Team Rolfstad’s plan for the season
Norway’s Rolfstad Pro Drag Racing will head into FIM-E Super Twin competition at the SpeedEvents Internationals at Tierp buoyed by off season progress and promising early testing at their local Gardermoen track over the past couple of weeks. Second generation team rider and a sign of the future in European nitro bike ranks, John Rolfstad gave us the overview.
“Over this past winter we’ve upgraded my bike quite massively, with a new engine and rebuilt frame. All the bikes have been completely overhauled so we think we have removed the issues we had last season. This year we are competing with three Second generation supercharged bikes [for John, his father Svein Olaf, and Erling Opheim], and one naturally aspirated entry [ridden by Frank Aaslund].
All four bikes will be ready for the first race at Gardermoen this weekend [at the time of writing John had picked up his first six second ticket]. This will be a great opportunity to test the bikes before we go to our first FIM race of the season, which we hope will be the first of many. We were also at Gardermoen last weekend for some 1/8 mile testing and we are excited about the results.
Our goals are to get the bikes going straight and hopefully go full 1/4 mile with a nice and easy setup. If we stay somewhat on budget and the bikes are still running, we are aiming for Hockenheim [for the NitrOlympX at the end of August] and Santa Pod [for the Euro Finals at the start of September] as well as the two rounds in Sweden in June and August.”
The mixture of youth (John is 19 and Erling 27) and experience (team patriarch Svein Olaf is a former European champion and record holder) in the Toten team are on target to shake up the European nitro bike ranks this season.
The SpeedEvents Internationals takes place at Tierp Arena, Sweden over the weekend of the 13th-16th June.
Words and photos Ivan Sansom & Rose Hughes and Rolfstad Pro Drag Racing
