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Supertwin racer Job Heezen is in his second year with Lo Stauble's championship-winning bike and Roel Koedam as crew. Their friendship is documented in a Statler and Waldorf cartoon, inspired by Monique Koedam and captured in yesterday's photo gallery. Job said 'We made a lot of changes and for the first time the bike wanted to go straight on two runs yesterday, so it looks like we solved the problem. The team worked to put twelve feet of extra tubing in the frame to make it stiffer and changed the location of the rear wheel. We also have a new clutch because the old one was difficult to adjust. We can now start tuning the bike. The weight of the extra tubing was not a problem as the bike is still quite light. The handling was getting worse the more power the bike had. I am amazed Lo stayed on it!' Job is qualified third with 7.06/188.
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Top Fuel Bike racer Rickard Gustavsson qualified second with a 6.42/213. He said 'The bike has gone well this weekend and 6.42 is near to our personal best which we ran and backed up at Tierp last August. All we changed over the winter is the oil, fuel and some British air in the tyres. We are also helping Fil Papafilippou on a race by race basis. His engine setup is almost identical to ours although the frame is different, we think his bike has similar potential to ours'.
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Top Fuel Bike racer Ian King's Engineering Manager Marius van der Zijden mentioned that the team along with Steve Woollatt's and Andy Frosts' will be featured in an episode of the Discovery Channel Canada's show 'Mega Speed' which includes many forms of motor sport and will be broadcast world-wide. Some of the shots including four bike-mounted cameras, promise to be spectacular. Marius said the King Racing Team visit to the Manufacturers Cup at Valdosta was a 'lifetime experience. You couldn't have written the script. The main goal was to get the final place in the MTC Engineering five second club, but there were two others up for it as well. Adapting our tune-up for the conditions was a challenge with the high altitude and temperatures, but we managed it by varying the nitro percentage and changing clutch and ignition settings. The bike dropping a cylinder at 5 seconds was the only problem, which explains the terminal speed of 224mph. It was also important for us as our first five in Sweden was not broadcast, whereas in Valdosta there was plenty of footage. And running 5.87 and winning the event was beyond our wildest dreams'. At this event the team took it easy in session one and stepped the bike up in session two. As Ian headed towards the centre line he clicked it off at 4.6s into the run, recording a 6.06/193.
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Supertwin racer Martijn de Haas ran his first six yesterday and in the process improved his personal best by three tenths to 6.787/202. He said 'All the pieces came together now I have the right stuff on the bike. I bought the equipment before the 2013 season and it is now working great. The bike seems to lean to the right so I lean to the left to correct it, it may be because of the wheelie bar or even the frame but it is not major. If the equipment stays in one piece I will run the whole series'. Martijn thanks his crew Joeri (his brother), Colinda (girlfriend) and Ronald, and his sponsor MPM Oils.
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Top Fuel Dragster racer Stig Neergaard has a new self-built chassis and eye-catching livery by Dutch artist Ger. He said 'The car has performed well. Our new motor combination has taken time to perfect, but we have had Alan Johnson stage 6 heads and billet blower for two years and made a change in firing order four years ago. We didn't get data from the first session as there was a problem with the timing system which meant the lights didn't run, however our next run was a good 4.09. It went a little lean and burnt some valves but no major issues. On the last runm the engine dropped a hole at the hit and we shut off. Last year we did 35 runs on the same motor until it broke the crankshaft in the Finals'.
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Top Fuel Dragster racer Anita Mäkelä's crew chief Sami Lehtimäki worked during the winter to build up a new car for Anita to drive this year. He said 'The chassis is Murf McKinney and the team bought it two years ago and it has been in the shop since then. It is a fresh chassis, the old one had been in use since 2008 and Tommy wants to have a drive as well.' The team are joined by Dom Lagana from the US who first came as consultant at Tierp last August. Dom said 'My brother Bobby and I each have a Top Fuel car. Bobby is currently crewing for Steve Torrence who is fifth in points in the NHRA. Racing in Europe is more like our style of racing. I do a lot of match racing and here in Europe too racing is for the love of it and everybody celebrates it and enjoys it. Anita's equippment is good and all the class seem to have stepped up and have current know how and the best parts. we will try to lean on it when I come to Tierp next in August. Yesterday we had some new car woes when a small fitting on an air line popped off but we were pleased to run 4.01/293'.
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