Urs and Anita
After the stunning numbers at Santa Pod in qualifying, everybody was looking forward to the race at the new resurfaced and very smooth Alastaro track. An almost record number of eleven Top Fuelers were entered and so in qualifying all had to do their very best to qualify for the eight car field. Well, exciting it was, but not in the way everybody hoped and expected to see. Bad weather conditions made it impossible to do the full preparation a new track needs and so track conditions were tricky and traction was far from optimal, especially for the 8,000+ bhp Top Fuelers. So qualifying saw many ‘up in smoke’ and aborted runs, but during the weekend the tuners learned how to deal with the conditions and although it’s of course not how they want to race, they took power and clutch out to come to the finish line in reasonable numbers.
Thomas Nataas
Thomas Nataas in the lead
In the first round of qualifying almost all went up in smoke at the start line, but in round two Thomas Nataas took the lead in 4.44 sec., with Duncan Micallef from Malta in second (4.57) and Urs Erbacher in third. Saturday morning local hero Anita Mäkelä improved to 4.57 and was the new number two. An improvement too for Stig Neergaard and the Dane was fourth (4.64). In this third session Erbacher was down from third to fifth. With a better run Antti Horto was sixth (4.70), Tommi Haapanen in Anita’s car from last year seventh, while Noah Stutz in the second Erbacher Racing car jumped from eleventh into the number eight position. With one qualifying session to go Timo Lehtimäki, Micke Kågered and Jari Halinen, stand-in for the injured Chris Andrews again, were outside the ladder. So a very interesting fourth session was to come.
Micke Kågered
Team TIL Racing - driver Timo Lehtimäki to the right
Andersen Racing
Two of the Finnsh drivers:
