Top Fuel Bike had two standout competitors, and, fittingly, they both made it through to the final round although with very different outcomes. Roel Koedam looked to be on a storming run in the first round of qualifications, a nice 4.003/190 mph 1/8th mile clocking suggesting an absolute lock on the number one qualifying spot until half a second later when the front wheel dropped suddenly thanks to a broken cam timing gear. The resultant damage wiped out valves and cam sprockets and necessitated a marathon thrash to get the motor back in running order for eliminations, although, surprisingly, the 6.57/155 held out for low qualifier. A first round match up with Ian King was competitive until halftrack when King's blower and primary drive belt were thrown and Roel hit the stripe at 6.214/214, and another 6.2 dispatched Luigi Ferretti (having just run his first six second pass) in the semi finals. The final round proved to be a solo, but Roel didn't disappoint with a 6.108/227 to start off his last UEM Top Fuel Bike season with a win before he takes over the hotseat of Ton Pel's Fuel Harley next year.
Having had a couple of seasons battling to match Vortex cylinder heads to his tune up and pistons, Eric Teboul's luck seemed to have changed dramatically in the semi finals with a very nice 6.26 at only 202 mph as the mixture went very rich at the top end. This pass moved the Frenchman up into the All Time Top 20 quickest on nitro bikes and left Teboul beaming with delight after all the hard work (including another all night thrash during qualifying). Then Teboul's jinx struck again as a broken sprocket was spotted whilst waiting for the track to dry before the final round against Koedam and time ran out before he was able to return from the pits.
It would not have been too surprising if SuperTwin was something of a subdued eliminator following the announcement of Ton Pels' retirement before the event, but there was some spectacular action from the ground thumping nitro Harleys nonetheless. An eight bike field was quickly reduced to seven when Svein Olav Rolfstad spectacularly torched a second cylinder head in two weeks, leaving Charley Karling (nearlane) as the only blower bike in the field. Charley wasn't too worried about this isolated position and produced a 6.57 at only 190 mph to head the qualifying list, an ET he matched in the his final round defeat of 2005 series champion Ronnie Aasen (far lane) suggesting that the rest of the field might be in for a long season as Charley plans to debut a new and hopefully straighter running chassis later in the year.
With multi-time champion Roger Pettersson missing, Anders Abrahamsson looks as if he will be the man to beat in 2006 UEM Pro Stock Bike with Roger Lyren making the tuning calls for his Motospeed Suzuki, indeed the Motospeed entries of Abrahamsson (7.31) and Anders Jakobsson (7.49) had three tenths over the rest of the field in qualifying. The team mates somewhat inevitably met up in the final round with Abrahamsson running a 7.295 (and new PB) to take the trophy to sit alongside the one collected at the European Finals in 2005. 
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