Euro Finals, FIA/UEM Championships, Santa Pod Raceway, England
de·pres·sion (dĭ-prĕsh'ən) pronunciation 1. The condition of feeling sad or despondent. |
Depression comes in many guises, but when a North Atlantic low decides to sit over the centre of the UK and dump a seemingly never ending amount of rain on Euro Finals weekend at Santa Pod Raceway, the feeling of gloom and despondency that follows is somewhat inevitable. This really did look like the weekend when nothing would go down track during the four day meeting which would have been a real kick in the teeth for the SPRC track crew who had put in a phenomenal amount of work to try and get the track into a go condition only to be repeatedly thwarted by yet another cloud burst. Things got real close on Saturday, but then the rain resumed just as the final application of glue went down, an observation by UEM jury representative Lars Andersson 30 minutes earlier that “it isn’t a good sign when the track dryer has it’s wipers on” proving all too prescient. By the end of Saturday the camping area had developed into a mudbath, the entry road was in danger of disappearing under a very deep lake full of muddy water and creating the Isle of Santa Pod
Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! and more rain, a delay to the start of track prep (the SPRC crew having started before 5 am each of the previous days) caused by the newly commissioned medical centre catching fire overnight and the local fire brigade declaring a temporary exclusion zone. Despite these obstacles, the track was finally dry enough at 10:30 to start the one shot qualifying session for the FIA/UEM classes, and, hopefully, a full day of back to back professional racing was to follow. The first pair of FIA Top Fuel delivered a side-by-side skating lesson, and then the rain fell again. Two hours later, and under much better conditions, qualifying resumed and it looked like we’d be in for a re-run of the 2005 Finals where eliminations started after 2pm and were concluded in the depth of the night, but it wasn’t to be. After most FIA classes had made it past their semis and the UEM bikes were lined up for their final four match-ups it rained hard, soaking the track and terminating the meeting.
FIA Top Fuel Dragster
If previous history was anything to go by, Andy Carter arriving at the Euro Finals with a sniff of a championship should have him marked down as a hot favourite to take the points. With the brains trust of car owners and co-crewchiefs Per and Karsten Andersen augmented by Jimmy Brisette on his first visit to Santa Pod, the Lucas Oil team would present a formidable force in the points chase, and they hardly missed a beat on Sunday. Low qualifier at a 4.9089/293 made up some of the deficit to Lex Joon, and a first round 4.7475/317.86 to defeat Risto Poutiainen, both runs being marked by some short and sweet pedalling jobs by the Brit put Carter in a very strong position to tie down the 5 extra points for Low ET of the weekend and set up a final four match up with Tommi Haapanen. A 5.057 was enough to get past the Finn’s ailing mount, but the slow number caused by the chutes shaking out before the 300 foot mark could have proved critical in handing Joon lane choice in the un run final round. Carter must have nerves of steel with the aggregate points difference from each of his three championship seasons being a mere four points.
The one racer who probably lost the most to the rain was Lex Joon. The MPM Oil crew gave the Dutchman the settings to run a solid 5.00 in the one shot qualifier, being the only fuel team to put down anything like a representative pass in the right hand lane, and then ran an easy 4.9366/300.94 to get past Stig Neergaard and book a slot in the semifinals where he would meet and defeat fellow championship contender Micke Kagered with a 4.9173/293. Having gained lane choice for the final round and, bearing in mind all the fuel cars with a winning ticket had run down the left hand lane, he really didn’t want the rain to fall.