UEM Super Twin Bike
After a long time in the build, Anders ‘Charley’ Karling is having something of a nightmare in finding a baseline for his Uddeholm blower bike. The latest set backs involved this spectacular head torching flare up on his first qualifying effort which then led to an all night thrash to finish off some spare heads back at base, and then blowing the inlet pipework off on a second attempt the following day.
Any racer scoring two event wins in a row at the mid point in the European season requires a pretty big drop off in fortune not to secure a championship, and at the moment Svein Olaf Rolfstad is very much the hot ticket in Super Twin Bike. The Norwegian rider qualified second (behind Per Bengtsson) but finished on top of the podium when Bengtsson failed to make the call for the final round of eliminations and ran a string of 4.4s throughout the day.
UEM Pro Stock Bike
Things are going pretty well for Fredrik Fredlund in his second season on the UEM tour. A win at the previous round in Finland, followed by the addition of Alund’s Paf as sponsors, and then winning in Sweden after qualifying on pole with a 7.352 and defeating Richard Gipp, Martin Bishop and Stavros Svrachnos to join Ulf Leanders and Svein Olaf Rolfstad as two time winners in 2008.
Once Stavros Svrachnos had managed to point his ex-championship winning TL1000 bodied Suzuki in the direction of the finishline (the first two qualifying attempts would generously be termed eccentric), the pedigree of the bike came to the fore, slotting the Greek into the eliminations ladder at 3 with a 7.451 and then defeating new racer and first alternate Gabriella Nikokovska and a red lighting Ulf Ogge before losing to 2008 champion elect Fredlund in the final round.