. So move the Congress. I am now waiting for the race in Mantorp at the end of July. This is going to be a great race. Again the Supertwins and Top Fuel Bikes race over the eighth mile but we will have a lot of racers so the qualifying will be very hard. I do hope that this will be the last year for this. ©Eurodragster.com Web site updates. 9th July: Our good buddy Patrik Jacobsson has updated his web site with pictures from last weekend's Street Legal event at Gardermoen. You can check out Patrik's shots at www.racebilder.nu. Hans Karlsson has posted video from last week's race at Malmö's Meca Raceway at www.hassebilder.se including footage of Håkan Nilsson's newly-acquired Chevy Pro Mod. ©Eurodragster.com Dom Romney's FHRA Nitro Nationals pictures are now showing at www.archive.modernpics.co.uk. "I would like to take the opportunity to thank Andy Carter and the Lucas Oil team for their hospitality over the weekend", says Dom. Crossed lines with Malmgren. 
8th July: If you read the live race report from Alastaro at the weekend then you may be forgiven for thinking
that Swedish Pro Stock racer Michael Malmgren had something to do with Richard Sundblom's crash after his Lahega-sponsored car swapped
lanes off the start line in Sunday's eliminations. Michael tells us that this was not, of course, the case.
"Our team made a mistake, staging me slightly out of the groove", Michael told Eurodragster.com. "After half a second, at the middle of low gear, we lost traction badly and I just crossed the centre line with my left pair of wheels and, of course, clicked off. I managed to maneuver the car back into my lane calmly, just rolling to the end. I don't think Nixxon ever saw what happened in my lane, since he was ahead of me at that time; he would have understood that he was the winner at that point, and would have clicked off as well! ©Eurodragster.com "It was then scary to see Nixxon getting on and off the throttle trying to go for a win. Finally he went in to the wall in my lane approximately one hundred metres ahead of me. I am really happy that Nixxon managed to step out unhurt from that one. The decision from Race Control that we were both excluded for crossing the centre line was made rather early. "I had a talk with Nixxon after the accident, so no hard feelings there. It seems that the car was not that badly damaged and that they will be able to come to Mantorp, so that's good news. "Team Lahega changed the engine in the race car on Sunday evening, to be ready for Meca Raceway this weekend where we are going to give a series of passenger rides. Then we are focusing on the Swedish race in the FIA European Drag Racing Championships at Mantorp Park. We know that we have a lot of power in our engine. That also means that the car is very sensitive to adjustments. We know the Mantorp track well after racing there for so many years, so expect us to run some really interesting numbers there." Thanks to Christer Abrahamson for his help with this news item Wet weekend for the Beast. 
8th July: Swedish Superwwin racer Per Bengtsson and the Beast team came to the second round of
the UEM Championship Finland's Alastaro track in Finland with high hopes after showing good performance at the first race in England.
Unfortunately the Alastaro race track turned out to be very tricky with traction conditions changing several times during the weekend.
On top of that, one qualifying round was cancelled Friday due to bad weather.
The Beast produced a 6.92 and a 6.99 second in the first two runs. But after the 6.99 run the team discovered a broken intake valve which of course damaged the engine quite badly. "This was some of the worst damage we've had so far", says Per. "Luckily it happened at the very top end but the cylinder head was badly damaged so we had to put on a spare one and change the pistons among some other things. We decided to work without stress and to concentrate on the eliminations. We were still number two qualifier after Lorenz Stäuble." ©Eurodragster.com In the first round Per was up against alternate Martijn de Haas as Tommy Möller couldn't make it. A 7.06 second run was enough to make it to next round where Job Heezen was waiting. Job left the starting line very quickly and was ahead of Per at half track as the Beast lost traction early in the run. But Per gave it one more try and was first to the finish line with a 7.16. The final turned out to be a very close race against number one qualifier Lorenz Stäuble, side by side racing all the way with Per crossing the finish line first in 6.87 seconds against Lorenz' 6.92. "This is our first win since 2003 and to be the winner with eighteen competitors at the track is really something", says a very happy Per. "I think it was the closest final in a long time in Supertwin and it feels good to give the race fans something back for their money. This win was also good for the Championship as the points standings are now a little more even. Our competitors in Supertwin Bike will have something to think about as we've been the fastest bike both at Santa Pod and at Alastaro!" The Beast team will now prepare for the third round in the Championship which will be held in a couple of weeks at Mantorp Park. A big thank you to the sponsors who make this season possible: Swedcut, Quaker State, Autoexperten Växjö, Fanhultstvätten Älmhult, Gates/Lönne, Ulvsgården Ab, Flexoart and Bentec Engineering. The list gets shorter... 8th July: UK 9.50 Bike racer and B&H Automotive/LA Racing Parts Street Eliminator racer-in-waiting Danny Cockerill has been in touch with an update on his '67 Camaro which should be hitting the track once a little more work is done: ©Eurodragster.com We finally got the body somewhere near ready to go to the paint shop and fitted the new bonnet etc. It has gone to John Sultana at Beautiful Body Repairs in Northfleet, Kent. Whilst the car is in for paint we are going to do some checks on the motor and make a few minor adjustments. My wheels turned up from Billet Specialties a few weeks ago, so all there is to do when the car comes back is fit the motor and trans, wire it (care of a really nice man called Not So Raging Any More Ray White), plumb it, fit the windows, put all the chrome back on, fit the tyres to the wheels, get it running, get it MOT'd, tax it, insure it and then we'll be close to being finished. Shouldn't take too long! I would also like to say well done for their hard work to everyone who crewed on Graham 'Blakey' Ellis' Pro Mod Superbird at Alastaro last weekend. They are getting close to getting the car up to speed at last. Keep tweaking boys, it will come round in the end! Going after the king. 8th July: Swiss Top Fuel Dragster racer and Eurodragster.com News sponsor Urs Erbacher was very proud of Lorenz Stäuble's runner-up spot in Supertwin in Finland, but he was elsewhere at the time: Last Saturday and Sunday I was at Interlaken in Switzerland displaying Sascha's Harley Destroyer, the fastest Destroyer in Europe and twice European Championship winner, at the Swiss Harley Days. There were about six thousand Harley Davidsons there and I was trying to sell my bikes and make some money whilst my team did a great job in Finland. 
©Eurodragster.com My car is in a container on the way from Baytown, Houston. It will be here in Europe this Saturday and will arrive in Switzerland next Monday if everything works properly. We working hard to prepare the second truck and trailer. Car, driver and team are ready to win in Sweden and Hockenheim and push the King of Europe off his high horse. We are ready to rock! I am looking for some good pictures of Lo's new bike and of my new car. We want make new T-Shirts and new posters and hero cards for the fans. We will print them before Hockenheim so we are ready to give them away at the NitrolympX. So if anyone can send me some good pictures then please do so. In Hockenheim we have a special offer for our guests and fans. We are offering special hospitality which includes a ticket for the Quarter Mile Club at Hockenheim, best seats on the VIP grandstands, food and drink, parking directly behind the VIP grandstands, and a place in Erbacher Hospitality - an extra tent directly by our trailer where we serve food and drink and where guests can watch us prepare the Top Fuel car while they drink and eat. Every guest gets a new T-Shirt and a cap. I will be in hospitality and I will talk to the fans as much as I can. The complete price is €400 which includes the whole weekend in the Quarter Mile VIP Club and the entry to the special hospitality area in Erbacher VIP. We are limited to 110 guests so if anybody would like to be part of it then let me know. For more read our flyers here and here. Swift snippets.
8th July: The latest spy picture to arrive at the offices of Eurodragster.com
came with no words at all. If you know more, or if you would like to send you own spy picture, then
drop an E-Mail to eurodragster.com@btinternet.com.
©Eurodragster.com Many thanks to FIA European Championship Points Co-ordinator Kjell Pettersson for forwarding us the post-FHRA Nitro Nationals points standings in the FIA European Drag Racing Championships, and to FIM/UEM European Drag Bike Championship Co-ordinator Lars Andersson for sending us the post-FHRA Nitro Nationals points standings in the FIM/UEM European Drag Bike Championships. You can check out the European points on our Speedflow-sponsored Points Standings page by clicking here or by clicking on the Points Standings link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. Santa Pod Raceway hosts the Retro Show this Sunday (12th), and there is room for a handful of retro drag demos. "We are especially interested in hearing from nine-second or quicker cars from the 1980s or earlier, and nostalgia dragsters", says Rick Cuthbert. "Selected volunteers will be given free entry and sign-on at what must be one of the Pod's most varied and relaxed shows of the year. If you are interested in running as a demo vehicle at the Retro Show, please contact me at rick@santapod.com. For general show information, please visit www.retroshow.co.uk." FIA European Top Fuel Dragster Champion Andy Carter writes that the Lucas Oil Show Dragster will be at Sunday's Retro Show at Santa Pod Raceway. "We will have a full line of oil products on show and to buy if anyone needs oil at the weekend", says Andy. "Rememeber that you can order Lucas Oil and products, the same which we use in our Top Fuel Dragster, at racer prices from cartermotorsport@hotmail.co.uk. Central European update. 8th July: Twenty six events have now been run in the Central European region since the start of the season and eight of these took place in June, writes Paul Fischer of CEDrag.com: Only one , the V8 Cup at Meidl (Hungary) was postponed due to bad weather and this was decided several days before the booked day - such was the dire, and accurate, weather forecast. This race will now be held this coming weekend and is the cause of some excitement here. The big news is that the folks at www.raceworld.hu will be attempting their first live video streaming broadcast. After a number of earlier experiments, these folks have decided to attempt an all-day static camera broadcast on Sunday (12th). Go to their web site on Sunday and, if all goes well, you'll get a taste of Americana in Hungary - weather permitting. The other big story is the realisation that the track at Kunmadaras in Hungary is now a bona-fide full-time drag racing venue. We understand that it was due to good co-operation between the organsiers Jozsef and Judit Hadnagy with Trakbak Ltd in the UK which has resulted in full-strip concrete safety barriers being installed along with other necessary infrastructure. CEDrag.com attended last weekends drag-bike race at the venue and we can report that the place is ready for the upcoming UEM European race in August. Congratulations to all concerned. The bike event was also a great day and now I'm beginning to understand the special bond that appears to exist among bikers. The collapse of the Croatian race series has been a major disappointment, with only two of the scheduled six events having been run. Attempts are being made to re-instate a couple of scaled down races before the season ends but nothing concrete has been arranged yet. After the big success of the last event at Zagreb, this has been the season's biggest downer. ©Eurodragster.com June also saw the Super Twin Top Gas show make it's annual visit to Hoškovice, the home of drag racing in the Czech Republic. Good weather and a well prepared track made for a high quality event where, as usual, Otto Knebl dominated the domestic racing in their star class of Competition Bike. Otto and his pals Michal Ponca and Roman Sixta are the only racers from the region to attend the FIM/UEM European events. The Czech Republic will hold a big auto festival in July at Bechyn which will co-incide with the fourth round of their National Championship. As great believers in bracket/index racing, CEDrag.com will continue to focus on the 10.00-breakout "Street" class as the 2009 points chase hots up. The big show in June was held in the north Romanian city of Satu Mare where first-time organiser Gergo Butka and his crew put on a huge show and attracted 8,000 visitors to the city airport. They have brought a breath of fresh air to the scene with their innovative approach to holding an event. There was a children's creche and a full-sized ladies clothing store in addition to the usual automotive-related activities. They deserved their success and got it! Bravo to them. All the news from June is available at CEDrag.com where every effort will be made to report on all things related to drag racing in the Central Europe region. Your feedback and contributions, wherever you are from, are always welcome. Four rounds, three leaders. 
8th July:The SPRC Summernationals at Santa Pod Raceway was host to Round 4 of this year's
B&H Automotive/LA Racing Parts Street Eliminator
UK Championship, writes Ian Hook:
Round 3 was finalised during qualifying with Colin Lazenby taking the win over Jeff Meads and leapfrogging the Pop driver into first place in the Championship, but by the closest of margins - 2110 points to 2100 points! The meeting saw the return of Alex McIntosh in his blown 'Stang and Davie Murdoch in the gorgeous '33 Willys. Joining them were Colin Lazenby, Jeff Meads, Mats Andersson and Mark Todd. Qualifying was topped (again) by Colin Lazenby in the '56 but he relinquished that position to Meads when the Chevy's engine destroyed a lifter forcing Team '56 to retire before the Cruise. Race day saw a huge upset in the first round when a lazy light and a wheelie from Jeff Meads allowed Mats Andersson to prevail in a thrilling race. With the Reaction Time factored in the Swede's 9.88 and Jeff's 8.95 - yes, those numbers are the right way round! - translated into less than three thousandths, or 7.1 inches, between the two cars at the stripe. Mats was joined in the semi finals by Alex McIntosh and Dave Murdoch. Dave Murdoch progressed with his second bye of the day (thanks to the absence of Colin Lazenby) whilst Alex McIntosh saw red and lost out to Mats Andersson, missing out on his 9.49 to 9.53 advantage. ©Eurodragster.com Mats Andersson was in his second final of the year and with a bit more of a chance of victory - last time he faced Andy Frost! But Dave Murdoch, making up the first ever SE UK final with no English presence, was determined to make him work for it and despite the Swede's third holeshot of the day pushed him all the way. Despite losing out the Scot was well pleased as he ran his first nine in the '33 in his first SEUK final. Mats Andersson now tops the B&H Automotive/LA Racing Parts Street Eliminator championship table, the third racer to hold that position this season. But with just a few hundred points separating the top three it's still anyone's title. Bug Jam at Santa Pod in a week's time may see another change in leadership as the event hosts round five of this year's eight-round series. We would like to add a very Happy 50th Birthday to Colin Lazenby for Tuesday. Inexplicably no-one told us about this in advance (Be fair, they only had 364 days to tell us - Ed) and Colin himself ended up explaining via this picture of his birthday cake. Editor's note: A slew of network problems in your News Editor's office put paid to yesterday's news update. We still have a backlog of news which we shall publish tomorrow, and please keep those news items coming to news@eurodragster.com. FHRA Nitro Nationals results. 6th July: Congratulations to the winners at the weekend's FHRA Nitro Nationals at Alastaro: FIA Top Fuel Dragster: Andy Carter 4.122/457.05 def. Stig Neergaard 4.109/459.37 FIA Top Methanol Dragster: Derek Flynn 5.477/418.73 def. Timo Habermann 5.557/409.73 FIA Top Methanol Funny Car: Leif Andréasson 5.941/343.22 def. Jarmo Kuutniemi 5.931/391.99 FIA Pro Modified: Micke Gullquist 6.212/365.20 bye, Bruno Bader did not start FIA Pro Stock: Jimmy Ålund bye 6.755/330.76 ©Eurodragster.com FIM/UEM Top Fuel Bike: Rikard Gustafsson 6.849/263.53 bye, Rene van den Berg did not start FIM/UEM Supertwin: Per Bengtsson 6.872/325.11 def. Lorenz Stäuble 6.925/334.89 FIM/UEM Pro Stock Bike: Fredrik Fredlund 7.425/280.31 def. Ulf Ögge 7.354/294.39 red light Sportsman racing carried on after the Pro finals, but was curtailed when the guardrail was damaged by a crash and so there were no event winners in Sportsman classes. You can check out our American Car Imports-sponsored FHRA Nitro Nationals coverage by clicking here, or by clicking on the Event Coverage link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page and selecting the FHRA Nitro Nationals. Our Event Index page also contains links to qualifying lists and ladders posted by our good friend Hannele Höyden of FHRA; alternately you can go direct to FHRA's web site at www.fhra.fi. We must thank honorary Eurodragster.com staff member Christer Abrahamson who E-Mailed us race reports for posting at such a rate (eighty one E-Mails in all during the race weekend) that our coverage, although posted from the UK, was almost real time. Thanks also to Christer for coding up, captioning and posting Roger's pictures at the end of what had already been long and busy days. Thanks are also due to Roger, who was working solo this weekend, for getting the pictures turned round for our event coverage and to L-O Jonsson for getting us out of a hole with yesterday's gallery. Swift snippets. 6th July: Former European Pro Modified and Top Fuel Dragster Champion Håkan Nilsson made a victorious return to the track at Malmö's Meca Raceway at the weekend. Driving a blown-alcohol Pro Mod purchased from Kelly Martin in the USA, Håkan qualified number one and then took the win. You can find out more at blog66.nilssonmotorsports.com. ©Eurodragster.com The Allard Chrysler Dragster, which is to be restored to fire-up order by the Allard Chrysler Action Group, will be appearing at the Historic Weekend at Silverstone on 24th-26th July. The two paintings of the dragster have now been completed and not only are the originals up for auction but limited-edition prints are now available. For more information check out the ACAG Block under Latest News at www.theaccelerationarchive.co.uk/acag/acag.html. #1 Stäuble aims for consistency. 
5th July: Switzerland's Fat Attack
Racing have roared into Finland with European Champion Lorenz Stäuble on the seat
of the six-second Supertwin.
Rider/tuner Lo took #1 spot with a run of 6.89 plus a 7.12 and a 7.03 in tricky weather conditions and the crew have done a great job to prepare for race day. The team aim to go a little quicker yet to remain consistent in tomorrow's eliminations to gather more wins and retain their European Championship. Lo is a very busy man as along with Urs Erbacher he is a key member of Fat Attack Custom Bikes building some of the most beautiful motorcycles on the planet which function like Swiss watches. You will be able to stay in touch with Lo's progress today at Alastaro here on Eurodragster.com. Swift snippets. 5th July: UK Super Pro ET racer Nick Good was the star of the show at Potters Bar bus garage as he fired up his pretty blown-alcohol dragster indoors. The connection between Nick and the bus garage is the dragster's previous owner Gary Malin who is workshop foreman at Potters Bar. "The car was fired up twice and sounded really strong within the confines of the garage", says our informant Pat who unfortunately doesn't seem to have a surname. "The windows of the chip shop across the road were rattling. A good day was had by all." ©Eurodragster.com 
It was a a fine sunny evening for the Witney Motor Show with a good selection of race vehicles, with Charlie Chivers'
Taxi Express Pro ET Capri drawing good crowds for its couple of engine fire-ups. "I would like to say a special thank you to
Pro ET and Taxi Express sponsor Brize Norton American & Hot Rod Specialist for their help during the evening", says Charlie.
"Thanks also to the Pro ET sponsors Motorshack, Toxico, Brize Norton American & Hot Rod Specialists (01993 844144),
Real Steel, LA Racing Parts, Performance Unlimited, Cometic Gasket, Total Seal, Engine Data Analysis, Hauser Race Cars, A1 Motor
Stores, Inkwell Printing, Penn Autos/Andy Frost Race Transmissions, CP Pistons, and South Coast Customs."
Ex-pat UK Top Fuel Dragster racer Smax Smith is again driving the Leverich family's Top Fueller at this weekend's IHRA Rocky Mountain Nationals in Edmonton. "It's got to happen this weekend!", says Aidan Smith. "We have a new blower, changed the fuel system and got a new clutch". You will be able to stay in touch with Smax's progress on the Drag Race Central web site at www.dragracecentral.com. Swift snippets. 4th July: Bev and Nigel Batsford have asked us to send best wishes for a very long and happy future to UK Supertwin Gas racer Andy Watson and his partner Dawn who are to be married today (Saturday). Our pleasure guys, and all the best to Andy and Dawn from the Eurodragster.com staff too. ©Eurodragster.com A big Happy Birthday to Santa Pod Racers Club race official Kathy Taylor. Big hugs Kath and have a wonderful day. We would like to wish all of our readers in the United States of America a very Happy 4th July. Have a great day, guys. Web site updates. 4th July: In the latest entry in his exclusive Racer Blog, Dutch Top Fuel Dragster racer Lex Joon has a different horsepower problem and also has a few words about Top Fuel in the current economic circumstances. As ever you can check out the latest Blog update by clicking here or by clicking on the Racer Blogs link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. ©Eurodragster.com Tale of a curtailed weekend. 
3rd July: B&H Automotive/LA Racing Parts Street Eliminator competitor Colin Lazenby has been in touch to
explain his early exit from the SPRC Summernationals:
At some point during the third qualifying pass on the Saturday the engine tone in our somewhere between 811ci and 932 ci Sonny's billet motor noticeably changed. We were up against Jeff Meads at the time, effectively running what would have been our finals from the previous event. I have to tell you that the thought of coming off it against Jeff never entered my head - besides, give him an inch and he'll take a mile. In the race itself we ran a slowing 8.53 to Jeff's improving 8.83 (times courtesy of Andy Marrs of TSI Timers). Back in the pits we began the ritual of setting the lash, but clearly all was not well with #5 exhaust and with less than an hour before the cruise we pretty much knew we were never going to make it, certainly not without risking greater damage. By the time the other SE competitors were leaving for the cruise the intake was already off, and having borrowed a couple of specialist tools from Tim Mugridge (surely he's realised by now) and Graham Ellis' crew we managed to pull out the main body of the damaged lifter. By now Clive Bond was an hour and a half later than he'd planned to get away and, having committed himself to being elsewhere by this point, I am grateful for his ever-watchful eye and the fact that he stayed. At this point we wrapped up for evening and partook in our planned barbecue and one or two beers. ©Eurodragster.com Tomorrow was always going to be a tough day. On the Sunday I was up and about by 06:45 and our Bri and Garry weren't far behind. The plan was to get packed up and away by 09:30, we pulled out of the Pod at 09.25 (dammit). Now I must apologise here to the lady in the gas station with whom Our Kid fell out, something to do with access to the pumps? Anyhow lady, if you are reading this either on Eurodragster.com or the SE site, our Brian is very sorry in the way he spoke to you and I for one do not condone his disgraceful language, or indeed his ungentlemanly conduct. I do hope you weren't too traumatised by the abuse you received. I suspect our Brian (just like Ronnie Biggs) remains unrepentant on the matter. Anyhow, we'd planned to get to Clive's by 12:00 and we were there pretty much bang on schedule having already agreed with Clive that we would deliver the motor to his ample shop even though he couldn't join us given his previous commitment. We rolled the '56 off into Clive's shop and popped it up onto the Pro-jacks where me and Our Kid pulled out the motor, cleaning everything up as we dismantled - Clive's place is as clean as a hospital operating theatre (without the added risk of picking up an infection). The girls put on a spot of lunch and then sunbathed... What? They did. The image shows the old girl once again without a motor between the rails, and once it was placed safely onto an old engine stand we found lying around we simply tidied up and left, but not before raping and pillaging Clive's Snap On tool stash - when on earth will he learn? Clive has since inspected the motor and predictably when the lifter bearing failed, the axle collapsed and the offending item continued to bash the corresponding lobe on the cam until that too was trashed. Let's just say it could have been worse - much worse. And yes of course we'll check the other lifters. Sonny Leonard is now not talking to me. The cam and lifters are now ordered and we'll just have to see how we get on. Don't write us off just yet, you ought to know by now that here at Team '56 we don't give up that easily. Swift snippets. 3rd July: Thanks to Santa Pod Racers Club Secretary Paula Marshall for sending us Version 6 of the official entry list for Bug Jam, which takes place at Santa Pod Raceway on 18th-19th July and which is a Championship round for Super Modified, B&H Automotive/LA Racing Parts Street Eliminator, Sportsman ET, VWDRC, Outlaw Flat Four and Outlaw Anglia and a non-points round for Junior Dragster. You can check out the Bug Jam entry list by clicking here. Entry is still open but is subject to a late entry fee; you can download the entry form from the SPRC web site at www.eurodragster.com/sprc. ©Eurodragster.com Paula has also forwarded us Version 2 of the official entry list for Rotorstock, which takes place at Santa Pod Raceway on Saturday 11th July and which is a round of the HKS Drag Series. You can check out the Rotorstock entry list by clicking here. Outlaws at the UK Truck Show. 
3rd July: Eleven teams rolled through the gates of Santa Pod Raceway for the third round of the 2009 Supercharged
Outlaws Series, sponsored by LA Commercials of Kidderminster, writes Dave McKenzie, aka Fuzzie:
Two Funny Cars, two slingshot dragsters, three doorslammers and four altereds were assembled in the pits ready to do battle. Session one on Saturday saw seven cars pull into the staging lanes. Roy Wilding in Hemi Hunter ran a nice straight pas of 8.533, Steve Goode in Wobble 9.199, Richard Davis' '41 Willys 10.446, Lee Gallimore in Red Mist 7.504, Tom Coe in Shy Talker a troubled 12.422, and Paul Watts' No Easy Pick Up ran a PB of 9.444. The last car round was Trace Froome with the ex-Doug Ripley Dodge Avenger Funny Car, this was Trace's first time out with this new car and a wild burnout on the right hand side of the track (as Trace could not judge exactly were he was). Trace reversed up and into stage a squirt on the throttle then off again then on the power through the top end to record a time of 10.913. Well done to the Ultra Racing team. Session 2 at teatime on Saturday saw eight cars in the staging lanes and out for the first time in twenty months months was the altered of Dave (Fuzzie) McKenzie and Mark Windridge, Dave doing the driving duties at this event. This was intended to be a sixty foot checkout pass and that is exactly what Dave did, a small burnout not getting up on the tyres very well then a quick spurt on the throttle to the sixty foot mark and idled up the track. The team were pleased just to make onto the track at all as just four weeks ago there was not even any paint on the chassis so a gallant effort from all the team. Roy Wilding carded a 8.426, Steve Goode 9.627, Richard Davis 10.346, Tom Coe 10.846, Paul Watts 9.616 and Trace Froome 9.507 although Trace staged on the rear wheels. The final run of this session was Jon Best in the Felstead Best & Lotsabeera Fuel Altered. Jon needed to do a sixty-foot observed run, with the nitro motor sounding really strong Jon burnt out, staged and powered to the sixty foot marker and off the throttle. He did enough to satisfy the Race Director. Lee Gallimore failed to start the Red Mist altered and it was only when he got back to the pits that he realised that he forgot to re connect the starter batteries after between-round charging. Sunday dawned misty and damp and with rain showers forecast the mood was not optimistic but the sun broke through and the track opened. The first session for the Outlaws was 12:30 and eight cars were in the staging lanes. A match up in this session was Lee Gallimore against Dave McKenzie, side by side burnouts and chirps to the line was the order of the day, Lee went first into stage and just as Dave lit the top amber Lee was away leaving a big cherry on the Tree. Dave left on the green and went to about 300 feet when fuel came out of the hat and into the cockpit. Dave was wisely off the throttle and cruised through the top end. Roy ran a consistent 8.504, Steve 8.538, Richard 10.324, Paul 9.424 (another PB), Trace 9.170 and finally Jon Best who was shut of after the burnout unable to engage reverse. ©Eurodragster.com Six cars came to the staging lanes for session 4. Roy 8.723, Steve 9.492, Richard 10.553, Paul 9.579, Jon 10.067 - Jon was on an eighth-mile observed run and he shut off at the 330 foot reflector saying he miscounted so this run did not go towards his licence, but the team went home happy having achieved a lot this weekend. Final car round was Tony Froome in the Sundancer Funny Car out for the first time, Tony was shut down on the start line. One car in the pits did not make it onto the track: Ian Hanson in the beautiful Corvette hurt all the rod bearings in the warm-up on Saturday morning. Ian and his crew worked hard and changed all the bearings and they were ready to run in the last session on Sunday when Ian realised that he had not signed on; it was to late to do so and he returned to the pits. Also there was considerable damage to the slingshot of Alec and Tom Coe. Alec enlisted the help of Mark Windridge on Saturday night to see why the car was not running as expected and after some close examination it was found that the car had eaten some of the cam bearings and put the team out for the weekend. Roy Wilding went away with the winner's trophy and Steve Goode with the runner up trophy supplied by LA Commercials. This again was an excellent event for the Supercharged Outlaws and our thanks go to Darren Prentice of Santa Pod Raceway, Lee and Andy Gallimore of LA Commercials for sponsoring this event, all the track crew and marshals for their great work in giving us a safe and excellent track, and finally Eurodragster.com team for the coverage of the event and their support (Thanks, you're welcome - Ed). The Outlaws will be back at the 2010 UK Truck Show, one of the most laid back friendly meetings of the year. Web site updates. 
3rd July: Eurodragster.com Reserve Photographer Peter Donaldson has updated his Fotopic
gallery with his full set of shots from the NSRA Nostalgia Nationals at Shakespeare County Raceway. You
can check out Peter's shots at
peterdonaldson5305.fotopic.net.
©Eurodragster.com Brian Taylor has posted the latest entry on his Crazy Horses Blog on Alan Currans' excellent Acceleration Archive web site. You can read the Blog update via What's New at www.theaccelerationarchive.co.uk. The Beast loves Finland. 
2nd July: Swedish Supertwin racer Per Bengtsson and his crew are going in to the second round of the
Championship at Alastaro in Finland this weekend with a lot of confidence, after a very good performance at the opening round in England.
The team has found a strong baseline in the tune-up with a good performance advantage so far. The goal is of course to repeat the ET from
Santa Pod and to produce some really strong top end speeds.
"We like Finland, the track, the pits and the dedicated race fans", says Per. "The track always feels very safe and I'm looking forward to racing against so many Finnish Supertwins. Nineteen entries really shows how strong the Supertwin class has become. There is no other Championship category which has to eliminate more than half of the entry list before eliminations start! Those are tough conditions and you really have to be competitive." Per Bengtsson and the Beast team are supported by Swedcut, Quaker State, Autoexperten Växjö, Ulvsgården AB, Fanhultstvätten Älmhult, Gates/Lönne, Flexoart and Bentec Engineering. ©Eurodragster.com Editor's note: Eurodragster.com's coverage of the FHRA Nitro Nationals will commence tomorrow (Friday). Swift snippets. 2nd July: Italian Top Fuel Bike racer Antonio Ferretti is ready for action after recovering from a broken foot sustained on his Super Street Bike three weeks ago. A new crank has been manufactured for his Top Fuel Bike (below) and Antonio and the team are looking to test in the UK in a few weeks' time. "The crank broke 3.5 seconds into a test run at Shakespeare County Raceway, so we have designed and built a stronger crank", says Antonio. "Thanks to Franzoi SRL for helping to build the crank." 
Many thanks to Andy Marrs of TSI Timers for forwarding us the official timing data for the recent SPRC Summernationals at Santa Pod Raceway. You can check out the Summernationals timing data by clicking here or by clicking on the Timing Data link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. ©Eurodragster.com UK Truck Show organiser Russ Harman has asked us to thank all of the race teams who competed or made exhibition passes at Santa Pod Raceway at the weekend. "The truck audience were left awe inspired by the great spectacle", says Russ. "I am sure many will become true drag racing converts. I would like to pass on my sincere thanks to all the teams who attended for showing drag racing to a new audience in such a professional and well presented manner. Each and every one of them were a credit to the sport." It came too late for yesterday's news but Sue, Chris and Summer of the UK's Cool Green Racing asked us to say a big Happy 20th Birthday for yesterday to Ricky Emms. Hope you had a good day Ricky and that you didn't have too much to drink. Heading for a busy Festival. 
2nd July: The Swedish round of the FIA and UEM European Drag Racing Championships, the Veidec Festival at Mantorp Park,
is known to be one of the biggest events on the circuit. Even though the economic climate in Europe is turbulent it seems
that the sport of drag racing is standing strong, and the Veidec Festival is a good example.
"We are very pleased to announce an entry list which consists of 362 race teams in total from ten diffferent countries", says Press Officer L-O Johnsson. "First of all this shows how solid and strong the drag racing community really is and it also gives our organisation credit for producing an event of a very high standard. "All of the Championship classes shows very good numbers: Pro Modified and Pro Stock stick out with thirty three Pro Mods and fourteen Pro Stocks! Eleven Top Fuel Dragsters have entered and on two wheels spectators will witness twenty Supertwins battle for eight spots in the ladder. Top Fuel Bike has amassed ten bikes and in Pro Stock Bike we have nine bikes." The event will start on Wednesday 22nd of July with a lunchtime press conference for invited media. The race proper starts on Thursday 23rd July. One of the old stars in the nitro ranks, American Funny Car pilot Harlan Thompson, is back with the famous Tre Kronor Plymouth Arrow Nitro Funny Car, which he drove at Mantorp Park for the first time in 1980. The car was then owned by Knut Söderqvist and now one of Knut's old associates, Johnny Nilsson, has built a brand new version of the old Tre Kronor FC. The car has already been tested at Bakersfield Raceway in California where the team put down a 6.43 second pass. Harlan Thompson and the old crew will run the car at Mantorp Park on each day of the Veidec Festival, with the first run taking place on the Press Day. ©Eurodragster.com You can check out the official Veidec Festival entry list at www.motorevents.com. What's on this weekend. 2nd July: The second rounds of the 2009 FIA and UEM Drag Racing Championships take place between today and Sunday at Alastaro, Finland. The FHRA Nitro Nationals includes all Professional classes and Super Street, Super Gas, Super Comp, Stock/Super Stock, Comp Eliminator, Super Gas Bike and Street Bike.Racing is scheduled to take place from 10:00 to 18:00 (17:00 on Sunday). A weekend ticket costs €50, day tickets are €15 for Thursday, €20 for Friday and €30 for each of Saturday and Sunday, and accompanied children under twelve go free. The huge entry list can be seen at www.fhra.fi. On Saturday and Sunday the UK's York Raceway hosts the Ultimate Road Car Challenge and Northern Sportsman Nationals. The event, organised by the Pennine Drag Racing Club, is Round 3 of the Northern Drag Racing Championship. On Saturday there is the 23rd Annual Ford Shootout, Modders/Tuners Shootout Round 4, 0-60 Championship Round 2, American Power Tour, Northern Drag Racing Championship Round 3 Qualifying, HR Challenge Round 3 Qualifying, Air-Cooled Eliminators Qualifying, RWYB and a Ladies' Race. On Sunday there is American Super Stock Round 4, Northern Drag Racing Championship Round 3, HR Challenge Round 3, Air-Cooled Eliminators Round 4 and more RWYB. One day entry is £10 for adults, £5 for ages thirteen to sixteen, and free for accompanied children twelve and under. Admission for the weekend £15 for adults, £7.50 for teens and free for accompanied children twelve and under A family ticket is available: for two adult admissions, two accompanying teens go free. Track fees for racers are £30 per day for RWYB (two-day events £40) and £40 per day for racers (two-day events are £60). Thanks to Markus Münch and Benni Voss for sending us information on the 21st Grand Nationals Dragrace to be held at Jerry Lackey Raceway at Luckau in Germany. Featured will be the German Pro ET Series, the German Super Pro ET Challenge, the Top Gas Euroseries, Junior Nationals and Toyo Tires Street Eliminator Germany, where the racers will be shooting for the first eight second pass, plus many more. Qualifying takes place on Saturday, racing on Sunday, and scrutineering and maybe free practice tomorrow. The race marks two important anniversaries for the sport in Germany: twenty years of drag racing at MZA Luckau and forty years of Jerry Lackey's involvement on German tracks as racer, race director and organiser. Spectators can get a Weekend ticket for €25. ©Eurodragster.com The Malmö Nationals take place from tomorrow until Sunday at Meca Raceway in Sweden. This is a round of the Toyo Scandinavian Dragracing Series High Five Points competition and all Sportsman classes are represented. Qualifying takes place from 18:00 to 21:00 tomorrow and between 10:00 and 18:00 on Saturday. Eliminations take place between 10:00 and 16:00 on Sunday. On Saturday and Sunday Lurcy Levis in France hosts the Dulamon Drag Race organised by the Association Trophée Dragster. Car classes include Super Gas, Super Street and Street for the Trophée Dragster Championship. All details including rules and admission charges can be found at www.promotop.org/francedrag. Bike racers in France are also catered for at the Run Cap Sud to be held at Le Pechereau for the French Motorcycle Championship. More details at www.rk-service.com. In Central Europe, Kunmadaras in Hungary is the focus with a round of the Kunmadaras Drag Bike series on Saturday. Qualifying commences at 08:15 and eliminations at 13:30. Classes include Super Street and Competition Bike as well as several street classes. Admission is 2000 Ft, under twelves and over 62s go free. More details at www.kunmadarasmotorsport.hu. Carolynne Campbell and the Laffin-gas Rocket Dragster team will be appearing at the Rocket and Space Event at the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey, off Junctions 24 and 25 of the M25. "We'll be there with the Laffin-Gas Rocket car, with individual rockets and parts on display, alongside the Bloodhound SSC team who are bringing a large-scale model and lots of interesting info", says Carolynne. There'll be rockets of all kinds being launched and fired, with the chance for you to build and launch your very own rocket. Special rocket competitions for the youngsters will be happening alongside talks from many very knowledgeable rocket people." All are welcome to the 4th annual Hot Rodders Bash at The Lamb public house in Theale, near Reading, from 12:00 on Sunday. The event features a rod and custom show, two rockabilly bands playing in the garden, BBQ and bar all day, dragsters from the Wild Bunch and a couple of other dragsters, including one from the Gasser Circus. The event is in aid of the local Air Ambulance and a raffle will be held to increase funds even more. If it should rain then the event will still take place - cars aside the whole thing will move indoors. Chicane to handle ACAG media. 
2nd July: The Allard
Chrysler Action Group has appointed automotive marketing specialists Chicane to handle press relations for the project to
restore Europe's first dragster, Sydney Allard's Allard Chrysler owned by the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu.
Chicane is based in the Pinewood Studios complex in Buckinghamshire and motor sport is one of the company's key areas of operation. The three main contacts all have motor sport pedigrees. They are Gary Barak, Simon Maurice and Steve Coombes. Their clients include Gulf Oil in its sponsorship of Aston Martin Racing's Le Mans efforts, top British outfit West Surrey Racing who run Team RAC in the BTCC, plus they were involved with drag racer Micke Kågered during his time with Pennzoil-Quaker State. The ACAG patron is Nick Mason, President of the Guild of Motoring Writers and National Motor Museum Trustee. He is also known to have played the drums in a small band called Pink Floyd and races historics. The ACAG includes such drag racing luminaries as Alan Allard, Gerry Belton, Peter Crane and Clive Skilton. ©Eurodragster.com 
"The project has now reached the stage where we need a more professional press relations strategy", says
ACAG Chairman and Crazy Horses author Brian Taylor (left). "Up until now I have been handling this function
myself but we have some great stories to release soon and my time is limited; plus we need someone to get these story across
to new media and new audiences. This does not mean people will not be able to contact me direct but I have worked with
Gary, Simon and Steve before and I know they will do a fantastic job. They are genuinely enthusiastic about the project
and have great contacts. Chicane will also help us find sponsorship partners - another very important part of our strategy."
"I've been watching drag racing since I was a teenager in the seventies", enthused Chicane's MD Simon Maurice (right), "and I still get a huge buzz being at a big Santa Pod meeting, but I never actually got to experience the Allard in action. Its place in Europe's Motorsport history is, however, the stuff of legend and Chicane is delighted to have been asked to become involved with the project. Like everyone else who is helping out, I can't wait to see - and hear! – it up and running again." ©Eurodragster.com Web site updates. 2nd July: Our good buddy Alan Currans has updated his excellent Acceleration Archive with pictures from the weekend's NSRA Nostalgia Nationals at Shakespeare County Raceway. You can check out Alan's pictures via What's New at www.theaccelerationarchive.co.uk. ©Eurodragster.com Also updating from the NSRA Nostalgia Nationals is Jeni Long whose pictures you can find at www.jenilong.fotopic.net. Another good buddy, Markus Ek, has updated his gallery site with pictures from the weekend's Aros Nats at Västerås. Markus' shots are showing at www.mek.nu. Feature: TF racers on 1000 feet. 1st July: For the latest in our occasional series of Features presented in association with Stroud Safety and Andy Robinson Race Cars Eurodragster.com spoke to four of the Top Fuel Dragster racers entered for this weekend's FHRA Nitro Nationals about racing over the "metric quarter mile", both at Alastaro this weekend and as a general principle. ©Eurodragster.com This weekend's FHRA Nitro Nationals will be the second FIA European Championship event at which Top Fuel Dragster is contested over one thousand feet (more properly 990 feet), following the 2008 Veidec Festival at Mantorp Park. With uncertainty over the future of quarter-mile Top Fuel Dragster racing in the NHRA, and FIA European Championship rules tending to follow NHRA rules, this could be the next major issue faced by European drag racing. Click here to read the personal opinions of FIA European Top Fuel Dragster Champion Andy Carter, Anita Mäkelä, Micke Kågered and Stig Neergaard about one thousand foot racing, or click on the Interviews, Features, Tributes link on the left-hand side of any Eurodragster.com page. Back to a two-car team. 
1st July: Denmark's Tommy Rostgaard will be back on track at this weekend's FHRA Nitro
Nationals at Alastaro after he, car owner Stig Neergaard and the team repaired the dragster which was
damaged in a crash at the FIA Main Event at Santa Pod Raceway.
"We put a new front half on the car", Stig Neergaard told Eurodragster.com. "We bought a new set of body panels from Murf McKinney so we have half a spare body. Rene Hersland is lending us his rear wing for this weekend's race and then John Smith will bring us a new wing from the USA for the Veidec Festival." ©Eurodragster.com Stig says that Tommy himself suffered no ill-effects after the throttle stuck open on what should have been a licencing pass to half track. Tommy went through the top end at 278.09 mph and reached who knows what speed before the motor expired in a ball of flame halfway down the shutdown area and the dragster flipped in the field at the end of the track. "The car is like new and Tommy is ready to go", says Stig. "Tommy's first pass on Friday will be his final licencing pass. We have assistance from some of Rene Hersland's crew this weekend and John Smith will be tuning both cars." Stig has also got to the bottom of an irksome problem with his own all-new car which made its first competitive outing at the FIA Main Event. "We had some problems with the Alan Johnson clutch set-up", he says. "We didn't know exactly how to set it but I think we are OK now. We have changed to a one-piece nose and front wing, it is different but it is not a problem. It's a nice car and feels good to drive." Pro Mod Zed's dead, honey... 1st July: John Bradshaw and Abbey Motorsport have picked themselves up off the floor after discovering that their Project Zed V6-powered Nissan 350Z cannot run in either FIA or MSA British Pro Mod (see Eurodragster.com News of 18th June). Both sets of rules stipulate V8 motors and that doesn't look like changing any time soon. "It was a bit of a shock", says John, "but that's life and rules are rules so no hard feelings and time to move on. We will keep our fingers crossed that maybe the rules could be changed for 2011 but there are no guarantees. ©Eurodragster.com "In the meantime it means that we will have to change our plans for next season. In 2010 Project Zed will run in HKS Pro, and in Comp Eliminator and Super Pro ET in mainstream drag racing. In a way it really lets us loose on the car's full potential as we can run it at a lower weight and develop it as we go along. It should be a very, very competitive car in HKS Pro and Competition Eliminator and it would be great to see a Japanese car in the sixes for the first time in Europe. We will run the car at this year's FIA European Finals and UK National Finals. "In turn this means that our current Skyline is now up for sale. I'm happy to sell it as either as a full turn-key package or chassis only etc. The car has run as low as 7.68 with the 2.8 litre Nissan engine. It's tagged to 7.5 seconds and has been a fantastic package: it is a credit to the workmanship and skill of Andy Robinson Race Cars. We are open to offers depending upon the final spec in which it is bought, if interested then please E-Mail me at johndjbradshaw@yahoo.co.uk." Islanders head for Finland. 1st July: Paul Ingar Udtian and Frøya's Islanders team are looking forward to another ten-car field in Top Methanol Dragster at this weekend's FHRA Nitro Nationals at Alastaro, says team member Konrad Ree: We have a completely new set-up for the season, and the first round of the Championship gave us a lot of answers. Because of the rule adjustment regarding blower overdrive, we have to adjust our set-up to the new rules when we get to Finland. We are excited to see how the change in rules will affect the cars, and we hope this will narrow down the gap between the A-Fuelers and the blown cars. ©Eurodragster.com We would like to use this opportunity to introduce and welcome a new sponsor: Lerow AS, a company working with ROV submarines in the Salmon industry. Without the support of our sponsors racing would be difficult. We left Frøya on Tuesday and the rest of the crew will join us in Stockholm. We'll do our best to run fast in Alastaro and we can't wait to get there. We hope to see you all in Finland! The return of the Powder Puff Derby. 1st July: This weekend, the UK's York Raceway doesn't only offer the UK's largest all-American Car racing field (pushing for over thirty two cars), Air-Cooled HR Challenge and Pro ET and Sportsman ET, but on Saturday they also feature National Street Car Challenge Round 6, American Power Tour, the 23rd Annual Ford Shoot Out, Old Skool Ford practice and their first-ever Ladies' Race. "Putting on a ladies-only race is in no way intended to put regular female racers in their own class, but much more to encourage the long-suffering girlfriends, wives and even daughters who have been dragged to the drag strip to have a go in their husbands', boyfriends' or dads' cars in this once-a-year race class", says Chris Murty. "To ensure it can be as safe a possible the race will run under a bracket system and will have three rounds of qualifying which will be observed bye runs. The ladies will then will be paired up against each other for eliminations. ©Eurodragster.com Then on Sunday we have American Super Stock Round 4, Northern Drag Racing Round 3, Old Skool Ford Round 4, Hot Rod Challenge Round 3, Air-Cooled Round 4, NSCC Round 7, plus a Subaru Impreza v Mitsubishi Evo Shootout - this alone attracting an entry of around 45 cars." For more details check out York Raceway's web site at www.york-raceway.co.uk. Weir gives up waiting. 1st July: Following on from classmate Ian Hook's announcement last week, B&H Automotive/LA Racing Parts Street Eliminator Jason Weir and the Pro Suburban team will be appearing at Bug Jam at Santa Pod Raceway in July. This will be Jason's first race event of 2009. "Over the last year we have had timing and ignition issues with the old engine, due to some inadequate engine work", says Jason. "Being fairly impatient we couldn't go on like this, so the decision was taken to source a new motor. After a few options were explored, we knew we wanted to continue with the Procharger, but as always with more horsepower. Even though the Dollar exchange rate was far from in our favour we chose a complete engine package from Steve Morris of New Era Racecraft in Michigan. ©Eurodragster.com "The all-ally motor is a 540 ci Big Block Chevy with a new gear-driven F3R, giving over sixty per cent more horsepower than the old motor. The modifications needed are being carried out by Webster Race Engineering just prior to the Bug Jam. "Big thanks go to Steve Morris of New Era Racecraft, Webster Race Engineering, Paul Dickens, and to Clive Bond of Ultimate Race Cars for all his help and advice." Swift snippets. 
1st July: The German Street Eliminator racers had their best Cruise ever at the
weekend's Recaro Tuning Days at the Nürburgring, says our good buddy Benni Voss. "The Cruise was to be held outside with a stop
for gas and hot start, like UK Street Eliminator", says Benni. "But the local authorities did not stick to their word and threatened the Cruise.
Then the Nürburgring organisers stepped in and offered all of the 27 km of classic Nordschleife race track, which the SE guys drove both
in both convoy and in awe. The racing was only an eighth mile on the unprepped start/finish straight, but it got lots of attention from the tuning
crowd, maybe some hooks were taken."
Thanks to Santa Pod Racers Club Secretary Paula Marshall for sending us Version 5 of the official entry list for Bug Jam, which takes place at Santa Pod Raceway on 18th-19th July and which is a Championship round for Super Modified, B&H Automotive/LA Racing Parts Street Eliminator, Sportsman ET, VWDRC, Outlaw Flat Four and Outlaw Anglia and a non-points round for Junior Dragster. You can check out the Bug Jam entry list by clicking here. Entry is still open but is subject to a late entry fee; you can download the entry form from the SPRC web site at www.eurodragster.com/sprc. Paula has also forwarded us Version 1 of the official entry list for Rotorstock, which takes place at Santa Pod Raceway on Saturday 11th July and which is a round of the HKS Drag Series. You can check out the Rotorstock entry list by clicking here. ©Eurodragster.com The Finnish Hot Rod Association held a Press Day yesterday to publicise this weekend's FHRA Nitro Nationals, which commences at Alastaro tomorrow (Thursday). Risto of Jari Halinen's Top Fuel Dragster team kindly got in touch to point us to a set of pictures from the Press Day, which you can find at kuvia.1g.fi. Following his recent appearance in the mainstream motorcycle press, 2008 FIM/UEM Top Fuel Bike Champion Ian King is very pleased to appear in the pages of another major European magazine Performance Bikes. "Although the article has used some journalistic licence, with the details not being quite as accurate as they should be, it is pleasing for drag racing to be headlining an article alongside British Superbike star Chris 'Stalker' Walker and Enduro star David Knight", says Ian. "The article is about How To Nail A Fast Getaway and needs little further explanation!". You can check out the article at www.kingracing.com. Will Hanna, who together with dad Rick will be tuning Fred Hanssen's Top Methanol Dragster at Alastaro this weekend, got into the mood by tuning Chris Foster's Top Alcohol Funny Car to runner-up spot at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals in Norwalk at the weekend. "We qualified second with a 5.647 and ran 5.92, 5.69, 5.67 then 5.65 in the finals to Frank Manzo's 5.61", says Will. 2008 FIA European Top Fuel Dragster Champion Andy Carter is planning to post updates from this weekend's FHRA Nitro Nationals on his web site at www.andycarter.net. "I am looking forward to going to Alastaro and indeed all of Finland - I love the country", says Andy. "Everyone is very friendly and welcoming. The FHRA put so much into the sport and we really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to our fourth win at Alastaro - maybe if I do get four wins then they will give me the key to the place!" Eurodragster.com will be posting results and pictures from this weekend's FHRA Nitro Nationals. Courtesy of our good buddy and honorary Eurodragster.com staff member Christer Abrahamson the plan is for an end-day report on Friday and then regular updates throughout Saturday and Sunday. Eurodragster.com Photo Editor Roger will also be at Alastaro and given decent web access will be posting pictures. Holly Walters has been in touch on behalf of family and friends to wish a very Happy Birthday to UK Super Pro ET racer and Eurodragster.com News sponsor Peter Walters. Have a great day Pete. Dupuy's mixed emotions. 
1st July: For Wayne Dupuy, tuner for Swiss Top Fuel Dragster racer and Eurodragster.com News
sponsor Urs Erbacher, this has been a week of pain and
pleasure.
"It has been five years since we lost a great NHRA Champion and Top Fuel driver, Darrell Russell, to a dreadful accident" says Wayne. "We won lots of NHRA races together and had a great freindship as a Crew Chief / driver combination. It was one of the worst days for Amato Racing in June of 2004 at NHRA in St. Louis. Not only was Darrell my friend but he was my hero. All of us who were a part of Darrell's life miss his smile an awful lot. "Now as we move forward to what's been going on: another great Top Fuel driver doing some great things of own. "Urs Erbacher and Fat Attack Custom Bikes had a fund raiser for charity at Europapark in Rust, Germany and raised a lot of money for The Days of Steel: in fact they raised more than $13,000 Dollars which was thirty per cent up on last year. What a great job for Urs Erbacher and the Fat Attack Custom bike gang, and for a great cause. "Even Urs' World Champ Harley Destroyer with 2007 Champion rider Sascha did burnouts and launches to thrill the crowd - it was great. Plans are now being made for 2010 event on the same date so don't miss the Days of Steel, it's a must. 
"If anyone is interested in helping Erbacher Racing in their assault on Europe At Mantorp Park or Hockenheim, being a part of the team and interacting with the crew and racers Urs Erbacher and Lo Stäuble in our team hospitality area, pics with drivers, crew and vehicles and being a part of a winning team then contact Urs at Fat Attack Custom Bikes. You could have a great day at the drags with Team Erbacher. There are also tickets and a nice gift which comes with the package - the deal of a lifetime! For more read our flyers here and here then come and join Team Erbacher and the Kings of Nitro on The European Assault Tour 2009." Going for the treble Eight. 
1st July: Andrew Hadfield, aka Andy Fadster, says that the aim of his trip to
Shakespeare County Raceway at the weekend was to run an eight of any description with his street-legal T:
We managed that and so much more with a new Personal Best of 8.80/153. Every time I think we have got to the bottom of the present tune, the T just seems to try even harder and give an extra effort. We ran an eight at the Pod a few weeks ago at the Wheels USA day, it was our first ever eight and we were somewhat delighted. This eight at Shakey means we can now try to attend York this weekend and complete the hat trick. ©Eurodragster.com We were racing against Helen in Hell's Belle on the final run of the day on Saturday and just managed to stay out of harm's way when her lovely altered overturned. I braked and spun round as quickly as possible at the end of the track to offer assistance, and I met with Helen later to offer my commiserations with the damage. The lack of any injury to Helen is testament to good chassis safety and driver awareness, a lesson for us all I'm sure. Diff damage on Sunday meant we couldn't try for a better time and it'll be a panic now to try to find a replacement diff at short notice for the York trip but we'll do our best. The T remains completely street legal and we recently attended the NSRA show at Billing with a day trip of some 370 miles. That adds up to five tanks of fuel...probably not the most economical use of fuel but certainly the most fun! Aim for the future? Keep my foot in and try for a 8.5 before the end of the season. Turbo 21, Laura 14. 
1st July: Team Turboville
descended on Santa Pod Raceway at the weekend to attend what is probably the most enjoyable family outing of the year, the UK Truck Show:
We have attended the Show every year so far and it really is a great weekend that just gets better every time. We get invited to do demos for the appreciative crowd of truckers and enthusiasts and the weather has so far been absolutely scorchio every year! After the cylinder damage we suffered at the Summernationals a few weeks ago we were left with just one set of used pistons and no time to order new ones, we had no choice, so I threw them in. Whilst desperately searching for the tune-up to run a that elusive six we got a little lost so went back to basics and a setting we knew would work. We were going to do it scientifically this time. The bike sounded great in the pits and drew a large crowd every time we fired it up. The first three runs were perfect, nice soft 7.8s at 181mph to check things out and then we started adding settings to get us going quicker. There were rounds of Supertwin Gas and Supertwin ET, a Super Street Bike Cannonball, Supercharged Outlaws and Super Modified cars along with demos from Jon Best in his mean green machine and Trace Froome in his funny car. Martin Hill put on the usual power show, which never fails to impress, and the serious stuff was the truck racing. Man, those big rigs doing 100 mph in the quarter was awesome! The two seater dragster was fully booked all weekend and left a lot of people with huge fixed grins that just would not go away! There were lots of fantastic trucks on show, live action in the arena with stunts and monster trucks, this show has just everything for everyone. They even had the Blues Brothers band in the Fuellers bar on Saturday evening! On Sunday morning the sun broke through the early mist and it was race time again, and my birthday, twenty one plus a little bit! Thanks to my crew for a great evening and to Barry Sheavills for a killer barbeque out of the back of his supercharged Ford F150 Harley truck, nice one! Then it was time for disaster. We started the bike and smoke came out of everywhere...what the hell? A quick check revealed that one of the pistons must have been way past its sell-by date and the crown had collapsed leaving a gaping hole. Damn, if it weren't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all this year! There was no time to rebuild the motor within the show slot so that was it for us. Apart from my fourteen year old daughter Laura that is! 
As part of Laura's birthday treat I rented the Santa Pod Junior Dragster to see if she might like it! Oh boy, did she ever like it! I couldn't get her out of the car
all weekend and with the help of Ian Marshall, Rob and the Santa Pod track crew, Pete and Rhiannon Bellenie, Joe Lann, and Chloe, she immediately got the
hang of it with perfect staging routines eventually getting .08 RTs on solid, consistent runs! Now guess what she wants for Christmas? Well done Laura Leadfoot,
welcome to the whcky world of drag racing, no going back now!
I can recommend renting these cars for your kids, it is not expensive and gets them very focussed and responsible. It's also a great weapon for getting them to do chores, heh-heh! Details are on www.santapod.com or you can rent Santa Pod Racers Club's Junior Dragster. Thanks to Russ and Neil for a great event once again, don't miss it next year! And congratulations to all the competitors and winners in all the classes. The next event for us is the Festival of 1000 Bikes at Mallory on 11th-12th July, then onto the North Lincs Custom Show on 18th-19th July at the Coach and Horses, Tattershall Road, Billinghay, Lincoln, LN4 4DD. Then the Bulldog Bash, which is definitely going ahead, at Shakespeare County Raceway on 6th-9th August. ©Eurodragster.com Web site updates. 1st July: Our good buddy Pete Roberts has updated his excellent web site The Pod - A Look Around with 3D shots and a panorama from the weekend's UK Truck Show at Santa Pod Raceway. You can check out Pete's work at www.podlook.co.uk. If you've not seen Pete's unique web site then it is well worth a look with panoramas, 3D pictures, daily wallpaper, history of Santa Pod and more. Editor's note: Apologies for the lack of a news update yesterday. If you've been paying attention over the last couple of days you will understand but don't worry, everything is OK and we are now more or less back to normal with the web site so keep that news coming to news@eurodragster.com. Earlier news |
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