Petri Paljakka

The first round at Kunmadaras will see Paljakka, now in his sophomore season, looking to gain a valuable points cushion in defense of his title. ‘Finland’s quickest gardener’ is planning on running the whole tour and, with the bulk of last year’s crew returning for this season’s campaign, a push deeper into the low sixes will also be high on the ‘to do’ list for crewchief Pasi Soderlund in 2011.

The Hungarian event will also see the debut of the radical and all-new Gulf Oils/Grand Prix Originals backed entry of Ian King. The latest from the Puma Engineering stable promises to be a true ground breaker with the cumulative knowledge in the team that has delivered over ten championships at European level feeding into state-of-the-art design details from the front forks through to the wheelie bars. New bike bugs might prevent a dream start for the multi-time champion, but once fully dialed in Ian will be chasing European records as well as a sixth title in 2011.

 

Gagnon - photo by Larry Pfister

Canadian Nate Gagnon, flying over with V-Twin legend Ron Houniet to help out Samu Kemppainen with his new Super Twin bike, is taking the opportunity to compete in Top Fuel Bike with Samu’s old ride. Gagnon will be a potential spoiler on the tricky Kunmadaras track where high horsepower isn’t always the best solution in getting from A to B.

Team Paljakka - 2010 Champions

Missing from the Kunmadaras event is Kai Selkamaa (last season’s championship chase took a heavy toll on the Finn’s funds), Rene van den Berg (sitting out 2011 whilst completing a new bike, the basis for which has been delivered by Puma Engineering over the winter), and Eric Teboul (who has put his ex-championship winning and Euro record holding bike up for sale). However, the European record holding Svensson brothers are due to rejoin combat in Tierp with a revised back end for the Team Kendall Billet Racing flyer as they look to push deeper into the five second zone, and Sverre Dahl will be also be looking for a five second ticket at around the same time with the heavily revised Sunshine Express fueler the Norwegian debuted last season. It will also be interesting to see how many events Jaska Salakari is able to double up in Top Fuel and Super Twin with the jaw dropping NitroDukes in 2011. Aside from Ian King, the UK based-teams will be out in force at the Santa Pod rounds. The usual suspects of Steve Woollatt and Steve Carey will be joined by nitro-rookie Kev Charman who is stepping up from UEM Funnybike by renting van den Berg’s ex-Annesley, Johnson, Pemble, Forsyth, Geeve, Bon Puma Yamaha (yes it really has been around since the late 1970s!), and made it into the sixes on his very first pass in testing.

Some whispers and rumours we’ve overhead for later in the year include. a UK veteran running at least one of the continental rounds this season if things go according to plan. Also on the likely list are a new Norwegian team that may appear later in the year as their Puma-based bike is nearing completion, whilst another Funnybike standout may join Charman in making the step over to TFB this year if he can find the time to complete his new ride. In addition, keep an ear open for some more North American accents in the pits this season as one or two teams from ‘over the pond’ are looking to run at least part of the European tour in 2012.