Johan Lindberg bids farewell to his title with a win at the Scandinavian Internationals

Published 2015-08-29 | By Remco Scheelings

Johan (and Jonnie) Lindberg

Johan Lindberg drove to victory at the Scandinavian Internationals at Tierp Arena. With his win, the 2014 FIA European Top Methanol Funny Car champion bid farewell to his title in style, as Lindberg will not take part in the last race of the season, and so Tierp Arena runner-up and championship leader Leif Andreasson can no longer be caught.

The Scandinavian Internationals at Tierp Arena was the fifth and penultimate round of the 2015 FIA European Drag Racing Championship. Helped by the perfect weather and track conditions at the state-of-the-art drag race facility, a record crowd of 37,000 spectators were offered an action packed and exciting race weekend.

Leif Andreasson

Qualifying

That Johan Lindberg was in the number one qualifying position was not the biggest surprise, but it was a surprise that the reigning champion had to wait until his fourth and last run to take that position. Lindberg had to abort earlier runs after he was hit by traction problems, but that was all forgotten when the Jonnie Lindberg tuned Ravolin Monte Carlo stormed to 5.59 seconds.

Johan Lindberg

Leif Andreasson was more consistent in qualifying, but with 5.74 seconds, the championship leader was pushed down to second position. The biggest surprise in qualifying was Ari Pietilä from Finland. After all kind of engine problems at his Alastaro home race, the Panox driver bounced back and reset his personal best three times in qualifying, to end up with 5.77 seconds, only 0.03s short of the number two position.

Mikael Larsson

Johnny Oksa had some more problems with the Tierp Arena track, and with 5.88 seconds the Alastaro runner-up ended qualifying in fourth position. It was great to see Mikael Larsson back on track after his bad crash at the Tierp Internationals in June. Thanks to his sponsors and with a chassis and Dodge body from the Leanders Brothers, Larsson made a welcome return.

Ari Pietilä

Eliminations

First round

As the number one qualifier, Lindberg had a bye run in the first round, but that was no reason for the Swede to take it easy. In great style Lindberg stormed to 5.461 seconds, the quickest run of the weekend. In the all Finnish confrontation between Pietilä and Oksa, it looked like the Panox driver would take the win with a better reaction time, and traction problems at the start line for Oksa. But in the run, Pietilä also ran into problems and slowed down and so Oksa crossed the finish line first. Andreasson advanced to the semi-finals after an easy win over Larsson.

Johnny Oksa in the semi-final with Johan Lindberg

Semi-final

Andreasson showed his consistency again in the semi-final, and in a bye run and another 5.8 the multiple champion advanced to the final. In the other semi-final Lindberg had to face Oksa, a replay of the Alastaro final. And despite a slower reaction time, it was Lindberg who took the win again.

The final

Final

The final was already decided at the start line. Both Lindberg and Andreasson had traction problems, but where Lindberg could recover immediately, Andreasson, who went up-in-smoke, had to lift and rolled to the finish line.

Johan Lindberg

Championship

In the championship Lindberg closed the gap to Andreasson from 96 to 78 points. But as the reigning champion will travel to the States, where his brother Jonnie has a busy programme in the next few weeks, and with the U.S. Nationals being held on the same weekend as the European Finals at Santa Pod, Lindberg will skip the last race of the FIA European Championship. Thus Andreasson will be the 2015 champion, with Lindberg in second and Oksa in third position. Jürgen Nagel from Germany is fifth and has to win in England to come third.