2014 FIA European Championships Round 1

It will always be The Main Event to us and a fair few others I should think too! Anyhow, after the success of last meeting, Team Rampage knew we had to keep the momentum going for this weekend to keep our championship hopes alive; fair to say we sort of did and sort of didn't!

The midweek forecast for the long weekend was against us racers with only two of the days looking relatively settled (emphasis on the relatively) and so it struck us that we needed to qualify well to secure as many points as possible in case rain put a stop to eliminations. After the previous meeting, we felt that an 8.00 dial in would always be a good starting point for us as the dragster had the tendency to always run an 8.0 something. Running through with an 8.05 in round 1 of qualifying on the Friday did indeed confirm what we already knew. It wasn't bad, not at all, but it could certainly be better!

As Friday went by, numerous stoppages on the track for a number of reasons meant that we would only get one more run in so we tried to narrow it down a little more and shoot for an 8.02. The dragster hooked so hard, wheels higher than they have ever been, that it was a little unsettled when coming back down again, resulting in a few hundredths lost in the 60ft time. This in turn meant running through with a slightly off pace 8.08, not improving on our previous 8.05. After the end of that session, we were down in 15th. Not good!

Saturday arrived and pretty much everyone knew that the weather was supposed to be at it's worst and it didn't fail to deliver, although nothing compared to the test and tune on Thursday! Time went past midday and it was still raining, resulting in us all doubting whether we would see any racing at all. By some miracle however, the rain did eventually stop and it all dried up rather quickly in time for another round of qualifying; we could see some racing happening after all! Knowing that the track had been soaked for many hours meant it would be a little 'green' so we knocked down the dial in by a hundredth to 8.03 and to our delight she ran through with an 8.04, moving us up to 3rd, narrowly missing out on 2nd by just 2 ten thousandths of a second!

After a few pro sessions on Sunday, it was time for round 1 of eliminations and we were due to race 'that' monster of a pickup truck from the Netherlands. Unfortunately Reinier Van Schelt had informed us that he was out due to a breakage, so we were paired with one of the 4 first alternates Frank Esjkoot. We went for an 8.02 to Frank's 8.55. Knowing we had a slight advantage when it came to running our numbers, Dave tried to consciously not pull a red light...which in turn meant he pulled a -.03 cherry. Gutted was an understatement, but hey ho, the old saying of "if you never pull a red, you're not trying hard enough" definitely came into play. Frank running an 8.54 breakout to our 8.10 added insult to injury, but we were a little off our time as it was. After talking to Felicity and Ian, who were on the startline, they came back and said that it had never been so sticky so we think the track may have been too sticky for the amount of power we have compared to the Pro classes, holding us down enough to make a difference. Fortunately for us however, was that the other championship contenders also went out in the first round so it wasn't as bad, as well as the advantage of having qualified higher in the first place.

We now look forward to the Summer Nationals where we can hopefully go a couple more rounds and keep the points coming in. See you all there!