There are 34 entries in Super Gas and nine are from the UK. Here are Jon Giles, Dan Page and Thursday's Birthday boy Jon Morton's cars in front of the circuit spectator stands.

The Brit Super Gas entries were alongside one another in the pairing lanes. Pictured is Eurodragster.com sticker and pen sponsor Paul Foote with his Ford F100 Pickup in front of Mark White's Vega and Brian Pateman's Firebird. Brian has raced here before, twice in Super Gas and once in Super Comp.

Super Gas racer Markus Habermann races this unusual VW Pickup or Käfer which has a 434cu in small block Chevy engine. Markus who is the son of Jet Dragster driver Gerd Habermann, said "The car was built in America and Walter Strobel made it into a pickup" (a name that will be familiar to those as the last owner of the legendary Mr Six before Dennis Priddle and your pit reporter visited him for Dennis to reacquire it). Markus's sponsor is a drink company.

This Super Gas car has appeared at the NitrolympX since 1998 and has been raced by its owner Robert Jongen in Holland since 1993. Robert said "The car has a Subaru Flat Four engine that we have tuned to produce over 600hp. The car will run 9.5 and runs without a throttle stop in this class. But we want to put more power in with a new turbo and move up to Super Pro ET." Pictured are Robert and mechanic Dmitri Meyer (standing right); support is from Kronenberg Management System, suppliers of fuel management.

Top Fuel racer Urs Erbacher who is now tied on points with Risto Poutiainen said after a smoke-filled twelve second pass, "This is a green field site. It looked good on Wednesday but the rain over the last day has washed the rubber off from last weekend's event. All the teams have way too much power and clutch. We will change the blower for one with less compression, take weight off the clutch and about 1000hp out of the engine. It may have been different if other pro classes had run before us."

Super Twin racer Lorenz Stauble was delighted to have won at Gardermoen which leaves the championship really close. "I enjoyed my race with Job Heezen which I won by only 1/500 second. It was great drag racing. Also apart from a broken gearbox sprag we had no damage. Now we are ahead of Job and Hans Olav (Olstad) but by only two and six points." Lo is pictured with longtime crew member Horst Pauli.

Team Erbacher which is based across the Swiss border has a large corporate hospitality tent on the side of its double race vehicle canopy. Customers of Urs's custom motorcycle business are being entertained and on display are some of the bikes turned out by the company. Prices are on application...

Top Fuel racer Risto Poutiainen was pleased to have run the quickest time recorded but aware that fellow Finn Janne Ahonen made a better pass. "The time didn't come up but it was a good clean pass by Janne. I could see what was happening to the other cars but at that stage in the lanes we couldn't adjust the car and had to adjust the driver instead." Risto feathered the throttle to a carefully-judged 5.3 run.

Top Fuel racer Janne Ahonen not only suffered a no time recorded (your race reporter saw the car rolling the beams slightly on his single), this body panel came off when a Dzus fastener broke and the ever-helpful Duck Tape came out to repair it. Crewman Tony Pearson told us this was the only damage suffered.

Top Methanol Funny Car racer Dezsoe Krivan is back on the tour, running here and entered for the Euro Finals. "This is my 30th anniversary as a racer. I went to Santa Pod in Spring 1980 and entered a Street Camaro a few months later." The first funny car came in 1986 and he has run in this class for 25 years now. For the last six years he has been running more on a local basis but now his business is thriving, he is making a return. "I have distribution rights for DJ Safety across Europe and my web shop is open at www.djsafety.eu. The car has a Whipple blower, Crower clutch and a unique Toyota Celica body. Des said "The body was developed for Fuel Funny Cars and had over 100 hours in the wind tunnel but was found not to have enough downforce. However it is perfect for TMFC." After three years away from Hockenheim the objective is to win: "This class has such great competition anyone could win."

Top Methanol Funny Car racer Jürgen Nagel said "We tried our best in Sweden but got beaten by the weather. Hopefully we will have good weather and will try to go up in the points." Jürgen is only 20 points behind championship leader Arvid Grødem but the event got off to a bad start when the car refused to move forward into stage in the first session.

Top Methanol Funny Car racer Jarmo Kuutniemi is some way behind in the points after missing the Main Event but has one of the quicker cars here running a 6.13 to lead after sesson one. On his way towards the pairing lanes he was full of confidence.

Super Street Bike racer Wayne Saunders is with son Josh racing his Junior Dragster and after the first qualifying session both racers were in second place. Wayne said "In this size field and with the first pass on a new engine I am really pleased. The bike was set really soft and there was no tyre spin, so the cautious approach worked. The second half of the pass was the best ever for me. Thanks to Brad O'Connor who is helping me from back in the UK when I supply him with engine data." Wayne's engine comes from Robert Mistral.

Super Street Bike racer Rich Stubbins was no.1 after the first session with a 7.50. He said "I turned the bike well down but now will put something back into it. I am happy with the time, we haven't changed too much, just on the launch. It was a nice run and gave me good data.

Super Street Bike racer Thomas Granica (pictured right, with brother and crew chief Peter) said "I am so happy with my run. We set the bike up to run a 7.8 and that's what it run. We broke two engines at the Main Event trying to run that quick. Thanks to the builder of my new engine Claus Blatt and to my brother, the best crew chief in the business.

Funny Bike racer Christian Jaeger (pictured centre) is racing here in a non-championship round. "We are here to test after the engine broke at the UEM Funny Bike Cup round at Gardermoen. We had the bad luck to blow an engine in qualifying, but had all the parts to build another one which we did by Sunday evening. The best thing about the meeting was running 4.4 to half track at 258kph, our best ever and equivalent to running deep into the sixes." Christian has a 68 point advantage over Rikard Gustafsson which means he only needs to go one round at the Euro Finals to win the championship.

Super Street Bike racer Graham Dance said that the bike was set too rich for his first pass. The result was a 9.63, good only for 32nd in the first session. Most other UK racers struggled for grip or setup, and we are expecting big changes in the standings in the second session.

Super Gas racer Jens "Zippel" Zimmermann has this highly unusual Jaguar XKR body on his race car. .

Many happy returns to Jaap Selles, Junior Dragster racer Lisa's Dad, whose birthday it is today. Jaap and Lisa (pictured left) are joined by Lisa's Mum Henriette Selles and sister and Crew Chief Jessica Selles. The family, sponsored by Eurodragster.com sponsor Gold RV travel with Danny Bellio's Top Methanol Funny Car Team and will be meeting up with Gold RV Racing TMD team for a photo session later.

The Hockenheim circuit pit lane was echoing to the sound of big-inch V8s and high-winding Super Street Bike engines this morning shortly after 9am. The rain dried quickly to allow the first of two full qualifying sessions to start at 10:35 CET.

Super Pro ET racer Karl-Heinz Kleider is racing this blown alcohol Thunderbird funny car in Super Pro ET. The car is new to him (he ran a wheelstanding yellow Vette last year) and Karl-Heinz is a runner in the German Super Pro ET championship. This has two rounds at Drachten, two at Czech track Bechyne and here this weekend. Details of the championshsip are at www.suproet.de.

Running in Super Comp is this pretty '55 Thunderbird driven by Pascal Kohler. The car is supported by Red Line Motors and also runs in the Super Pro ET challenge. Red Line Motors restores muscle cars and builds race cars, based in Neustadt, near Leipzig and is run by Peter Ritscher and Marco Benner.

The Super Street Bikes have taken on two pit garages and we found Dyno Speed Developments' Paul Watson's bike in one of them. He said "We repainted it black but it is the same bike I rode to a 7.7 at the Truck Show. We are looking to tune it up to run mid sevens." The tuning will be mainly in the clutch area (Paul runs a Gann clutch) and also setting up his new clutch lever. Work has also been done on the front forks because the front wheel was coming up in third gear.

Super Street Bikes racer Mogens Lund from Denmark has a brand new Rich Stubbins-built bike here this week. This is a state of the art machine with multi-stage clutch and GT35 turbo and Mogens took delivery of it only yesterday. Mogen's racing background is in Super Comp Bike which he ran for four years and has got to second in the NDRS championship this year. Plans are to run the Super Street Bike at the Mosten Race Day weekend and at the National Finals at Santa Pod.

Super Street Bike racers Steve Venables (seated) and Chris Reed were relaxed before their initial run this morning. There are 18 UK SSBs competing in a 44 bike field for a 32 bike eliminator.

We caught up with UK ex-pat racer Tony Morris who lives in the US and returns to his former home track at Hockenheim with his carbuettor business BLP racing products. He said "I have checked out about five cars, getting them to run better by helping racers tune their carbs." Tony said this Super Gas Opel Manta owned by Guido Uhlir is running strong and Guido has invested in a pro start, weather station and performance prediction software in attempting to repeat his class win of 2009. Other cars Tony is advising on include the Super Pro ET Porsche 924 of brother in law Bert Gorselitz and the Super Comp Oldsmobile Cutlass of 2009 runner-up André Müller.

Super Pro ET Dany Burger races this '90 Vette with a twin carb setup. Dany is being helped by Tony Morris who has supplied advice on how to run two different types of carb on the same engine. Tony said "As well as two different types of carb there are two different boosters which tend to conflict. After looking at it the team are running a larger jet on one carb which will help compensate for the difference."

Tony Morris (pictured left) is alongside Super Comp racer Benni Pflug, whose car Tony drove at the night show in 2008. "I modified the air correctors on the carb which was causing a slight hesitation. We ran the car here last weekend to acclimatise the new setup and ran two 9.001s with no hesistation. We can tune the car to run mid 8.9s which we hope will get Benni to the top of the field."

After a bad fire at Mantorp Park, Top Fuel racer Micke Kågered took his spare block, had it re-machined and bought a new TF oil pump. The results of the rebuild pleased the team: Rob Inglis mentioned "We've got much better oil pressure than before." Top Fuel will be running twice today, and are just firing up as I post this.

Pictured before the start of qualifying, the field of Junior Dragsters were waiting patiently. Of the 25 racers entered, half the field did not run in 2009 and there are four Brits running.