Team Kendall Racing Season Review 2011
A season that will be hard to beat!
The season started in 7th – 8th of May where we went to the nearly finished Tierp Arena north of Uppsala in Sweden to test the track for the very first time, We were absolutely stunned by the facilities and the track itself when we were walking on the track Friday evening to check the smoothness and the surface of the track. We had extremely good air conditions through out the whole weekend and at lot of tests were carried out in order to find a set up for the upcoming season.
Summary of the weekend:
- As anyone know that have been racing on a totally new track it can be attempting to try to add to much clutch and power just to see if the track can take it, but we just had to try on our last run of the weekend and as a result we ran our very first sub second 60 feet time with a tire smoking 0.99 sec off the throttle, which was very promising for the upcoming UEM Championship for 2011.
Sweden Nationals 10th – 12th of June, Tierp Arena Sweden
We had a basic set up from the test runs that we had in May but the weather had changed dramatically compared to May and we had to change the set up to cope with the hot and humid air/track and what a great weekend we had winning at our home track on the first time out.
Summary of the weekend:
- Qualified no1, Winner of the event, New track record of 6.006 sec and Speed 370.37 km/h.
Sunoco Challenge 5th – 7th of August, Gardermoen Norway
The track at Gardermoen has always been one of our favourite tracks and since running the “first 5 outside the US” it feels like coming home when meeting all the nice staff and our fans at the grandstands. This year it was raining a lot and we had big problems to hook up the rear tire and qualified only fourth before it all started to rain again.
Summary of the weekend:
- Rained out!
Nitro OlympX 12th – 14th of August, Hockenheim Germany
This was the first time that we entered this event in 15 years and at the last time we won the event, securing the European Title. We have talked to our teammates at Kendall Racing in Sweden and we understood from them and many of the other race teams the track was a bit tricky to get hold of until the 60 feet mark so we started with a soft set up resulting in a new track record. From that run we thought we could run even quicker which we actually did…….
Summary of the weekend:
- Qualified no1, Winner of the event, New European record in booth ET 5.964 sec and Speed 375.55 km/h
European Finals 8th – 11th of September, Santa Pod England
The final event of the year in the UEM Championship and this was the race were everything really went our way despite new asphalt on the starting line, that many other team had big problems with. During the last qualifying run of Saturday Peter ran an incredible 5.881 sec at only 224.40 mph showing that he got of the throttle just after the 1000 feet mark. This is by far the quickest time ever recorded outside the US and the 3.87 sec / 202 mph on the 1/8 mile shows us that we are on a good track in order to run even faster!!
Summary of the weekend:
- Qualified no1, Winner of the event, European Champion (participating in only four out of seven events), Running the quickest time ever recorded outside the US!
Finally Peter has been voted to be “Drag Racer of the Year 2011″ in Europe in competition with many other top teams from European Dragracing (both car and bike teams) at the European Dragracing Database www.drdb.eu
During the 2011 season we have made a lot of promising tests that hopefully will pay of during 2012 where we hopefully will be able to back up our UEM Champion title and hopefully also finalize the next season by going to the Manufacturers Cup in Valdosta to compete with the US teams.
This and many other things such as some new expected top performing bikes in the UEM Top Fuel Bike class will inspire us and everyone else to run quicker and faster in the upcoming season.
We have made a preliminary race schedule for our team as below and hope that as many of you as possible has the time to come by our team in the pits for a chat during 2012.
Preliminary Race Schedule 2012
2012 Tierp Arena (test only), Sweden…………………………………………. May 6-7
(2012 FIM/UEM Santa Pod, England…………………………………………. June 2-4)*
2012 FIM/UEM Tierp Arena, Sweden………………………………………….. June 14-17
2012 FIM/UEM Hockenheim, Germany……………………………………….. August 10-12
2012 FIM/UEM Tierp Arena, Sweden………………………………………….. August 23-26
2012 FIM/UEM Santa Pod, England………………………………………….. September 6-9
(2012 Manufacturers Cup Valdosta, USA……………………………………. November 9-11)*
* Depending on available fundings
We would like to take the opportunity to thank ALL our families, team members, friends, sponsors, competitors, track staff, race organizers, our fans, UEM/FIM/SVEMO officials and the staff at Speedgroup.eu, Eurodragster.com, Kingracing.com, Stripbike.com, Dragbike.com, Racebilder.nu, Stefan Boman, Ivan Sansom and Rose Hughes and many more persons for your help and support during 2011 and wish all of You a great start of 2012!!!
Please find enclosed some photos by our good friend Ivan Sansom.
Best Regards Peter and Soren Svensson, Team Kendall Racing Top Fuel Bike
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