Two events down, and the job of stopping Grumpy and the team is seeming more and more unlikely, short of divine intervention!

Another superb wire to wire performance in Alastaro Finland started out with an off the trailer 5.58/250mph run that was 6 hundredths quicker than Rob Turners first pass.

By the end of qualifying on the Saturday, the gap from ACI’s number 1  5.47/ 258mph to Rob Turners 5.64 was over a tenth and a half! This was the biggest qualifying margin in any FIA professional category over the weekend, and in the season so far!

Team Psychologist Rhonda Cohen taking in the action in Finland.

A first round date with local racer Arto Holya was cut short for the home crowd when Hoyla’s car developed a leak after the burnout leaving Dave to gently run the car to half track to check everything out and move into the semi final.

On the other side of the ladder, favourites Turner and Schofer advanced to meet each other in the semi finals. They dispatched local favourite and debutante Mats Bjorklund and Sweden’s Krister Johansson respectively.

Schofer outran Turner in a great match, running 5.67/250mph in the process. Meanwhile Dave Wilson was calmly setting low elapsed time of eliminations so far with a 5.48/ 258mph run to give him lane choice and an almost unheard of 2/10ths advantage going into the final.

Well as they say in drag racing, we don’t run them on paper, we run them on the racetrack and Schofer gave it all he could with a quicker reaction time and a consistent 5.68 / 248mph try but was no match for Grumpys later leaving but much quicker 5.47 / 260mph victory lap!

If only we could print pictures with sound…..Grumpy gets set to race Schofer in a drama packed final round!

Maximum points from the first 2 rounds, a new European record set in England and track records set in Finland are the story of 2005 so far, but the big question is can anyone stop the Steamroller as the tour heads to Sweden for the Veidec Nitro Festival and round 3 of the Championship?