Report from the Veidec Nitro Festival, Friday 30th July 2004
It was a blazing hot day at the wonderful Mantorp Park Facility. There was much merriment in the journey here yesterday but for those details you will have to read the travelling report! The timing sense of the remainder of this report are now being reset to 'now' as if it was live reporting (which it was! But I was in hospital for a while and it has taken time to catch up!)
Things are just getting started here and from where I'm typing this (very near the start line) and currently, I'm working in a permanent haze of 'Eau De Rubber Smoke'. I will be back on line around lunch time with some more gossip and pictures.
Back around lunchtime? What a false promise that ended up being! In simple terms I am a forgetful idiot, most of the time, but this time I qualify for "Baffoon of the century". Not only did I forget to pack a towel (ill advised in such weather!) but I forgot to pack the 3 pin to European adapters well! Thus my laptop battery lasted a couple of loads of pictures downloaded from the camera and then... it croaked. I have just snuck into one of the trailers and discovered, to my delight, some 3 pin plug sockets and here we are, again, after being 'down' for about 4 hours. I am trying to concentrate on picking and squashing a small number of pictures which will give you a flavour of what is to come.
A picture update should be back here in about an hour or so....
Well, so much for the hour or so! A lot more reporting 'meat' and about a squillion more pictures will be going on the website when I get back. For now, here's just a small selection of shots that caught my eye either Thursday night or during the course of Friday. There's only 20 pictures, (just in alphabetical order not necessarily in the order they were taken) but please remember I only have my humble *Nokia 6310i mobile phone to upload the pictures and report pages to the web site. Please enjoy the show:
When I got the track on Thursday night, about 10:30pm, I was really surprised that a number of crew members (who had been on the same flight as myself) had dived in and got started on servicing their cars. Master Crew Chief, Alan Jackson, is well lit up (ho ho!) here as he attends to a throttle linkage on Jöran Persåker's Top Fuel dragster. I thought the second picture here of Andy Carter's rear wing looked nice with those fluffy clouds in the background (what an arty-f*rty one, I am!) - but it proved to be a prophetic shot because later on in the weekend, the end plate that you can see here was damaged in a collision with the MPM Oil sponsored dragster of Lex Joon. As always, TOPNITRO was in the right place and I have some interesting pictures of a "revenge" raid by the Carter crew on "Soderquist Castle!". I should have that later on.. Moving to the third picture above, we have the highly talented Top Fuel driver and Crew Member, Chris Andrews. He's a really personable chap and its 'fingers crossed' for some sponsorship dollars and more permanent driving duties in the near future. I heard a rumour that he may be driving at the Top Fuel tour race in Stockholm in a couple of weeks - but that's just rumour.... a strong one! But just a rumour.... I snuck into one of the trailers (thanks to Mr Knut Söderquist) to see if it I could get a better view of things and this trailer is literally right next to the start line. It is a noisy place, as you can imagine, but it is frequently 'smogged out' by burning rubber. I happened to see Nitro legend and Persåker Car Chief Gary Page mixing up some nitromethane (is there anything else in the world to mix?) and it was a 'fingers in the ear and waft it around' job to stay on station.
I had a wander around the entire Mantorp site including the sweeping racing circuit and when my feet were sore, I returned to the spectator side and caught up with some Pro Mod action. Micke Gulliquist is seen here in the first picture and was storming ahead at half track. Back in the pits Top Fuel contender Lex Joon kindly paused for a moment for a quick chat with me. He's really looking forward to 'going rounds' and taking this race title this weekend. We have a couple of views of the Mantorp facility in the next two pictures.
I caught the ever cheery and highly entertaining Smax Smith in a moment of thought as he was preparing for the first qualifying session. His Astral Projection must have worked because he wheeled his fueler to a cracking run in that first session. Making a very welcome return to the FIA Top Fuel Tour this weekend is the gifted Top Fuel veteran Monica Oberg. In the first session against Lex Joon, she hiked her wheels up, gave it a peddle and suffered a bit of shake, rattle and roll before the motor decided to spread its atoms over most of Sweden. Good job there's a spare motor in the trailer.... I couldn't help noticing that these blocks were of the cast aluminium variety which will be outlawed at the end of the season. Moving around the pits I'm always taken by the lovely 'Nasty Toys Team' logo and it gets another showing here. When the second Promod was run on Friday, I found this swoopy Pro-mod of Sver Kahrs most arresting and thought I'd let you see that beauty, here.
There was a single Top Fuel qualifying session on Friday and I snuck back into that trailer to get a peek at the start line. It was quite a magnificent view to see eight cars here at Mantorp in what is turning out to be a real banner year for the Top Fuel Dragster category. The afternoon weather was extremely hot and I bet Micke Kagerad in the second picture was sizzling in his fire suit waiting to make his pass. He was up against the other popular Swedish driver Jöran Persåker. Joran made the most incredibly long burnout - I was convinced he was going to keep it planted until he got to Gothenburg!! Micke had problems at the hit of the throttle and broke a pushrod just half a second into the run. He then lost traction and peddled before various small and large engine components made a bid for freedom. Next to join the foray was Britain's cheeriest Top Fuel pilot 'Sir' Smax Smith. He made a strong burnout and the motor was sounding really crisp, which promised to be another competitive run.
Smax made a super start and grabbed the top qualifying spot, albeit temporarily, with a super run. Next up was Tommy Möller and Britain's Andy Carter who are out to beat each other at every possible opportunity. Strong, smelly and smoky burnouts were followed by a pair of super runs. Andy must have had an incredible reaction time because he certainly got the jump on Tommy Möller who followed up with the quickest run of the day at 5.16seconds. Jöran Persåker remains the fastest at 441km/h.
That was about it for Friday 30th July and a pretty good day was had by one and all. On the way back to the lodge, we picked up some 'supplies' and further merriment was had before the snoring contests got under way. The Friday night winner was........ I have no idea; I slept like a baby.
*Nokia 6310i - it was nearly a month later that I received my account for the period that included the Nitro Festival. The internet access and FTP access using that phone over the 4 days was..... £486.53! This compares to my normal monthly bill of £47
