Drag Racing, In Finland?!

[W-409]

As some of you guys might have seen, I live here in the Northern Europe. Maybe someone thinks that there is no Drag Racing in Finland, but I'm glad to say that there is. We have FHRA (Finnish Hot Rodding Association) which puts together Drag Racing Finnish Championchip series year after year. Then we have smaller events, like West Coast Street Cup which is driven on airports... On the west coast!

There are pretty many Drag Racing car categories, but of course not as much as you have there. We have two real Drag Strips, first one, Motopark was built in 1987 if I remember correctly:

And then we have another Drag Strip, I can't remember when it was built, but I guess it was on the early 90's.

On 2012 Drag Racing season, which is now over, we had six Finnish Championchip Drag Racing events, and one of them was also European Championchip Drag Racing events. We had Pro Stocks, Pro Mods, Top Fuels, etc. racing there, as of course Finnish Championchip car categories too.

On this thread I will tell you about Drag Racing in Finland, and tell about the car categories, we drive here, and show examples of Finnish Drag Cars. It is more popular in here, than you have thought I guess.

Edited October 2, 2012 by W-409

[hansb57]

Good old Alastaro. Isnt that the sauna at the lower right???

Almost 24 hours daylight, quite an experience.

[W-409]

Nope, it's not a sauna. Sauna is so small building that it can't be seen in this picture, but it's close to that building, which is actually a place where you can wash cars, if I remember correctly... I try to find better picture of it, I've seen one, but can't remember where.

[GoatGuy]

I remember you mentioning before that you have drag racing over there. That's awesome. There is nothing like it to be there in person. Unfortunately most of the time I have to watch it on tv.

[comp1839]

nikko, those are two really fine looking top shelf facilities. are they the only two? or do you have some smaller less high dollar tracks too?

hey dave, hopefully you won't have to watch it on t.v. this week end. i'll be going sat. morning.

[george 53]

I didn't Niko had started this thread, and I just laughed to my self when I saw it. I just though,Heck, you OBVIOUSLY ain't seen the drag cars and customs these guys can built, why WOULDN'T they have Drag Raceing???? You guys have REALLY got YOUR act together, Models AND real ones!!!!

[W-409]

Yep, Drag Racing is really great Motorsport! I'd love to get on NHRA Drag Racing even on some day, too.

Dave Smith: Yes, these are the only two that we have. We have some airports where are few races, but they are mostly West Coast StreetCup (smaller Drag Racing series on the west coast, which has four races on two airports). One Finnish Championchip Drag Race event is driven in airport too, but it's the only one. This year there were two races at Motopark, and three in Alastaro including the European Championchip Drag Racing event (Nitro Nationals).

George: That's why I thought I would post this one. Heh.

I'm going to tell few words about first car category:

Sportsman & Pro ET (SET & PET)

This is a group where you can drive almost everything between 9.00 and 19.99 seconds. So it's like racing with little lower budget. They drive bracket, qualification is done by Reaction Times and eliminator is normal bracket racing. Even if it might be group where you can drive with lower budget, it's not easy one to win. There are very good racers and cars there. This is good category for jumping to faster cars.

Few examples of cars that drive SET & PET.

Hannu Hellman's Chevy Corvette (This is a Street Legal car, if I remember correctly, but not very slow one.).

Harri Kankare's Ford Mustang (you can also see the nose of Nissan Skyline, but can't remember the driver of it.) Mustangs best time is something like 11,8.

Ted Helin's '66 Opel Rekord Gasser, my favorite from this group. Goes about 10,6 times.

Ken Nyman's Chevelle. If I remember correctly, this goes 9 second times.

Ville Lauhasmaa's Plymouth Savoy.

[W-409]

Ari Salo's Camaro:

Teemu Kuikka's Volvo Amazon with 4 cylinder (?) engine and turbocharger:

And Ari Remahl's Buick Grand National with Buick V6 and Turbo.

You can see the index on the window.

That's it for now, more coming later and then I will introduce next car category: SPET (Super Pro ET). There are many wild machines, stay tuned.

All of those pictures are taken in Alastaro.

[crazyjim]

It must cost a fortune to get cars shipped to Finland.

[Burnout]

That is really cool Niko! Thank you for the education and photos. Keep 'em coming.

[george 53]

Niko, Ken Nymans Chevelle is a 65 with a 67 front end! Never seen that. Never even thought of doin that, but it fits an looks good.

[Mister Twister]

You have some good inspiration to go by Niko and that should help your model building experience quite a bit. Do you get to visit these tracks very often. If you do....Take your camera because first hand photo reference is hard to beat for model building reference.

[DirtModeler]

Drag Racing is pretty big worldwide.

I've shipped Drag Racing specific parts to Brazil, England, Finland, Belgium, Thailand, Germany, France, and Norway.. just off the top of my head..

[W-409]

Thanks for the interest, guys!

Jim: Yep, it's not free to ship these cars to Finland. Of course Race Cars are cheaper, because there's no need to do all of the registeration stuff. I don't know well, how is it today, but at least we have many cars, and there's coming more of them every year, many of them come from Sweden too.

In the 80's, something happened and cars were much cheaper to ship to Finland than they were before. Especially Race Cars were much easier to ship on those days. That's why Drag Racing came very popular in Finland on the 80's.

Ken: Thanx, here's some more coming...:

George: Wow, thanks for the information! Of course I know how '65 and '67 Chevelles look, I've built one '65 and I'm building one '67 right now, but never thought of that. But now when you said it--- it's very clearly as you said, '65 with '67 front end.

Darryl: Yep, these are great for inspiration, and I always have a camera with me to take some reference shots on the cars. I visit in every Drag Racing event in Alastaro and Motopark, so it's five times in a year. Next year we are planning to go driving in Kalajoki airport, too.

Michael: Yes, it is really popular in many places, but Thailand! Never heard of Drag Racing in there, but why not!

Okay, here is the next car category:

SPET (Super Pro ET)

It's basically the same as Sportsman & Pro ET groups, but these cars have dial in times between 7,00 and 11,99. Cars can have delay boxes and throttle stops, but throttle stops are quite rare in this group. Car can be normal Doorcar, or Altered or Dragster. Otherwise there are no bigger limits. Or of course there are, but they're not important in this point. Ask something if you'd like to know more.

The qualification results are sorted by Reaction Time, and in Eliminator, it's normal bracket. This is good car category for cars, that don't fit any other category, but that is good thing in my mind.

This is very big car category in Finland, so I give you some different kind of examples of cars that run SPET:

First we have Mikko Niemi's Toyota Corolla DX with 509 Cid. Chevy Big Block. He won the Finnish Championchip this year, the car runs very nice and straight 8,8 times. This picture if from Motopark.

Then another pic from Motopark: Hannu Tekoniemi's AMC Javelin SST. This goes 8 second times too, and he does sometimes huge burnouts, too.

[W-409]

...And those last three pics were from Alastaro.

Then Kari Laitinen's Chevy Camaro. This goes 8,8 times too, if I remember correctly. It has 540 Cid. Chevy engine and picture is taken in Motopark.

Then Esa Leino's Chevy II. Very beautiful car, and goes nicely. Picture taken in Alastaro.

Then Janne Noren's '34 Ford with 383" Cid. engine. This goes 9,3 second times, if I remember correctly. Very nice car. Picture from Alastaro.

Here loses traction Risto Palosaari with Pontiac Firebird powered by 572 Cid. Big Block. Picture taken in Alastaro:

Then Jukka Kivineva's Ford Mustang. It's 355 Cid engine with Blower, and it's Loud! Picture in Alastaro.

[W-409]

Pasi Vierikko's Dodge Dart. Burns methanol, went 8,6 on Finals.

Rolf Claeson's Firebird. Very nice car with 468 Cid. engine.

Timo Heiskanen's Polished Front Engine Dragster with Chevy Small Block and Blower. Burns Methanol, too.

Stay tuned for my favorites of SPET... Coming in few hours time.

[W-409]

Okay, here are my favorites!

First the Hollow Heads' Altered.

It's powered by Mercury Y Block and TwinTurbos. They're trying to steal the Worlds Fastest Y Block title from Bob Lindsay. Currently the worlds fastest time with Y Block is 7,966 and so far this Altered has been running high 8's. But in the start of 2012 season, it was 11 second car, so it has improved alot.

I'll post a video of this later.

Then my another favorite Drag Team is Rust Racing which has two cars:

'26 Ford T with Blower, of course:

And '28 Ford Funny Car:

[W-409]

You can see the Blower belt is coming off in this picture:

I will post few videos too in some time.

[Jim Whalen]

^Hi,

^{Some cool cars in those pics! Going to the drags is a great way to get model car building and inspiration. I usually get to Santa Pod here in England a couple times a year and watching drag racing is certainly an enjoyable multi-sensory experience!}

^Cheers,

[frozono]

The toyota remained me the drag racing in P.R. (without the Chevy engine)... . Nice pics..........cool

Edited October 4, 2012 by frozono

[blackandwhite]

I would love to see some of the cars over there and how things are set up. I was just at a local drag strip by me last Saturday.

My friends car who we went with, it went 11.1 and then we blew out one of the half shafts :/

Shop in the states. This is one of their track cars going mid 9's

Loved your pictures

[6bblbird]

Niko,

When you do come to the U.S. I would like to have you as a guest at Raceway Park!

WF

[jbwelda]

wow those are great photos! i had no idea drag racing was so big in finland. do you have nostalga cars running there too, especially rail dragster "diggers" like this:

i remember back in the day seeing features in hot rod magazines about drag racing up there too, back in the late 60s

that road course shown in the aerial photo looks impressive too!

i gotta check your videos next!

[Haubenschild]

Cool thread!

When I was in scandanavia this summer I was suprised to see so many American Muscle cars, I even saw a drag race event advertisment

[W-409]

Thank you all for the interest on the subject!!

Jim Whalen: That's true, it's one of the best ways to find inspiration for all kinds of builds... Maybe that explains why I'm building more and more Drag Cars.

Rob: Thanks, and cool pics! That BMW is quite fast, is it turbocharged? And that car on the other picture remids me of Finnish Audi which was 4WD Drag Car, went low 8's.

JBWelda: We have very few Slingshot Dragsters, which is a shame. But the coolest one is this one, it's driven by Aulis Hämeenkorpi, SBC and does nice little wheelstands.

These pics are taken at West Coast Street Cup Race at Pori Airport.

He has also very nice '32 Ford 5W Coupe with Chevy 409 under the hood, custom trailer and this is the way he comes to racing:

Okay, I had to think twice if I wanted to post this or not, but I decided to post it. Since you all know (or at least I hope so ) the risks of Drag Racing, sometimes there happen bad accidents, and sadly there happened one this year, and the car what crashed was one of my favorites in SPET Category.

It's, or it was Mazda Marella with Huge Chevy Big Block. It was quite wild car, and fast too, but sometimes awfull thigs happen. Luckily the driver, Ari Latva Korte didn't hurt badly because of good safety equipment.