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History
Event review
Kamien Slaski - Poland 30th June & 1st July
This 2007 dragster edition in Kamien Slaski was a long trip for most of us but in the end we can say it was well worth it! Next year we will be all back in Belgium! First of all, congratulations to Marcin Blauth the new King of Europe, for the first time the title went away from UK and will stay (at least) one year in Poland!
Weather was there and very good compared to last year and we
all had an excellent week-end again this year and this is
still what king of europe is all about.... fun and drag
racing! Even if the registration was showing 100
drivers, we were missing around 30 drivers at tech
inspection, various problems due to travel, mechanical
probelms or to last minute mind changes for the others.
In the final Top16, we had no surprise to
see the 2 big boys : Christell Racing and Andy Frost who
were 2 new comers but anyway the 2 main contenders for the
crown. In the well known KOE drivers, Didier Billaut
and his Challenger, Chris Skinner and his Fiat 126, Kev
Preston and his pickup made it again to Top16.
The best Polish drag racers were there as
well : Staszewski and his Corvette 4WD, Blauth and his GMC
Typhoon, Karalow and his Civic Turbo, Wawrzak and his CRX
Turbo, Ozieblo and his Audi S4.
Usmanov and his Civic Turbo, Paul Dziubek
and his Golf R32 Turbo, Mariusz Bartnik and his 911 Turbo,
Sandor Vogelsinger and his Civic Turbo, Darren Scannel and
his Ford Escort, Michael Jensen and his Ford Escort were
filling this exciting King of Europe Top16. 4 Brits, 6 Polish, 1 German, 1 Hungarian,
1 Russian, 1 Danish, 1 Swedish and 1 French. Here is
the final European Top16. On this first round, our 2 main contenders
will be out : Frost beaten by the crazy 4WD Corvette of
Staszewski and Christell defeated by Jensen due to an engine
problem. Due to a hard week-end, 4 contenders had
to give up at this first round, reliability remains a key to
win!
The 1/4 finals were now ready to run :
Staszewski vs Blauth, after defeating Frost, everybody was
thinking about a Corvette winning but Blauth and the Typhoon
made their way to the semi-finals! Dziubek vs Karalow : Witek made his best
run of the week-end to put the civic first on the finish
line and made for the first time a Street FWD car in
semi-finals.
Preston vs Jensen : The pickup was
favorite in this run against the unknown Jensen but the
Dannish guy put the 742bhp on the ground and made the win! Skinner vs Wawrzak : Fiat 126 V8 against
CRX Turbo, Taz Racing strike back after Kev elimination and
put one of their guys again in semi-finals.
The stress was close to the maximum when
the semi-finals started.... Blauth vs Karalow was the first
semi-final, VTG vs VTG, of course Witold let the way opened
for Marcin to the final by making a huge red light! Jensen vs Skinner was the other
semi-final, once again Jensen make it all the way during
this 1/4 mile, for his 1st participation at KOE, we will
remember him for sure! Third place final between Chris Skinner
and Witold Karalow put Chris and the Taz Racing Team again
on the 3rd place of King of Europe, well done guys! But the only thing we were thinking about
was the big final : Blauth from Poland against Jensen from
Denmark!
Playing at home sometimes help to get a
small advantage, today for Marcin, this might helped him to
stay cool because on the other side, Jensen was way too hot
and missed his launch, giving instantly the victory to
Blauth!
Before this King of Europe Top16 battle,
all classes finals were run, you will find below detailed
top3 of each class.
THE NEW KING OF EUROPE
The track was a real issue to get good grip on saturday and
DHRA worked so hard to make it grippy, we even got a 8.6 on
this track! We work with DHRA from the beginning of
KOE and i would like to thanks the whole DHRA team for their
work and their true passion to drag racing.
Please note also that Robert Christell put
a new record at KOE with an 8.6... but like John sleath, in
2005 and 2006, the best time never made it to the final at
KOE!
Long life to our new King of Europe
Dragster 2007 : Marcin Blauth
GMC Typhoon from Marcin Blauth
Congratulations to Dunlop NoLimit VTG Team
which had several classes titles and the overall winning
Thanks to Donald Pottier for his
incredible jet car demo!
Third edition of King of Europe Dragster is already finished,
so let's get back to Belgium next year.
Thanks to all people involved in this edition, the drivers,
the spectators, SSS, to all guys of my team, to Magda our
official Polish/English translator, to DHRA of course which
played again a crucial part of the success of the
competition! Thanks also to Intercars and Rafal who
supported us to make this event happening! King of Europe is there because we all
share the same passion! Never forget it!
See ya all in 2008!!!!
Chimay - Belgium 24th & 25th June Dear all, This 2006 dragster edition in Chimay deserve a longer review than last year, so here we go. First of all, congratulations to Nigel Parkin the new King of Europe and by the way title stays in UK for the second year! Final LadderSpectators and drivers had a fantastic week-end again this year and this is our main objective! But the week-end was for sure not perfect...Important thing is to learn and improve the event next year! For us and for some drivers as well! Most of the last year fastest drivers came back this year in Chimay. In the final Top16, we can see again Didier Billaut and his Dodge Challenger, Hervé Caen and his fast-but-not-yet-reliable Plymouth Barracuda and Ludovic Rys, the last frenchie in Top16 with his Corsa T16, he will be the only french in quarter final. 3 Brits, 2 Polish, 1 Italian, 1 Swedish and 1 French. Here is the final Top8. On the UK side, John Sleath of course, but also Kevin Preston and Nigel Parkin. On italian and swedish sides, well known Luca Lodi and feared Stefan Gustafsson! Last but not least on the polish side Arkadius Ozieblo (Audi RS4) and Thomas Nagorski (Lancer Evo 9).
All quarter finals will go through without any problem. Semi finals will be Luca Lodi vs Nigel Parkin and Stefan Gustafsson vs Kevin Preston. Due to disqualifications (more info below), Nigel Parkin get through the final and will win it on a bye run. 2007 will be without any doubt the year of the revenge for a lot of drivers!
Let me remind you that King of Europe has been created by dragracers for dragracers because we were tired to go to "business-oriented" competition where the #1 rule is money. Our #1 rules are security, competition, friendship and of course this event is made to crown the fastest european street legal car. But "King of Europe" means nothing for the spectators, for our crew and even for the winner, if he is not recognized by the european dragracer community as the real fastest european street legal car!!! This year we have discovered the huge gap between last year first event where all drivers came to see "what's going on here" and this year where the drivers came with this event as their main objective of the year. You are now expecting a lot from this competition and we will upgrade the event to this required level. This year, we had to take very hard decisions about 2 drivers : Luca Lodi and Stefan Gustafsson. About Luca Lodi, his white Lancia Delta arrived in Chimay without headlights, turn signals, stop lights, wipers, horn and has been rejected at the friday's tech inspection, the italian crew has worked hard during all friday afternoon and evening to get the car in the rules : they succeeded. But a street car has to start on its own, it is clear for everyone, so clear that we did not even write it in the rules, so this could be discussed but on top of that, the italian crew has started the engine on the start line which is a restricted area where no one can access. These 2 reasons gave us the decision to disqualify Luca Lodi. About Stefan Gustafsson, his front tires were not DOT as requested in the rules, we think that the tires the Camaro was running would not have cheated the competition BUT rules are the rules. His car has passed tech inspection with these tyres so it is part our fault also but Stefan knew very well the rules also and should have known that as a major contender for the crown, his car would have been checked again during the whole week-end by other contenders! We want to keep this "King of Europe" spirit and respect between drivers, let me remember you that when you race at King of Europe with your country flag on the car, you have to be proud and behave correctly when running your national colours. About disqualification. For us, disqualification make only the current run lost because for example, as far as we saw for Luca Lodi, all the runs did before the semifinal, he came by its own on the start line and got no help, so he qualified correctly up to the semifinal, same for Stefan Gustafsson, until someone complaint about Stefan's car in the final, all other runs of Stefan has been validated. It is impossible for us to tech inspect each car on the start line at each run! We had some other minor issues during the week-end, like oil on the strip, as well as water from intercooler spray, next year we will have a dedicated guy on track to check for any fluid leak on the car's line up, any leak will lead to pit return! Anyway the crew has worked very hard to clean up oil and get the track up and running again, thanks to them! Another main hot point has been the sunday's bad weather. It was impossible for us not to have the KOE finals but weather was so unpredictable we were all turning crazy! We decided to call the military airport 50km away from Chimay, after several phone calls, they agree to make us a local forecast but the answer gave us more in trouble than before : "2 hours gap without rain : 66% reliable forecast". "2 hours gap without rain : 66% reliable forecast" : with this sentence, we had to make a choice, start running all drag classes till raining with not enough time for the King of Europe final... or take the Top4 or each SuperStreet Class and bring it to the KingofEurope Top16 without class finals. Whatever the choice people will be disappointed. So we took the choice to shorten the finals but this made SuperStreet (#5 to #16) and Street drivers not happy at all, we understand and we apologize again for the drivers not able to race, we all know you were coming from so long but rain is the baddest issue you can have on a prepped dragstrip, please understand us. By the way, even if class finals has been cancelled, we still have class winners based on qualification times. SuperStreet RWD Winner : John Sleath - Audi S2 SuperStreet RWD 2nd : Kevin Preston - A60 PickUp SuperStreet RWD 3rd : Didier Billaut - Dodge Challenger
SuperStreet FWD Winner : Marcin Wawrzak - Honda CRX SuperStreet FWD 2nd : Witold Karalow - Honda Civic SuperStreet FWD 3rd : Gianni Santi - Renault 5GT Turbo
SuperStreet 4WD Winner : Robert Pothorcki - GMC Syclone SuperStreet 4WD 2nd : Tomasz Nagorski - Mitsubishi Evo 9 SuperStreet 4WD 3rd : Arkadiusz Ozieblo - Audi S4
Street (over 12.5) Winner : Christophe Galante - Peugeot 106 Street (over 12.5) 2nd : Lasse Much-Nielsen - Fiat Uno Street (over 12.5) 3rd : Ludovic Ciuch - Lancer Evo 8 A lot of good stuff also happened in the week-end, like the jump of Poland into major drag racing countries, with 5 cars in the final Top16, Poland shew us we have to watch out for them at the next edition! Getting more major countries involved in the competition can only be good! The very good saturday weather and the
spectators who came as much as last year, close to 9.000!
John sleath, like in 2005 has set a new record, it turned
the chimay dragstrip from a 9sec open road track to a 8sec
open road track with an incredible 8.960!!! Like last year
also John had no luck in the big final...
Nigel Parkin : King of Europe 2006
Timings :
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