Anthony Cohen, Cheif Executive Officer of American Car Imports and the ACI Racing division, proudly stands by the Top Alcohol Dragster of Dave Wilson who is looking really strong for the FIA TAD championship, this year. Good luck to Dave, Anthony and the ACI team.
Day 2 Veidec Nitro Festival, Saturday 31st July 2004
'Live Coverage': I am going to add a lot more interesting snippets when I get back to base, but just briefly, here are a few of a load of pictures that I squashed and uploaded using my crappy mobile phone. The passenger in the 2 seater dragster had never sat in anything quicker than a Mondeo before. I guess the run of 8.3 seconds may have opened his eyes to drag racing, then.. I didn't mean to catch Michael Malmgrem in this particular pose, but I imagine that we can gather he's not having a particularly good weekend with Jimmy Ålund running that sensational 6.88. Tommy Möller has new crew members, new parts (note one of Carbon By Design's Carbon Scoops) and he also has a new paint job on the nose. Can you see what it is? Looks like Terminator 3 to me. Pity Tommy was 'Terminated' in Round 1of eliminations on Sunday - but that's drag racing. I love nitro machines and in the lanes I came across Ton Pels' sensational new Nitro Harley bike.
Then along came Ton himself and he obliged me with a quick pose. Good luck Ton! He's going very well so far. I also bumped into Tommy Möller and he, too, paused for a moment for a quick picture. Thanks Tommy. I couldn't help but add this lovely picture of Tommy's wing offset against those lovely fluffy clouds... There goes the arty side of me, again... Moving on to the final picture was Tommy warming up for round 2 of Top Fuel qualifying on Saturday afternoon. It was a delicously smelly warm-up as well, now that they are all getting the hang of that new slider valve..
With the name topnitro.co.uk, you take it that the site principal is a bit of a nitro freak. What about the rest of the fans then? Well, just take a look at this! Stinking Nitro warm-ups a plenty in the pits at Mantorp and, despite the burning eyes and throat, it seems that 30,000 people are just loving it!! Well, a quite a lot, anyway. In the early afternoon of Saturday, I called up to see Andy Carter to congratulate him on that completely sensational run in qualifying. He was chewing the fat with Top Fuel racer and whizzo Photo-journalist Darryl Bradford. Andy's run of 4.76 at 308mph is just unbelievable, particularly at Mantorp, where the uphill strip runoff area kind of turns right, all of a sudden. In a shocking first round upset on Sunday morning, Andy ran a slowing low 5 second run and did not make that turn. Into the gravel trap he went and that was that. This must have been a double upset for Andy, after yesterday's dominant performance. Commiserations must go to the Go Talk team - they'll be back, I'm sure. Ers Erbacher and Nicholas Andersson are in the second picture and 'Fast Freddy' Fagerstrom in his outrageous Pro Mod truck is in the final picture. On his burnout, Freddy kept his boot in for that long, I thought he was going to burn out all the way to Gardermoen!
A little more Pro Mod action saw Hakaan Nilsson run extremely well in his '68 Camaro. He was helped along by lots and lots of Nitrous oxide, yet not by the enormous 740 inch motor's that seem to be favoured by American Nitrous-equipped Pro-Modders. Monica Oberg came out for the second Top Fuel qualifying session and I caught her in the middle of this super burnout. Unfortunately, shake then loss of traction, caused enough engine damage to end her weekend at Mantorp. What a Pity. This meant that Smax Smith would then have a bye run into round two of eliminations on Sunday. Micke Kagerad was not having too much fun, either, in that second session. He's backing up in the first picture and in the second, he blew the tyres off at the Christmas tree and in amongst the smoke there looked like there was a bit of 'flash-bang' as well. The guys were burning a drop of midnight oil to put that lot right..... perhaps this was the elusive turning point in Micke's fortunes...
The last pair of Saturday Top Fuel qualifiers were Tommy Möller and the sole Dutch Top Fuel Commander in the World, Lex Joon. You can see Tommy dropping cylinders before the tree and if I'm not mistaken it looks like the whole bank went out in the next picture. A nice picture of Ton Pels follows and finally a little bit of an 'arty' sunset shot that caught my eye around half past nine Saturday night, right after I'd checked in with Mrs. Topnitro.
When we set off back to enjoy a 'quiet night in' we really did the job properly this time and purchased sufficient supplies for an excellent evening. Again, the snoring contest was a neck and neck competition and, no-one really complained so that was good!