Defending series champion Lex Joon looked strong in the first qualifying session, with a 4.870 at only 239 mph suggesting that there was considerably more to come from the MPM Oil car tuned by Eddie Corr. Unfortunately, the more-to-come in qualifying was a couple of chucked belts and shake after some low 0.8 60 foot clockings, and then tiresmoke in the second half of the run against Fallstrom in eliminations placed the team behind in their bid to win back to back championships. |
Urs Erbacher was a truly surprising non-qualifier at the Main event. Having managed to secure his license earlier in the week, the Swiss national suffered from severe shake and engine failure on each of his attempts at cracking the field and a mid 5 best was simply shocking for the well-funded if rookie outfit. Although Erbacher managed to come in as alternate and line up alongside Smax in the first round of eliminations after Moller's failure to fire, but a growing fire from half track onwards resulted in another disappointing mid 5 clocking. |
After an eventful off-season in more ways than one, Thomas Nataas returned to Santa Pod with the crimson Batmobil run out of Rune Fjeld's stable. Severe smoke and tireshake in the first qualifying was replaced in short order by a 4.998/267 in the second session accompanied by more than a wisp of death smoke as Nataas got off the throttle at 1000 feet. Carter's 4.89 in the first round easily covered a tire churning 11 second effort from the Norwegian.