The super sized field of entrants (23 !) in the Super Twin Bike category will no doubt make a great impact and put on a terrific show for the crowd at Mantorp Park. As the elimination ladder only hold 8 spots, 66% of the entrants will not be competing on race day at the VEIDEC Festival.



On paper some of the riders look strong favourites to be in the ladder when the racing starts, but this is drag racing for real and at its highest level. The machines are complex and quite often unexpected discrepancies occur that nobody could anticipate. Add to that the fact that bike and rider have to function as one in harmony and you can see how complex drag racing really is. In short, the outcome of the qualifying rounds may well be very different from what can be expected when looking at the results to date.



Job Heezen starts the VEIDEC Festival as the championship leader, followed by Hans-Olav Olstad and Lorenz Stäuble. These three are very strong contenders with a proven track record this season. Olstad was winner at Alastaro and runner-up at Kunmadaras, Stäuble was winner at Santa Pod and Heezen won at Kunmadaras and was the runner-up at Santa Pod.

Absent at Alastaro by intention but back in competition at Mantorp Park is Sweden´s Per Bengtsson and he is there to run fast and make record attempts against the ones held by Anders "Charley" Karling (read more about that in a separate article about Per Bengtsson under 'Talking with racers').

Jaska Salakari has entered in both Super Twin and Top Fuel Bike. He was among the riders who did not qualify at Mantorp Park in 2009, but rumour says his bike is very fast over the first part of the track and with everything in order he might well win rounds and even the event this weekend.

Young rookie rider Jan Sturla Hegré is still on a learning curve but has shown great progress in the races so far. Much will depend on how will he takes to the Mantorp track when he rides it for the first time. It may even be an advantage for him to not have experience of it before the changes….

De Haas, Kemppainen, Rolfstad, Koedam, Mäenpää, Höiberget… the list of names just goes on and all of them are potential winners next week when the VEIDEC Festival qualification starts for Super Twin bikes on Friday, July 29th.



In 2009 the no# 1 qualifier was Hans-Olav Olstad with 4.31 sec and the bump spot was at 4.79 (Matti Vahasaari, who is not running this time) The final should have been between Per Bentsson and Lorenz Stäuble last year but was rained out.



Check out the massive entry list for the Super Twin Bikes, make sure to watch them go down the Mantorp Park track online or for real - just awesome!