What's this? Do you need Beer Mugs for Glasses?
Early on the Saturday morning of the Veidec Nitro festival, a photo-session had been arranged by Knut Söderquist of his four dragsters to be taken lined up on the start line at Mantorp. The hour had to be early - around 7:15am and the picture taking session was being orchestrated by the veteran Grand Master of all photographers, Andy Willsheer. His chum and photo-legend himself, Roger Gorringe, would assist the picture taking process. A simple set of arrangements, it seems? All done and dusted before the racing starts. An excellent idea - in theory. In practice, the crew managing Lex Joon's dragster, headed by car chief Dave Bryant, were working on Lex's car until 4am, changing motors and such like. At seven, they were stirred to get the car ready to move to the line..... It was not beyond the bounds of imagination that the tight confines of the Mantorp pits and the horizontal versus vertical pit parking may well be a hindrance to an overly tired crew, who could maybe have done with another 30 or so hours sleep.... You've guessed it, whilst Lex's dragster was being pushed back, to get to the line quickly, it was pushed a little too far and Bump! Oops! The tall rear wings of Lex's and Andy Carter's dragsters clashed and a little damage was one! D'oh!! The dismayed Go Talk team, not involved in the photo session, decided that seeing as they were the 'injured party' in the affair, that they would plan for a revenge attack on The Söderquist owned top Fueller, emphasising the need to sharpen up their vision with a little help from some better spectacles, or as the old cliché goes, "Beer Mugs" for spectacles...
Crew Chief Eddie Corr takes the lead in the attack along with the rest of the Go-Talk crew. Alan Jackson looks on, enjoying the joke.
Having not received 'satisfaction', Eddie then led the attack on "Söderquist Castle" to play out the visual troubles with none other than Knut himself.
Knut enjoys the joke and even tries on a pair of "spectacles" himself. Eddie, having gained 'satisfaction' for the Go-Talk team, then returns to his own pit to inspect the damage a little more closely with those fine tuned spectacles. Just in the left hand corner of the picture is FIA Photo journalist Stefan Bowman who joins in the fun.
Still a little incredulous that this has all happened, Eddie, John and the guys milk the last of the fun out of the incident before getting ready for the next round of Top Fuel qualification.
Later on, just prior to the qualifying runs, there was some concerns expressed by Andy that there may have been some more serious damage to the wing and he asked that he should swap wings with Lex in order to be 100% safe with a big tune-up loaded up into the car. Crew member Tethys was dispatched to pickup the the spare rear wing from Rune Fjeld's spare dragster and bring it back to Mantorp to be pressed into service. In the end, the 4.76 second pass at 308mph (with Lex's wing nicely in position) was more than anyone could have wished for - absolutely stunning and congratulations to Andy and the team on the most incredible run ever at Mantorp Park.