Micke Kagerad Car Chief Thomas savours a delicious hot dog after his boss and the team notched up victory in Top Fuel at Mantorp Park. These things always taste much better after a victory!
Day 3 Veidec Nitro Festival, Sunday 1st August 2004
You can probably tell as you read this very raw and unpolished report, that I'm posting pictures and stuff that I've processed locally, whilst the racing has been going on. I've made hints to that a little earlier. In Top Fuel, a crazy first round of eliminations took place. Andy Carter was up against the struggling Micke Kagerad in that beautiful orange dragster of his. Andy was so dominant in qualifying with that mind-boggling 4.76 second pass, I think people would have been placing the bets firmly in the court of Andy, particularly with Micke's recent struggling. Let no-one say that Drag Racing is predictable! At the hit, Micke's dragster hooked up, stuck down and shot off to an upset win over Andy with a personal best 4.84 second pass. Lex Joon was lined up against Tommy Möller and, despite having problems and getting off the throttle at around half track, he had less problems than Tommy, whose difficult weekend was capped off just nicely, by all sorts of mechanical grotesqueries just past the Christmas tree. Smax Smith was surprised to see that poor Monica Oberg's mechanical woes meant that she would not be able to take the stage for eliminations. He sensibly lifted at around 300 feet to give the busiest Crew Chief in the world, Al Jackson, some useful data. Jöran Perskåker, whose trailer facilities I have 'crashed' (and no one has thrown me out, yet! There's time to come! Cheers, Knut!) was up against Thomas Nataas in the first round and he wasn't prepared to take prisoners and ran a best of 5.06 seconds. Last night, I was talking with Crew Chief Alan Jackson and we were discussing what the possible odds would be of having 4 cars in an 8 car field and none of them meeting in the first round. I'm no good at sums, so it's no use asking me, but I think its 'A lot' to 1. Here we were, at the end of round 1 eliminations and all of a sudden its an all-Söderquist Top Fuel race!
The interesting thing is that the teams are fiercely independent, except when away from the track, and they succeeded in carrying the competitive spirit forward and each made a run of round two of eliminations, the semi finals. First up was Micke Kagerad versus Lex Joon. Lex had not had time to warm up in the frantic servicing turn around, so there's always the danger that something might slip through the net. Sounding strong, he made a good burnout to match Micke's smokey tribute and Lex ran into trouble as he reversed back to the start line. He could not select reverse. Further back, team owner Knut spotted the difficulty (Lex knew he would come and just waited) and suddenly 'Brave Sir Söderquist' ran at an impressive velocity, despite his tender 34 years, to assist the ailing Lex. With no regard for his own safety, he dived into the area where the reverser is located and physically engaged reverse by hand!!! You must remember this is a highly dangerous area and is right where those cackling Nitro headers are located and they were all belching generous clouds of gaseous nitric acid, straight into his face..... Rather him than me! Alas, it was not to be. When Lex moved forward, he'd burnt off much more nitro than normal (remember, Micke's waiting in the other lane, too) and he went straight into stage without the normal gentle procedure. Micke had him at the lights and Lex laboured to a 5.8 second pass.
The other semi final in Top Fuel featured the two other Söderquist cars. Smax Smith in his beautifully liveried Promise Dragster was up against team mate Jöran Persåker in the Persåker Speed Shop dragster. Both made impressive burnouts and were just edging towards stage and........ then the rain came. It wasn't a bad shower and it was quickly dried in 30 minutes or so. The problem is that you can't just slop some fuel into these things and start them up again. They had been running for nigh-on a minute and a half, so they are very hot and the oil is fully impregnated with nitro and is, consequently, junk. After feverish activity, the cars were ready to go. As the dragsters staged, Smax anticipated things a little too soon and pulled a red light. Not just a red light; a red light that was so ridiculous that we had time to have a cup of tea before the tree ran down properly for Jöran. In fact, later on that evening when Smax, Al Jackson and the lads were enjoying some "Amber Neck Oil" and were watching a video of this very moment; Off went Smax (on the video) and Al with a string of jovial insults enquired roughly (words to the effect of) "What the devil was that, Old Chap?" to which everyone was already laughing and then Smax - bless him - came out with possibly the most incredibly amusing retort (and must-quote cliché from henceforth!) that I have ever heard: "THAT WASN'T ME!!!! THAT WAS THE THROTTLE FAIRIES!!!". Needless to say, back to the race, Jöran ran strongly in the race that was dominated by the throttle fairies (!!!!!!!!) and that made it an all Söderquist/all Sweden Top Fuel final. Back to 'live' coverage:
The cars have been serviced and, as I type this, Micke Kagerad, orchestrated by the magnificent Al Jackson has just warmed up. It has been raining heavily for a while and thus, the warmup after routine servicing was entertaining, indeed. I'm fairly experienced in nitro warm-ups but this was a magnificent, cackly, brown-cloud, everybody-run-for-your-life job and the spectators loved it!
That's it for now. I am processing the pictures, but what I am going to do is post this report and just the picture thumbnails for now as the full sized images take forever on my little mobile phone, so they will appear 'later'; I hope I can afford the mobile bill as I'm dialling my internet supplier in England from a drying Mantorp! Bye for now....
Micke had Jöran on the lights and stormed away to a memorable victory at his home track. Several things came out this race day; perhaps the most important was the fact that when the handle came on this car, Micke's crew were able to put in on the track and run 4 second passes every time out and - my word! That beautiful orange machine is looking awfully dangerous! Watch out everyone! For a full selection of the pictures I took over the Mantorp weekend, please click below.