Lars Sjӧholm steps up to Pro Modified
After several years with all kinds of doorslammers, Lars Sjӧholm is ready for the next major step, Pro Modified. The 2024 Summit Racing EDRS Series Top Doorslammer champion found a new challenge in a well-known Chevrolet Camaro with a blower engine. Sjӧholm and his LSR Motorsport team will try to get familiar with the new combination in the EDRS Bilsport Pro Modified Series, to enter the FIA European Championship later this year.
Lars Sjӧholm, from Sundsvall in Sweden, started drag racing in 2007 with a street Chevelle, to move up to Pro Street with another Chevelle. After a couple of years that car was replaced by a GTO Pro Stocker, but the daily job took so much time that he and his team had to take a break from racing. After a 4-year break, Sjӧholm, who runs a business in industrial maintenance, acquired a ’63 Corvette from the States and stepped up to Top Doorslammer. And with success, as Sjӧholm and his LSR Motorsport team claimed the 2024 Summit Racing EDRS Series Top Doorslammer title.
And now there is a new challenge on the horizon. “After a couple of years with nitrous in Top Doorslammer, we decided to step up and go for international racing in the FIA European Pro Modified Championship with a blown hemi car,” said the now 36-year old Sjӧholm. It’s of course no secret, and you only have to look once, to see that it is the ex-Michael Gullqvist championship winning Camaro.
“Oud main goal for this season is to try to understand alky/blower engines, like tune-ups, what the car likes at the track, weather parameters and so on. The crew chief and the team will have a much harder job to figure all these things out, than I have as a driver this season. But together we will fix it. One hard thing is, that when you think you know how it’s being done at the track, you just understand how little you know. In the beginning we will get some help from Michael Gullqvist and his crew, but as soon as we get more knowledge, we as a team will tune the car. It’s important for us to understand the parameters and get things going faster and faster and it’s fun too!”
In the last couple of weeks the team made some minor changes to the car, for example regarding the driver’s position, but next winter there is a total overhaul for the car in the planning, and that is not without a reason. “This season we will compete in the full EDRS Bilsport Pro Modified Series, but we will also enter the two FIA European Championship races at Tierp Arena in August and Santa Pod in September. We see this season as a learning year, but the plan is to run the full FIA European Pro Modified Championship in 2026.”
That is a great prospect for the FIA European Championship and the LSR Motorsport team that will have Matfors Industriservice AB as their main partner.
Text: Remco Scheelings
Photos: Team and Remco Scheelings
