No blower but A-Fuel for Staflund Racing
After their 2025 debut in the FIA European Top Methanol Drag Racing Championship, Hampus Staflund and his team Staflund Racing decided to try something completely different. “Go big or go home.” When you do the same as your competitors, you will not be faster, is a common saying. “A-Fuel Funny Car in Europe — yes, the time has come for Staflund Racing to begin an exciting journey to figure out the right combination here in Europe,” said the driver of the Staflund Racing Funny Car about their brave choice.
The decision to switch from a traditional blower Funny Car to nitro injection comes from many factors. Stepping back a decade, Hampus earned his licence in the same car that his father, Jonas, competed with in the FIA European Championship, but starting with the much smaller 6-71 blower and running that combination first. This also helped him to get comfortable with the big step from Junior Dragster to Funny Car. “Eventually, we felt the time was right to go faster, and in 2019 we moved up to the 14-71 blower.”
”By making small steps at each race, we kept improving. However, like many others, COVID-19 hit us hard. We parked the car and prepared it to return when the time was right.” Unfortunately, in 2021, just as the team were getting ready to come back, Hampus lost his firstborn son, leaving uncertainty about whether he would ever return to the driver’s seat.
Fast forward to 2023. ”We said, ’Let’s give it a go, at least figure out if we still have it.’ Being back in the race car felt right, and off we went. Step by step, we continued improving, and finally in 2025 we completed all the required passes for a Top Methanol licence. So we asked ourselves: why not try running the FIA European Championship again? Tierp was our first outing. We kept improving, the driver stepped up to the task, and the team had more fun than we’d had in years. That made us hungry for more.”
”The problem was that with the 14-71 blower, we were about half a second short of being competitive in Top Methanol. Because of this, we began looking at other options, including switching blowers or moving to an A-Fuel Funny Car, even though the rules for that combination did not yet exist in Europe at that point in time. With a lot of encouragement from Tony Bryntesson, Jonny Lagg, and Daniel Jedborn, we decided to explore what it would take to run an A-Fuel Funny Car. We knew there had been great progress in the U.S. over the past year, and we wanted to try it ourselves. Choosing the A-Fuel option became a true “go big or go home” moment for us,” Hampus looks back at this brave decision.
”Making the switch to A-Fuel means many changes: a Chrisman rear end, a Molinari clutch, and, of course, a completely different engine setup. The old engine, rear axle, clutch and so on are now for sale and we have chosen a BAE engine with Noonan A-Fuel heads. That engine has performed very well in the U.S., so we know it shouldn’t be the problem, we just have to figure it out in our car. Other changes include the ignition system and fuel management. Overall, this means removing almost everything from the blower setup and assembling an entirely new configuration, resulting in a massive amount of work.”
“The next steps are to get everything figured out and running properly. After that, we will most likely head out for testing to ensure everything works as intended. Then it will be time to show up at an FIA European Championship event and give it a try. At this moment, we can’t say exactly where our first outing will be. We also don’t plan to run the entire tour in the first year. We still need time to dial in the setup and get comfortable. Hopefully, one day, we will be ready to take on the entire FIA European Championship.”
“A big thank-you to everyone helping to make this a reality, the team, our families and to all of our sponsors and partners: DeWalt, Mobil 1, O’Learys, Ahlsell, Ironside, SkellefteReklam, Fordonsmontage i Norr AB, Karlssons Maskinentreprenad AB, and Ströms Bärgningstjänst.”
Interested in following Staflund Racing’s journey? Follow Hampus Staflund on Facebook or Staflund Racing on Instagram. They will bring you along for every step of building and running an A-Fuel Funny Car.
Text: Hampus Staflund and Remco Scheelings
Photos: Staflund Racing and Remco Scheelings
