..The Bruno & Micke show may be Pro Mod’s headline attraction at the Scandinavian Internationals but there is plenty more on the Tierp undercard to tickle the fancy.

With qualifying points awarded following the NitrOlympX skate-a-thon, Bruno Bader’s championship lead over Michael Gullqvist has been whittled down to just 17 points going into Tierp. Bader began the season with a one-race advantage, taking near-maximum points with victory at Santa Pod in June, a race Gullqvist did not attend. Gullqvist narrowed the gap by winning Tierp’s Sweden Internationals and reaching the semi-final at Alastaro while Bader managed to red-light at both. At Hockenheim, Gullqvist qualified second, a clear 2.4sec ahead of Bader in 13th, such was the impossible state of the track.

But this is only part of the story. There are 30 other drivers on the entry list apart from Bader and Gullqvist, reduced to 29 if Robert Joosten withdraws following his Hockenheim accident. Based on personal-best elapsed times, Joosten would be the bump-spotter at 6.174sec, an indication of the event’s potential for exceptional performances. In Joosten’s absence, fellow Dutch racer David Vegter would be 16th-quickest at 6.185. At the end of qualifying, no fewer than 15 drivers will be due to head home.

Micke Gullqvist - in 2nd place in the points standings and will be competeing at Tierp Arena

Three drivers have already run in the 5’s: Gullqvist, Johan Lindberg and Mats Eriksson. Six more have achieved 6.0’s. At 6.103, Bruno Bader is only 10th-quickest in the field, yet didn’t allow such technical distinctions to deter him from winning on the Tierp concrete last year. Bert-Ove Olofsson ranks 14th-quickest at 6.153 but ominously clocked 5.97 while testing at Tierp earlier this year.

Among the 6.0sec runners, two stand out for strong form this season from idiosyncratic choices of car. Niclas Andersson’s 1951 Chevrolet Business Coupe and Fredrik Fagerström’s 1966 Chevrolet C-10 Pickup both reached FIA final rounds for the first time, Andersson losing the Sweden Internationals decider to Gullqvist and “Fast Freddy” losing out to the rain before his Alastaro match with Mats Eriksson could take place. Jan Gunnarsson’s 1959 Cadillac is no less quirky but has not run quite at its peak for a couple of years.

At the opposite end of the performance scale, the race brings three new faces to the FIA scene, plus one nearly-new. Having managed just a single run on his FIA debut during the Sweden Internationals’ rain-shortened qualifying programme, Stefan Holmberg will expect to improve on the 14-second ET he achieved then. Joakim Backman, Jan Bränvall and Tero Laukkanen all step into the fiery furnace for the first time.

Tierp racers, organisers and fans will pray for fine weather. With such a large, competitive field, the event promises rewritten record books, reams of personal bests, fresh additions to the 5-second roster and an all-time-low bump spot to beat the 6.240 mark set by Norbert Kuno at last year’s Sweden Internationals. Races don’t always live up to their potential but, if the sun shines, who knows what might happen?