Next Championship Round Preview - 2010

Round 4:  Santa Pod Raceway – The European Finals - 9th/12th September 2010

In the language of Pro Mod, ‘R2B2’ spells ‘dominance’. Since the US team allied with Sweden’s Michael Gullqvist, it has cornered the headlines. First came Gullqvist’s historic victory in America, the first by a European in NHRA competition. Then, just two weekends later, came superstar Melanie Troxel, jetting into Santa Pod for May’s Main Event (MSA Rnd.2) with full crew and the mighty R2B2 Camaro. She didn’t win but she did make a solo exhibition run that delivered the quickest elapsed time and fastest terminal speed achieved by a Pro Mod in Europe till that point.

In July, Gullqvist steered the Camaro to an even quicker, faster, record-setting triumph at Finland’s FIA race. His 245.76mph was good for a new European terminal speed record but his 5.911sec elapsed time proved too quick to be ratified; his other ETs during the weekend fell just outside the one-per-cent margin needed to back it up.

In August, Troxel returned to Europe to pulverise the opposition at Hockenheim’s German FIA round. Only a rain-out halted her progress on the brink of the final against – who else? – Gullqvist.

Now Gullqvist arrives at Santa Pod level on FIA points with young sensation Johan Lindberg, so impressive in winning the Main Event. It’s a straight shootout for the FIA European Pro Mod Championship, the main focus of the event – the last man standing dons the crown. And Troxel is back to wreak more havoc among Europe’s elite. R2B2 rules! Or so it would seem.

However, there is also Round 4 of the MSA British Drag Racing Championship – the penultimate round – taking place concurrently with this FIA decider. Britain’s Andy Robinson enjoys a healthy, 73-point lead over Graham Ellis, with Kevin Slyfield 27 points further back.

While Slyfield has stayed at home basking in the glow of his maiden victory at June’s Summer Nationals (MSA Rnd.3) and keeping his parts and pieces intact, Robinson and Ellis have both had a wretched time pursuing the FIA tour to Scandinavia. Robinson, who looked highly competitive early in the season between bouts of breaking and shaking, suffered a severe finish-line fire in Finland. Instead of moving on to the Swedish round, the venerable Studebaker had to be shipped home for a chassis-up rebuild, emerging at Hockenheim in all-new, fire-engine-red livery. Robinson ran well enough in Germany to suggest he will be back to form at Santa Pod.

The 6.074sec ET with which Graham Ellis qualified 2nd at the Main Event seems a distant memory. Mechanical problems which set in at the start of the Summer Nationals became magnified in Finland and Sweden and the Superbird failed to qualify at either race. The team opted to forgo the Hockenheim trip in favour of a thorough overhaul at home and will come to the European Finals seeking to regain their heady Main Event pace.

Ellis will contest the Finals in a 1970 Plymouth, but will it be the familiar Superbird or the former Dave Woods-Troy Critchley Barracuda he is importing from the United States? The ‘Cuda is slated to arrive only a week beforehand so probably will not be ready in time. Of equal importance to the car itself is ace US tuner Howard Moon’s “operating manual” which accompanies it. The impact made by the arrival of Melanie Troxel’s all-conquering R2B2 Camaro has not been lost on Ellis. While finance might be the root of the gulf separating America’s and Europe’s Pro Mod practitioners, it is specifically the finance that buys track time – hours of testing and tuning in addition to the greater abundance of races – that makes the difference. It is this wealth of knowledge, purchased along with the vehicle to which it applies, which Ellis believes will be the key to future success.

While Graham Ellis looks ahead, Ray White nears the end of his “farewell tour”. In what is advertised as his final season at the wheel of the Lethal Zephyr, White at last broke into the 6-second, 200mph zone during a Santa Pod test session in July (in defiance of the paragraph above, they do happen; just more rarely than in the USA). Now White and his delighted crew will be doubly eager to match, if not beat, that 6.78/208 shot in official competition. If they succeed, what are the chances of the farewell tour extending a little further into 2011?