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14/07/2003 A LOGISTICAL NIGHTMARE WITH A FAIRYTALE ENDING There seems to be a pattern emerging here; me writing reports in exotic locations around the world about how we just won ourselves a drag race. This one is no exception. I am currently on an overnight ferry from the glamorous city of Newcastle bound for Gothenburg in Sweden in charge of a van load of motors, cylinder heads, blowers and all sorts of our other parts and spares. Before anyone asks how I managed to get a dragster in to the back of an Iveco TurboDaily, let me explain the situation…  This weekend just passed was round three of the MSA British Top Methanol championship at Santa Pod where racing finished on Sunday afternoon. On Friday morning coming qualifying begins for round two of the FIA Top Methanol Dragster championship in Alastaro, Finland, which is well over 1,000 miles and an awful lot of water away from Santa Pod. Although it is actually just possible to get a truck from one race to the next in time, it is cutting it very fine indeed. Taking into account that our rig is new and hardly tested we decided against making that journey and risk jeopardizing our FIA title campaign. So the new rig, with the new Hadman car stashed inside sailed on a freight boat on Friday night from Harwich, due to arrive in Turku, Finland on the Tuesday morning after the race at Santa Pod. Are you following all this? I hope so because we haven't even got to the complicated part yet. As I'm sure you've all worked out this meant that we had to find another truck and car to use at the MSA race. Well we still have last year's Meyer chassis and the faithful old blue Nemesis rig down at our workshops, so we came up with the madcap scheme of racing the old car out of the old trailer whilst the new car and new trailer were bobbing their way across the North Sea. Due to our fantastic support from American Car Imports and PlayStation we have almost enough equipment now to actually run two separate outfits, but of course there were a few parts and pieces we wanted to take out to Finland to make sure the war chest was full for that race, as well as the next three FIA rounds that follow it on our tour before the new truck returns to England. So here I am on a car ferry, that DFDS very kindly agreed to let us put our van on, heading for Sweden. Before anyone asks, no, we couldn't have put our new rig on this boat (because it wouldn't fit) and have saved ourselves a lot of hassle!  Once we disembark, Jennifer will be in charge of the Powerade and matchsticks to keep me awake for the overnight drive across Sweden to Stockholm from where we will catch a boat on to Turku, make the short drive up to Alastaro and then hopefully arrive at the drag strip on Wednesday night. There we will meet up with Dave and David who flew out to Turku yesterday to meet the rig on its arrival and then the rest of the crew fly will out on Thursday. Complicated enough for you? Right here I'd like to say a huge thank you to Lena and Ann from AffarsKompaniet in Sweden for all their help getting me onto the already fully booked Stockholm to Turku ferry. If any of you need to make travel arrangements for any of the other races on the FIA tour then call them on +44 16 51 01 51; they can work magic, and they even offer discount rates. You just can't go wrong there! Anyway enough about all that. Suffice to say that organizing the travel for this trip alone has been a major headache. Factor in trying to work out which parts, tools and spares needed to be in which of the trucks and what needed to be in the van and I'm sure you'll appreciate that by the time everything was loaded and ready to go there were a few fried brains on the team. Everyone involved here at American Car Imports Racing has done a stupendous job over the last few weeks in making sure not only were the two cars and rigs ready in time, but that we also managed to be on show at the American car show at Billing Aquadrome for two days and make a whole bunch of improvements to the new rig. I cannot thank them all enough… Once ready we unceremoniously dumped the Nemesis rig at Santa Pod on Thursday night (thanks for letting us in early, Kjell) and then rushed back down to Farnborough for a few hours sleep. Dave then took the new truck to Harwich, accompanied by our trusty crewman Phil to give him a ride on to the track after the truck was loaded on the ferry. Meanwhile the rest of the team converged at Santa Pod and got the old car ready for qualifying the following day. We had put that car back together with the bare minimum of equipment needed to run it; no computer and just a rev counter and shift light in the cockpit. We had also been careful to use as few parts as possible from the new car to cut down on the work we will have to do when we get to Finland. It is a credit to everyone involved that by 7 p.m. that evening the car was ready to race with all the mechanical and electrical systems working perfectly. So we rewarded ourselves with a trip out to a local Indian restaurant for some great curries to help keep the trailer warm overnight and couple of well earned Kingfishers to wash it all down. On Saturday morning finally all the team were in the same place at the same time, working on the same car and out of the same trailer. Once we had had the chassis tagged for 2003 and been scrutineered we fired the old girl up and decided that the fumes tasted just as bad as the other one so everything must be OK. Sure enough our first run netted a straight, smooth and stout 5.594 at 253.01 mph, good for the number one qualifier spot and an MSA championship ET record if we could back it up. Not a bad return to the track for the old car, and when everything was found to be in fine shape back in the pits, we were a very happy bunch of bunnies indeed.  To simplify the logistics of this whole escapade we had brought the bare minimum of spares with us so we decided to sit out the remainder of qualifying, conserve what we had and ready ourselves for race day. By late afternoon we were ready to go and everyone had a chance to relax, resume the discussion about squeezing chickens, examine the bottom of a few beer cans and celebrate being number one qualifier. All in all, a very pleasant evening for everyone and a much deserved break for the whole team. Sunday dawned hot and humid, and just kept on getting hotter and more clammy as the day went on. Due to the sadly, very short 3-car field we had a bye run in the semi finals and we knew we would have at least three hours to get the turn round done ready for the final. Rob Turner was right on our pace with a 5.61 and we knew there was a much better ET to be had if we could make the car pull strongly all the way through first gear without shaking the tyres. So we changed a few things around, hopped the motor up and made the car shake so hard the battery fell out and the gear shift button popped back out. Who says we know what we're doing? The car still put a 5.636 at 245.45 mph on the board but Turner had posted a 5.58 in the other half of the semis to pinch the MSA record and put us on the back foot for the final. Although the shake had knocked a few things loose and we spat a lash cap off, the car was turned round and ready to go in plenty of time so we rolled the dice, stuck a couple of wet fingers in the air and danced round the cauldron a few times to come up with a tune up for the final. Whenever we get together with the Turners for a race everyone knows it will be a good ole' drag race and this one was no exception. Some great driving by Dave saw him get out of the hole ahead of Rob and both dragsters launched well and then got into tyre shake. At this point in the day the track temperature had rocketed to 115 degrees Fahrenheit and they racing surface had become slick and greasy because of it. This no doubt had an effect on both cars as they shook, struggled and in our case, smoked towards half track where Rob had the lead by just 9 thousandths of a second. From there on both cars were hooked up and hauling and the power of our trusty number three motor pulled the American Car Imports machine back ahead to a 5.684 at 248.90 and a win by just two hundredths of a second. After making such a big effort to attend this race naturally we were ecstatic to take the win, our third in a row and I can't say enough for all the very special people involved that made this happen. Dave, Linda, David, Tony, Ricki, Mike, Phil, Jennifer and Harry all worked like troopers whilst our number one fan Dennis kept us amused during the rest times. We won't forget that you owe us all a beer mate! I'll have a pint of Eagle and a doughnut please mate… Once the celebrating was over we cracked into stripping the car to its very bare essentials (who needs wheels, right?) loaded all of our kit into the van and by 7:30 p.m. we were ready to leave. Jennifer and I made the trek to Newcastle, spent the night there, boarded the ferry, found our cabin and then I started writing this load of twaddle. I hope you all enjoyed it, because it does get harder and harder to write them every time, and I hope that you will all be rooting for us at the big race in Alastaro this weekend. FedEx do an overnight service to here and I know that Tesco's Apple doughnuts stay fresh overnight so if anyone fancies popping some supplies in the post to the boys abroad that would be much appreciated. Cheers…
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