Sunday, September 11th was a day all of the team members of Leanders Bros. Drag Racing will long remember as Ulf Leanders captured his fourth Top Methanol Funny Car title in the FIA European Drag Racing Championship. That is more than anyone else has ever achieved in this class.
The 2011 season started in the US where Leanders Bros. Drag Racing had the funny car based for about a year at our great friends Todd and Denise Tutterow's shop in Yadkinville, NC. We went to Valdosta, GA and did some testing with a new fuel system from Randy Anderson at APS, we saw right away that this made a huge difference in our performance. From there we went to the NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, FL. This was our last stop in the states before we sent the car home to Sweden. The FIA series always begins at Santa Pod in England. Next stop on the tour was Tierp Arena, every racer in Europe has waited for this so long, a brand new state of the art facility built in just 8 months in Tierp, Sweden. The race however was not that good for us when we lost in the first round to our great friend Jonas Staflund who went on to win the race. Next stop, Alastaro, Finland and this would be our only win this year. The Nitrolympx at Hockenheim in Germany are always a great race with a lot of spectators but a second round exit was not what we needed before we headed back to the legendary Santa Pod track in England, which was this past weekend.
With 12 points behind, we knew that every point was very important so the goal was to qualify at the top and just do what we could to grab every point that was available. What we did not count on was that after qualifying was over on Saturday night the championship was going to be decided in the first round on Sunday when we qualified #1 and Arvid Grodem, who was the points leader qualified #8.
The FIA Championship title was our's after winning the first round. We went on to the final but lost to Rob Turner, this made his first win since they switched over from the dragsters to funny car.
As many involved in drag racing know, we design and manufacture our own clutches and that has helped us and many other racers to win a lot of races for many years now. This year we have been #1 qualifier and we had low ET at every race, we also have both the European speed and ET record at 5.687 sec and 406.85 kmh (252.86 mph). In testing at the excellent all concrete Tierp track we have been as low as 5.62 @ 411.6 kmh (255.8).
We also would like to send a big Thank you to our sponsors:
IRONCAD
HAAS AUTOMATION
76 LUBRICANTS
HALI
SWEDHANDLING
ENGCON
PERSAKERS SPEED SHOP
NORDTRAFIK
ARE PRODUKTION
FEATURECAM
NORDEN & CO
SPEEDY ENGINEERING
SVETEK
SYSTEM EDSTROM
CUSTOM PARTS AB
LEANDERS BROS. AB
FIA Top Methanol Funny Car
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