Report and pictures by Richard Stirling with gratefully
received help from Jon Crawford, Rick Chavez, Bowler and Keith Carnell. Cheers Guys!
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The Finale of the FIA European Drag Racing season, after a season-long battle throughout the categories, came to Santa Pod Raceway for the drag racing warriors to duke it out. It has been a season of consistent performances and new records throughout and I, with thousands of other race fans, couldn't wait for the whole thing to start. The Picture Gallery consists of pictures taken from the entire 4 days of the event. However, they are filed in order of name and not chronological order. I will attempt to remedy this for next season. Many thanks must go to Jon Crawford, Press Officer for the Santa Pod Racers Club, who assisted with some start line pictures. Many thanks also must go to my US Partner in 'Nitro-Crime', who travelled from Northern California to be with us over the weekend and took part in photographing everything that moved and assisting one and all throughout. Cheers Rick! Let's see you back here next year!
Over the weekend, the weather tried hard not to spoil any of the racing, but the residual high-wind conditions made new outright records in most categories out of the question. Never mind! Next year is just round the corner... In Top Fuel, we had a field of 8 cars, so everyone knew they were safely in the show; We had enormous numbers of competitors in Pro-Mod and Top Fuel Bike and Nitro Harley entries, but it seemed a shame that there were very few entries in Top Alcohol Dragster and Fuel Funny car. With Dave Wilson licensing in Top Fuel at the National Finals meeting, it does make you wonder what will happen to the TAD category. As the meeting progressed, it was great to see some stout performances from the Nitro Funny Cars with Gordon Smith taking the title over the multi-time decorated John Spuffard. Well done guys. The most congratulations must go in Top Fuel to Andy Carter. He had everything stacked against him to win the championship for the second time and he went and did it! His 'freebie' round came in round when he was against Smax Smith. Smax had a mega tune-up loaded into the car, but suffered another dose of the 'Throttle Fairies' and pulled a red one on the Christmas tree. Even when his blower belt came off at 1000 feet (the drag strip is 1320 feet long), Smax still ran the quickest time of the day at 4.99 seconds. Andy stormed on by Lex Joon in the second round - with a little shake and pedalling thrown into the bargain - and this set up a final of Andy versus Thomas Nataas. Thomas had got by Jon Webster in round 1 (the closest finish at the finish line ever!, beating Barry Sheavills and Rico Anthes' record) and faced Micke Kagerad in Round 2. Micke had really had his work cut out to even make it to the line with Thomas. In Round 1, Micke got by a blower belt-shredding Tommy Möller only to have his motor blow up in the lights. This then punctured a rear slick and gave Micke a real handful of a driving job to slow down without causing major damage to the car. The thrash to get the car turned round for Round 2 proved very stressful: Micke's posh carbon front wing needed changing (Team mate Jöran Persåker's was pressed into service) in addition to the fact there were ignition problems picking up properly from the crankshaft trigger. What does that mean? It means that on several attempts to warm the car up properly in the pits, the car was just running on 4 cylinders. Eventually, they took the car into the lane as it was and Crew Chief Al Jackson 'wired them up direct' to cure the problem. Either way, it was sadly to no avail as, Thomas was away first and Micke's blower pulley decided to head off to sunnier climes. Thomas's run of 5.004 gave him lane choice in a nail-biting final which, if Andy won, would have him the first second-time FIA Top Fuel Champion. Thomas enjoyed his first Top Fuel final, but Andy Carter got away first and never looked back! Andy's run of 5.236 was just what the doctor ordered to do the business! Congratulations again to Andy Carter and his Go-Talk team. Congratulations also to car owner Rune Fjeld of Rune Fjeld Motorsport who also owns the beautiful 'Batmobile' car driven by Thomas Nataas.
The racing over the entire weekend was simply superb, considering the potential (and predicted!) weather implications, which made for a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. Here's looking forward to the Nationals finals weekend on the 2nd-3rd October and the Flame and Thunder show on 6th & 7th November. Don't forget - BE THERE!
Hope you enjoy the picture gallery:
I hope you enjoy the pictures. If you require full-sized publication images, or in fact, high quality unstamped prints of any pictures you see on the gallery, please do not hesitate to contact us by email at rs@topnitro.co.uk Thank you for visiting http://topnitro.co.uk
