Friday at The Veidec Nitro Festival at Mantorp Park

To Mantorp we go! Will I have enough for the taxi?

Friday 28th July 2006

I left the Hotel at 7am and sauntered across the road to the Bus/Train station to look for the taxi rank. I’ve stayed in Linköping once before, when we've been at Mantorp and as I recall, the track was only a handful of miles down the road. I grabbed a taxi and off we went. After my eyes had been fixated for a little while on the taxi meter, spinning around impossibly quickly, I enquired just how far away the track still was. “Around thirty kilometres – we are about half way there” “What??” My guess of the distance had clearly been greatly flawed. Once this realisation had hit me, of course, the meter appeared to speed up to the extent I was getting seriously worried about being personally bankrupted by the time we got to the track. Eventually, the driver took pity on me and stopped the meter at 500SEK. That was over half the amount I was going to pay for car rental over the whole weekend! At least he hung on at the gate whilst I signed on at the Press office and then he took me up to the main car park. Only a reasonable walk into the pits then remained for me to get to the media centre. I bumped into Fuel hero Gary Page with equally heroic Fuel crew member Terry Giles – who were looking after Micke Kågered’s cylinder heads, this weekend and they were with friend Glenn and his son Ashley who were also going to be helping out Micke as well. As usual, I was greeted with the usual ribbing and by the time we reached Micke’s pit, we had all been chuckling for a while - not all of which was at my expense, for a change!

Having had a quick chat with Press Chief L-O Jonsson, I got to the Media Centre and was soon ready to get to the trackside. It was good to see the other photojournalists we more regularly see at Santa Pod’s trackside: Eurodragster’s Sharkman (with Simon Groves) and unsighted in Race Control - the one and only Tog, who was 'back in the saddle', looking after all the race coverage. The legendary Andy Willsheer was also in attendance with (the equally legendary) and life long friend, Roger Gorringe. In addition, the highly talented Dr. Ivan Sansom was here, fresh back from expeditions into the Australian outback, with partner and decorated photographer Rose Hughes. The omnipresent Stefan Bowman (how many cameras can one possibly own?) was also there with a large group of local photographers. It was also good to make the acquaintance of Patrik Jacobsson of www.racebilder.nu who has a fine site which I had visited many times before I had the privilege of meeting him.

The qualifying was excellent and in the first session of Top Fuel, it was interesting to see the return of Stig Neergaard after a sabbatical of some 9 years away from the cockpit. After his burnout, he couldn’t select reverse and dribbled out the top end. Monica Oberg was next and was also on a solo run. I had seen her limping heavily in the pits earlier on and wondered if that was causing discomfort in the cockpit. A sizzling burnout allayed any fears of that and she launched really hard at the lights and she’d got more power than Mantorp could handle and blew the tyres off at 300feet. An 8.15 second ET was all that could be salvaged. Tommi Haapanen was next on a solo and he seemed to have found the car keys to partner Anita Makela’s (she was curiously not at the track this weekend) Top fueler and was blowing the cobwebs off his fuel license. His burnout sounded really rough and I was thinking that any second he would kill the motor. He didn’t and to my surprise he launched really hard – a cylinder went out at around 200ft and Tommi kept on it until those big Goodyear slicks boiled hard at 600 feet. Tommi took his foot off and still got a timing ticket with 5.86 seconds written on it. Next up was Ers Urbacher and Micke Kågered. Both had good burnouts and at the hit, got away well. Micke smoked the tyres at 600 feet and Ers dropped a cylinder. He stayed with the run and bagged a 5.06. Tommy Möller and Lex Joon were out in their first qualifying session next and Tommy ran really hard and clean down the left hand lane, but inexplicably got off the throttle at 900 feet. I spoke with him later and he slapped his head repeatedly “They MUST paint a line where the finish is!!” “I thought they DO have a painted line there, Tommy” “D’oh!” A 5 second flat run resulted which would have been an early 4.8 second run had he not lifted. Lex had no time on the run and yet it looked very good. Håkan Nilsson seemed to be laboured on his run against Andy Carter and Andy couldn’t keep those Goodyear hides stuck in the right hand lane and smoked them at half track. In the next run Håkan Fällström (on a solo) ran well down the left hand lane. He, too, had a little too much power for the track and had to pedal, but still rescued a 5.32 second timing ticket.

In the second round of Top Fuel, Stig Neergaard was the first out on a solo, again, and ran fairly strongly down to around 800 feet before lifting. A 7.6 second timing slip was the result. Thomas Nataas now made his first appearance on a solo. He had missed the first round “because” said his coy crew, so I imagine car owner Rune Fjeld had something to say about that. Thomas was on a fairly soft-ish run with a little black-striping and bagged a 5.31 second pass at 17.31 km/h according to the timing lights. Rene Hersland was making his first appearance (perhaps this would haunt him later) and blew his tyres off hard before he made it to the Christmas tree. Lex appeared to be ‘lagged up’ on his run and though he ended up with 5.09 seconds, it felt and sounded really laboured. The next pair consisted of Micke Kågered and Andy Carter. Andy had trouble with the tyres smoking and he pedaled it then seemed to mix his cylinders up. Andy ended up with a 6.02 second run. Micke ran straight and true and it sounded quite strong – he got to the line in 5.05 seconds and it was immediately obvious there was no parachutes. Mantorp is the last place you want your chutes to fail. The plume of dust indicated that Micke had arrived in the Kitty Litter. Word came back that he was okay and the car was alright, but did anyone have a Hoover in the pits? That stuff gets everywhere! After a short delay, Monica Oberg came out on another single. She ran really strongly to 300 feet and instantly fried the tyres. She seemed slow to lift and though she got an 8.19 second timing ticket out of it, she was still not in the show and I would wager that her crankshaft was as black as the ace of spades. Urs Erbacher and Håkan Nilsson were next and Urs surprised everyone by not being able to select reverse. He dribbled out the back door as quickly as possible and Håkan (who’s idle speed seemed far too high) ran a soft 5.19 at 444.95

After the qualifying sessions were complete and the pits was pretty much packed up for the night, I was grateful to Glenn & Ashley to give me a lift with Gary & Terry, back to Linköping. I was exhausted and I really wasn’t bothered about going out at all. I had camera batteries that needed charging and I was fighting to keep awake, so I turned in.

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