For the second time this season we packed our things and got on the road on Monday (20.08.) and headed for Tierp in Sweden. This is the fifth event of the FIA European Championship and the third event for us this season. Once again on a Wednesday we got our pit space ready and on Thursday we were ready for tech inspection. Today (Thursday) was reserved for the sportsman classes so we used the time to get everything ready for our first qualifying run on Friday and we also had a little time left to watch the sportsman classes.
On Friday morning at 11am we did our first run, which Peter had to abort due to very bad tire shake. But even with a 9.6 sec. run we were qualified 5th after the first session. For the next run we had to change quite a bit of the setup to be able to achieve a better result. Our next run was in the afternoon at 4.30pm: which resulted in 5.41 sec. so we advanced to 2nd in qualifying for this day and this was much more conform with our expectations!
Saturday started out with rain showers and postponed our third qualifying run a little. As we got to run at last at 12am the occurrences of the first run the day before repeated itself: with very bad tire shake which resulted once again in an abort of the run. But this time the rear axle made very weird noises on the way back to the pits. Back in the pits we dismantled the rear axle and the gearbox completely. Luckily we could not detect any damage, only the ring and pinion set of the rear axle had to be adjusted. Even with the extra work we were ready in time for the next qualifying run of the day. Just after 4pm we ran again….and what a run…5.39 sec…a great run and at last after 3 long years, once again there was a 3 after the comma on our time slip. At the end of the day we may have “only” become 3rd in qualifying but this did in no way impair our joy over the ET we had run. Happy and satisfied with the days achievement we worked late into the night to get everything ready for the first round on Sunday.
On Sunday morning we were awakened by heavy rain. Once again a déjà vu…raceday Sunday in June here in Tierp also started with rain, but this time we did not have to wait too long for the first elimination run which was at 1.30pm. We won first round against Dave Wilson with a 5.50 sec. run. Once again it began to rain and therefore the semi-final run against Chris Polidano was postponed until 4.30pm – we won second round too with a 5.45 sec. run. Hooray….once again we were in the Finals as in Hockenheim two weeks prior. The Finals were scheduled for 6pm so we had to be very quick turning the car around to be ready in time! But the weather god petrus obviously had a problem with the scheduling of this event….because 15 minutes before the Finals it started raining buckets. Because the weather radar was showing that it was not going to get any better and the sun was going down the race was cancelled at 6.30pm. On the one side we were very disappointed, because it was definitely the last race for us this season, and we would have loved to have competed in the finals, but on the other hand we were very pleased and satisfied with our achievements…after all we competed in the finals in two out of three events. So we started packing our things up in the rain…and after we were nearly finished it stopped raining und we were able to put the tent and dragster in the truck without any showers from above. The journey home did not offer anything out of the ordinary and so we arrived back home on Tuesday evening.
Best regards,
Peter und Team