The off season has had some very interesting developments in the Pro Stock class, not least of which is the event win for Jimmy Ålund at the Z-Max 4 wides in Charlotte North Carolina.  Jimmy becomes the second European to win a "Wally" (Michael Gullqvist in Pro Modified was the first one).



Jimmy Ålund won the championship in 2013 setting new speed and et records on the way.  The first European Pro Stock car into the 6.5’s Jimmy looked unbeatable all year.  Jimmy set the bar higher for all the other racers, and made them all step up.  I do not expect Jimmy to have it all his own way in 2014. As we have seen in all forms of sport, one team make big advances, and it goes with them for a period of time, but everyone else steps up and raises their game to match and sometimes exceed them.  Pro Stock is about advancing in small increments.  Jimmy’s car in 2013 had advanced by a large increment, but even by the end of the season the rest were closing down the gap. 

Jimmy has had an “interesting” closed season!  When Greg Anderson of the NHRA KB racing Summit equipment Pro Stock team was forced to take a break from racing for some planned surgery, the team called Jimmy to take up driving duties whilst Greg was out.  It turns out to have been a very good call.  In Europe, we all knew that Jimmy could drive a race car.  In NHRA though, as we have often seen, Europeans are considered the poor relations.  Jimmy showed them how wrong they are.  At the opening round in Pomona, Jimmy qualified 10th and went out to a -0.14 red light.  At the next round, Jimmy qualified 11th and was beaten in rd 1 by a tiny margin by Allen Johnson.  At the Gator nationals jimmy qualified 9th and went out to a 0.072 red in rd one.  Moving to Las Vegas, and Jimmy qualified 8th and beat no lesser racers than Vincent Nobile and Jeg Coughlin, both huge names in Pro Stock, before losing to his team mate Jason Line in an extremely close race, won on the tree, in the semi finals. 

And then came the Charlotte North Carolina.  The world famous 4-wide Z-Max dragway.  Jimmy qualified 8th again, and beat everyone to win the event.


Thomas Lindström lost the number one off the race car to Jimmy in 2013.  He wants it back!  The team will be racing all rounds this season, and will fight for the championship, the usual over winter engine refreshes have been completed along with some work on the race truck.  Thomas will not be able to improve on last season in one respect.  He married long term partner Nina in the pits at Tierp last August so that is one record he will not be able or willing to beat!  The Thomas v Jimmy rivalry will be present again in all its technicolour glory.  There may be a lot of banter between these two racers, but there is also lots of friendship and respect.

Micke Callin hung up his race suit at the end of the 2013 season, and it is with great sadness that we say goodbye to Micke and his team.  Micke has raced in Pro Stock since 2007 and has been in the top three several times during this career.  The Pro Stock family wish Micke well in whatever he decides to do in future.  If there are any aspiring pro-stock racers reading this, please feel free to buy Micke’s car and come and race with us!

Ulf Wagnhester and the Samantha racing team will be at all but one of the events this season. They have a new Hemi motor and are looking for improvements to their consistent package which saw them regularly hitting 6.80’s last year. A good result for Ulf and team would be to get into the 6.6’s


Sampsa Palos did not contest any rounds in 2013, but will be back for the Scandinavian rounds in 2014.  Over winter they have had their engines refreshed and also updated the Cobalt to meet 2014 FIA regs.  With a new race truck and these updates we should see Sampsa matching and improving on the 6.7’s he was running in 2012.


See the entry list for Main Event under a separate headline in this Newsletter and follow the action during Main Event via Eurodragster.com!    

The current Pro Michael Malmgren has purchased a Gerry Haas built Pontiac GXP race car and will contest all rounds in the 2014 season.  Michael has refreshed his engines over the closed season, and following on from his performance towards the end of last year, I expect to see the team improving on their 6.66 best et and creeping down and into the 6.5’s this year.  Michael has been in Pro Stock for many years now and he knows what he has to do to get near Jimmy and Thomas’ et’s.


Jan “Snowball” Palmqvist currently plans to run all rounds.  He has some new engines and has spent the winter refreshing the car and the race set up. Jan has been a regular competitor in Pro Stock since 2006 and ran some clean 6.7 passes last year.  Improvements for this team will add another car into the 6.6 bracket, and maybe quicker.  Jan is quick on the tree so I expect to see some good results for Snowball this year.


Magnus Pettersson has also spent the winter updating his car and package with work going into chassis, clutch, shocks and engine.  Magnus was a contender in 2013 with some very good laps.  I wonder whether the pressure on Magnus to let his son and crew chief Martin drive this year will increase. Magnus’ PB racing team is a true family affair with Martin working the clutch and set up and Magnus working the driving and engine duties. I know Martin is keen to get in the driving seat as well, so we will see this year if the driver name stickers change.



Jan Ericsson had plans last season to run more of the races in the season.  I have not received an update from Jan with the current status of these plans, but I certainly hope to see him outside Sweden.


Christian Sagelv is another racer who talked about attending more races in 2014.  The Gulf Oil Ford Focus is a very well finished car which should be capable of running into the 6.6 bracket, they are constantly learning and improving and will surely run PB times consistently this season.

Mats Jacobsson will not be racing in 2014.  An old injury means he will be undergoing some medical treatment during the season, and will not be able to race.  Mats does tell me that the car is race ready, but unfortunately he will not be able to race it himself.

Bo Pettersson will not be racing in 2014.  Bo crashed at Tierp in Q4 back in June 2013 and the car is not ready to run yet.

Tommy Leindahl has also not raced recently, but also has not communicated his retirement, so I hope to see him in a car this year. An the same goes for Finland based Richard "Nixxon" Sundblom.

There are enough cars in Europe to run a full 16 car field, and it would be fantastic to do so, but I understand that time, money and resources are all difficult to organise, and so I think the biggest field we may see is a 10 car qualifier for an 8 car ladder, and we will only see this in Tierp or Alastaro.

I took a poll of the teams to ask if anyone thought the speed and ET records set by Jimmy Ålund 6.53 sec @ 213.31 (343.29) would fall during the season.  I am going out on a limb here, because the majority of the teams think that the numbers are not beatable, but I think (and here is where I publish something and then get shot down for it later!) that what Jimmy has learned in NHRA will enable him to push these records.  I “confidently” predict that the record by the end of the season will be 6.51 @ 214 or better.  At the time of writing, only one other team had predicted anything close to this.