FHRA Night Race Finals 2016

[Niko L]

Now this Race Report is a lot late, but I've had some problems with uploading Night Race pictures from Saturday to our picture gallery. So now we have no pics from Saturday, but luckily other pics show up just fine...

So in 2016 finally the FHRA Night Race came back! Night Races were driven a few times in the 1990s at Alastaro Drag Strip, but they had not been driven in years, because someone always would complain about the noise. So now finally the Night Race was back and I was very excited since I had never been watching those night races (I wasn't born yet!) and now I could race myself at those Night Races!

The event was held at Alastaro Drag Strip on September 2nd - September 3rd. This meant that the Qualifying and Night Show would take place on Friday and Eliminations on Saturday. And since it's already September, it would definitely be dark in the evening! On Friday the Qualifying was going to be from Noon to 10PM and Night Show runs from 10PM to Midnight. Then the Eliminations would be on Saturday at the same time as usual, 10AM to 6PM.

Thursday

On Thursday evening we started driving towards Alastaro. When we arrived to the pits, I headed to the race office to get all papers needed. There I was asked if I wanted to do a show run at night so of course I said yes! Then the car was taken off from the trailer and tech inspection was passed too. While looking around at the pits, it was clear that a good number of Stock & Super Stock cars was there.


I also went to check out how the track looks with all of the added lights. Now I was even more excited!


Friday

Friday morning was sunny so it looked like it was going to be a great racing day ahead!



Unfortunately there were some things that slowed the race down a little, such as one crash on Top Street category. But anyway, our first Qualifying round was at 2:17PM. I tried to take a good RT but unfortunately I went red pretty bad, my RT was -.129. I ran 12.351 & 168.86 KM/H which is not too bad considering what the car has been running lately. For the second round at 5:25PM we did some carburetor tuning. My RT was a bit closer this time, -.060 but I was still a bit early. 60FT was a bit better too than it was in Round 1. This time it was 1.638. My ET and top speed were a bit slower than last time though, 12.385 & 168.15 KM/H.

The third Qualifying Round was at 8:56PM. Now it was already a bit dark so I put the lights on as it looks good. Now I got a good RT, .052, 60FT time was a bit worse than on Round 2 (1.661), but my ET was very close to my best what I ran on my first pass. ET was 12.355 with the top speed of 169.25 KM/H. So it looks like our carburetor tuneup before this run paid off.

After this run we did no more changes to the car and we just started to wait for the Night Show. After the track crew added some more lights to the track and especially to the braking area, everything was ready so we drove to the staging lanes too. It was 10:37PM when the officials showed me that now I'm allowed to go to the track. There were no extra lights at the Lineup so it was tricky to get the car fired up since I didn't see any of those buttons for the starter, fuel pump or water pump. But with trial and error I found the right switches and the Malibu was fired up and running! I drove to the burnout box, but I had to wait for a while for a permission to do the Burnout. So I switched on the electric fan before the burnout. My Burnout was slightly bigger than usually, but of course it was since this was an exhibition run. I staged like always and now I was again pretty close with the RT, -.016. Track felt just as good as it did during the day and I ran 12.380 with 169.52 KM/H top speed. It was a lot of fun to go full throttle at the dark with only those little blue lights on the track. When I turned away from the braking area, I didn't see anything as there were no lights at the return road and the lights on our Malibu don't really help... But I managed to get back to the pit area where were some extra lights too. I parked the car at our pit place and then went to look other guys who were running at the track.





There were a lot of spectators watching for the Drag Racing action! That was great to see, and the night show was great! Hopefully we can have more of this type races in the future!

[Niko L]

Qualifying Results.

1. Jarmo Grönman with his C/S Chevy Camaro. As always he took the #1 position by running some good numbers, 10.240 that is -1.110 under the NHRA 11.35 index.

2. Björn Bondesson from Sweden with his B/SA '71 Chevelle. His Chevelle is known for the huge wheelstands it does, in fact he rolled it over some time ago when wheelie bars broke at Tierp Arena. He ran 10.152 that is -1.098 under the NHRA 11.25 index!


3. Jarmo Markkanen with his A/S Pontiac Firebird. He went fast as always, 9.965 that is -0.985 under NHRA 10.95 index.

4. Hannu Palasmaa with his B/S '71 Chevelle. He is finally starting to find some traction after suffering from major traction problems after moving from automatic to manual tranny. Now he ran very nicely, 10.400 that is -0.800 under NHRA 11.20 index.

5. Arto Sulopuisto with his B/S Pontiac Firebird. He ran 10.432 that is -0.768 under NHRA 11.20 index.

6. Yrjö Wallius with SS/J Rambler American. His best was 10.264 that is -0.536 under the NHRA 10.80 index.

7. Kai Suilo with F/SA '66 Chevy Nova. Nice black car that runs great, his best ET was 11.339 that is -0.511 under NHRA 11.85 index.

8. Harri Hassinen with SS/BM Chevy Camaro. He is still in process of getting the car run right, but he is definitely on the right track... This time the best ET was 8.709 that is -0.491 under NHRA 9.20 index.

9. Timo Eronen with his new SS/AH Dodge Hemi Dart. Timo ran the best of 8.886 that is -0.414 under NHRA 9.30 index.

10. Cilla Koskinen with SS/GA '67 Camaro. She ran 10.142 that is -0.408 under NHRA 10.55 index.

11. Sami Toppari with SS/C '69 AMX. This car is one of the original factory race cars. He ran 9.698 that is -0.352 under NHRA 10.05 index.

12. Niko Lindström with J/SA '74 Malibu Classic. My best was 12.351 and that is -0.099 under the NHRA 12.45 index.

13. Jouko Jalava with his D/S '69 Camaro with 302 Small Block. His best ET was 11.486 that is -0.014 under NHRA 11.50 index.

[Niko L]

Saturday

Saturday was the actual Race Day. The weather was nice in the morning and as we had 16 car ladder, our first Elimination Round took place in the morning just after 11AM.

First #1 Qualifier Jarmo Grönman had a solo run. He did a nice run, .039 RT and he ran 10.212. Second pair was Arto Sulopuisto against Sami Toppari. Sulopuisto left first, but he took -.067 red light so Toppari won by running 9.751 (9.69 dial in) with .081 RT. Third pair was Jarmo Markkanen against Timo Eronen. Markkanen left first with .026 RT, much better than Timo's .272. So Jarmo took the win by running 10.032 (9.98 dial in) against Timo's 8.808 (8.88 dial in). The fourth pair was Yrjö Wallius against me. We changed nothing with the car so I chose 12.35 dial in for myself. Unfortunately I was a bit late at the start, my RT was .131 so I saw Rambler overtaking me before the finishing line. Wallius did a nice run, .095 RT and 10.305 (10.28 dial in), and because of my bad Reaction Time, I had to break out, 12.333. Next pair was Björn Bondesson from Sweden against Harri Hassinen. Bondesson left first with .073 RT, much better than Harri's .333 RT. Harri did a huge wheelstand with his Camaro, in fact it sounded like all four tires were up in the air for a little moment. Despite that he didn't lift the throttle and ran 8.656 (8.67 dial in), so Bondesson took the win (10.234 with 10.18 dial in). Next pair was Hannu Palasmaa against Cilla Koskinen. Palasmaa took the advantage at the tree, .060 RT against Koskinen's .219 and won the race by a holeshot running 10.455 (10.38 dial in) against Cilla's 10.167 (10.14 dial in). Last pair was Kai Suilo against Jouko Jalava. Suilo left with .080 light that was a lot better compared to Jalava's .357. Suilo won by running 11.530 (11.37 dial in). Jalava ran exactly to his dial in though, 11.450 with 11.45 dial in, but that wasn't enough to win after the big difference with the reaction times.

So at this point when I was out, I had to watch the other Elimination Rounds from spectator's view... And if I remember correctly, the second round came pretty soon after the first one.

On 2nd round, first pair was Jarmo Grönman against Sami Toppari. Grönman basically won the race at the tree with his .007 RT compared to Sami's .356 RT. Jarmo ran 10.352 (10.21 dial in) and Sami lifted the throttle early, his ET was a bit over 11 seconds on that run... The second pair was Jarmo Markkanen against Yrjö Wallius. This race finished early as Yrjö got a small red light, -.030. He ran 10.382 with 10.30 dial in, but of course Markkanen took the win because of the red light. Jarmo took .020 RT and ran 10.031 with 9.97 dial in. Next was Björn Bondesson's solo run. He did a huge wheelstand as always and ran 10.133 on that run. The last pair was Hannu Palasmaa against Kai Suilo. Suilo left first with .311 RT and ran 11.334 with 11.32 dial in, but Palasmaa took the win, .004 RT and 10.562 with 10.38 dial in was enough this time.

After the 2nd round, Semi Final pairs looked like this:

J. Grönman VS J. Markkanen
B. Bondesson VS Hannu Palasmaa

So first two modern GM F-Bodies against each other and then two '71 Chevelles! Unfortunately it started raining before this round and the rain just didn't seem to stop. So after all the race had to be cancelled, which was a real shame. After the points were count, it looked like Yrjö Wallius won the championship Cilla Koskinen being the second and Jarmo Markkanen third. Congratulations!

On Saturday evening there was the Finnish Championship Prize Ceremony at the track. Unfortunately we couldn't participate in there as we had to leave home so we could bring home my '62 Chevy II project on Sunday so I could start building!

Here's a link to the Full Picture Gallery.

And a couple of videos.

My all runs.


A friend spent Friday at the strip too, so he filmed my runs on Friday with a better quality camera... Big thanks to Elias V for these videos!




A Friend was driving "The Blacklist" with his Chevy Monza street car. Here are two of his runs:


Twin Turbo Chevy Pickup street car driving "The Blacklist".


Holo Racing runs their first 8 second ET with their street car. He is running "The Blacklist" as well.


And here is a video of Misc clips from the Night Show. Street cars, Drag cars, Nitro Harleys, Top Fuelers etc...



So this was 2016... Next year we'll be driving everything, hopefully faster than ever! Stay tuned.