The Robinson Race Cars team has just come back from the first FIA meeting held at Tierp Arena. This purpose built track was literally nothing 10 months ago, but now the track and facilities are amazing. The weather was great – Sun tanning weather which is perfect for the spectators although not as good for the racers who have to cover up in big heavy race suits! Either way this is better than the rain that plagued us at The Main Event in the UK just two weeks ago!

The crew flew out on Thursday – My Dad was already there having driven the car from the UK on the previous Saturday. As soon as we got to the track we had a short look around and then straight to work getting the last bits done before the first qualifying session on Friday Morning.

Coming into this race we were at a slight disadvantage as many of the Swedish teams had already been able to run on the track prior to The Main Event and therefore had already figured out a good base setting. This was obvious when we over powered the track on our first run and clocked a 9 second time. Our second run was much more successful, a 6.14 which was good for the 3rd position. However run after run other teams stepped up also and by the end of the session we were down to 7th. Not great however we were qualified and that was the most important thing.

The second day however was not as successful as we had of hoped, in hindsight its hard to say what we struggled with. When it came down to Saturdays qualifying runs although the car remained consistent, the times were simply not good enough and by the end of the day we were knocked down to 12th qualifier. Maybe the changes we made were not enough to compensate the changes in the track with some more passes we feel we could have definitely improved but that’s racing and sometimes you come across problems and challenges.

Our first elimination was going to be a tough one – up against the 5th qualifier Johan Lindberg who qualified with a 6.05. We knew that it would be difficult to get through round 1, we made changes to try and run faster but when it came down to it our 6.17 pass was simply not fast enough to beat Johan. Dad red lit on the tree also, he knew he had to get the best light he could and unfortunately was a bit too quick. Even with a perfect reaction time Andy still would not have been able to make up the difference.

In instances like this its easy for people to assume the run was thrown away with a mistake on the lights – This was not the case and its easier to accept when you see the incremental’s and realise there was nothing we could do either way. Its frustrating but in this race Johan was the faster competitor and our game was not quite strong enough.

Although this was a very difficult weekend there are always positives to be taken from it. We finally seem to have solved the issues we had causing engine damage – Last year was expensive after rebuilding the car and solving these problems means we can now step up the tune and run faster without doing the damage we were previously suffering from.

There were also over 30 cars all attempting to qualify for a 16 car field – The bump was the fastest bump in FIA Pro Mod history and to have been one of the cars that made it into eliminations is a big accomplishment in itself.

Although we were slightly off course, we’re not looking for anything we haven’t already achieved – hopefully a few small changes will see us back on form and in the top half of the qualifying list in Finland. For now we are all back home in the UK – In two weeks time we will be flying out again but this time to Finland! We hope the weather and track are as good as last year, we also hope that this year we’re able to come home with a car that’s in one piece and hopefully some better news for all of our fans!!