I am writing this Editor's Diary from our office in Race Control at Santa Pod Raceway. It's the Peak Performance Day the weekend before the FIA European Finals and we are on an enforced early lunch break because the local farmer has decided that today is the day upon which he will harvest the field next to the shutdown area - as a consequence of which Ian's pristine shudown area is currently full of hay, dust and assorted crap. The safety crews have been stood down and the sweepers are doing their thing at the top end.
 
This time last week I was strapped in to my seat in the front row of Race Control at Tierp Arena, in between the track announcers and the timing crew and typing so fast for our Alamo rent A Car-sponsored Event Coverage that my fingers were pink blurs from where I was sitting - from the side I would imagine that the speed distorted the vision. It was a privilege to report upon the Scandinavian Internationals which I think everyone is agreed was one of the best races ever held in the long history of European drag racing. It seemed at times that every run on the Sunday was a record of some type - certainly the records page in my notebook was crammed with notes of ETs, speeds, back-ups and little ticks or crosses. Keeping track of records on top of everything else added a dimension to the race report especially as my usual auditor Andy Marrs was not available for a lot of the weekend. As usual, though, my job was made a lot easier by the help and patience Oscar, Joachim, Bjorn and Petteri of the timing crew to whom many thanks. Petterssons Kjell and Tomas were also mines of information and assistance throughout the weekend which helped to inform our race reports even more.
 
You will be pleased to hear that, as has become traditional, I managed to make Christer laugh whilst he was speaking on the PA. Every so often during the event Christer and fellow announcer Bjorn Sundkvist would launch into paeans about Eurodragster.com, about Kirstie's and Patrik Jacobsson's photography, or about my race reports. Each time they did so I handed over one Swedish Kroner and by Sunday quite a pile had built up. On Sunday Christer made some more nice comments about Eurodragster.com but I found that I didn't have any one Kroner pieces left so I handed him a five Kroner piece and said "Can you make change?". It is levity such as this which stops us all going bloody mad under pressure.
 
Kirstie and Patrik, as ever, worked very hard indeed and delivered galleries which drew a lot of praise. Believe me those galleries could have been twice or three times the size. Kirstie gets extra credit against being fired (Eurodragster.com in-joke) as she did all the driving whilst we were in Sweden. It wasn't until we got into the rental car at Arlanda airport that Kirstie vouchsafed the information that she had never actually driven on the right, i.e. wrong, side of the road before but she did a great job and only tried to drive on the left twice. The first time was for about for about ten miles, and... no, I'm joking about that bit.

photo: The harvest which temporarily suspended testing at the Peak Performance Day - note the dust blowing across the track.



At home in Blighty Simon and photographer for the weekend Grace Roaf were covering the Open Sport Nationals at Shakespeare County Raceway. This was the first time that Eurodragster.com had posted live coverage of two Championship events simultaneously. Simon felt that it was very important that we covered the UK Championship event, not least because it was the final round of the APIRA Club Championships, and volunteered to stay in the UK; he wrote the live race report at the Springspeed Nationals in May so the event coverage held no fears for him. This event was Grace's first experience of photographing trackside at a Championship event after a day's dress rehearsal at the Mopar EuroNats in July. Simon and Grace worked ceaselessly over the three days producing informative reports and excellent pictures so that we could all stay abreast of what was going on at Shakespeare County Raceway. When downtime allowed we even tuned in to the Webster Race Engineering / Nimbus Motorsport webcast from Tierp Arena. We missed Simon's company and his pit notes but on the other hand people hopefully agree that we did the sport the greater service by covering both events.
 
Back in England after a fantastic weekend and our thoughts turn to the FIA European Finals at Santa Pod Raceway where the FIA and FIM Championships will be decided. Late last night we received the news (and I won a bet) that Top Methanol FC Championship leader Adam Flamholc has decided to go to the ADRL race and that has put Leif Andreasson and Jonnie Lindberg into a real fight for the Championship with Jonnie's brother Johan not far behind. It will be an interesting weekend, not least to see if Jonnie can go even quicker and faster than his 268.86 mph world record pace at Tierp Arena. If he does then I guess we should expect more churlish comments on transatlantic message boards; I never did understand this attitude on US message boards that if it didn't happen in the USA then it couldn't have happened but you can bet your life that Frank Manzo and his colleagues, people who actually know what they are talking about, were very happy for the Lindbergs. Going into the FIA European Finals none of the Championships is yet decided but at least some of them will be pretty much done and dusted when qualifying finishes. Marrs will be keeping track of points for us.
 
If you are attending the FIA European Finals then be sure to say hello; if not then tune in to Eurodragster.com and Kirstie, Simon, Julian, Patrik and I will do everything we can to bring you all the news as quickly as possible. At time of writing, webcast plans are not finalised but stay tuned to Eurodragster.com News during this week and as soon as it's sorted we'll let you know.
 
photo: English readers will understand why this sign led to a humorous misunderstanding.