He feels it says something about the difficulties posed for many teams, including his own, in adjusting to the Mantorp track. "I don´t know what it is," says Per. "If I did, I would do something about it. A general theory is that the track is better than many think, but just different from any other track so it simply does not work to run an 'Alastaro' or 'Santa Pod' setup."



Per decided to stay at home during this year's Finnish UEM round at Alastaro, a decision he does not regret. "Not being in Finland doesn't mean we spent less time on drag racing. We've been out testing at the Malmö track on three different occasions. The aim with the tests is to run the first 100 metres more quickly, with the main goal for the season to set a new European ET record. Attempts will be made towards that goal at Mantorp Park."



The records Per is targeting have been in the possession of Anders "Charley" Karling for a long time: ET 1/8 4.291 set in 2001 at Mantorp Park, Sweden ET 1/4 6.458 set in 2004 at Hockenheim, Germany.

Bengtsson himself follows developments on the US Top Fuel Bike scene and is influenced by their teams in various ways. About his philosophy and goals for this year he says: "In 2002 I ran 4.26 and I haven't improved since. To raise the lowest level of performance is, for me, a more interesting and tougher challenge than to win events and championship titles at the same ET levels as we have been running for many years."

Bengtsson wants to develop and stretch the limits, and the task currently engaging the team is to improve the bike's performance over the first 100 metres. Per's determination and focus will remain the same this season even if it means he might at some point fail to qualify (as already happened at Santa Pod's Main Event in May).

Discussing the forthcoming VEIDEC Festival, Per says he finds it very positive that the organisers have ground and resurfaced the first section of the track. The Supertwin bikes had previously really suffered from the uneven surface and bumps, especially in the right lane, and Per would go as far as to suggest that some riders had preferred to pass up a qualification run than to run in that lane.



Regarding the competition (21 bikes entered in Super Twin), Per´s guess is that Job Heezen and Lorenz Stäuble will both run well. However he finds the most interesting entrant in the class to be Jaska Salakari, whose bike(s) have proven very quick over the first part of the track.



In 2009 Per Bengtsson qualified #3 at Mantorp Park and had reached the final before it was eventually rained out, running elapsed times in the 4.50´s over 1000 feet. With a rather different setup this year, and sticking to his philosophy of running quickly rather than running safely at a lower performance level, Per Bengtsson and Team Bentec will be very interesting to follow when qualifying starts on Friday July 29th.