With the idea that when you do the same as your competitors, you will not be faster, Hampus Staflund and his team Staflund Racing took the brave decision to enter an A-Fuel Funny Car in the Top Methanol class of the FIA European Drag Racing Championship, the first and only one in Europe. At the Summit Racing Equipment Internationals at Tierp Arena, the team had their moment of glory with the first full pass. Time for Hampus Staflund to look back at his first season with the Staflund Racing A-Fuel Pontiac.
With the first season fresh in the mirror, we must say that we are very happy with what we have managed to achieve. We set out on this adventure of building our A-Fuel Funny Car back around Christmas 2025. Shortly after that we managed to locate an engine that we wanted back over in the States.
So we started to strip the old blower set-up down to where there were just pipes left. While waiting for the engine to arrive, we went on to change what was necessary and started preparing for the parts to arrive. The big parts, engine, clutch and rear-end all came around mid-spring, so we had only a couple of months to get ready for Tierp in June, that we were aiming for.
After many long nights in the shop, we got it ready, fired it up on methanol and headed down to Tierp. We had the privilege of having Tony and Christer from Tony Bryntesson Motorsport come by and help us make sure we did have it under control. Unfortunately we did not get a single run down the track since we had issues with the set-up of (idle RPM) making us unable to perform a pass.
After that we took it back home and went through everything again and did some tests to fix the problems. We managed to find the gremlin keeping us off the track, which where funny car related issues that the dragsters do not have. After that we decided we needed more runs on the car.
So we took it up to Piteå for two weekends. We managed to get everything fixed and even ran a few decent 100-200 meter passes. There we had some on track support from the Jedborn Motorsport team. Feeling good after this, we took it back home, went through everything from engine, clutch and complete chassis to see that it was all working as intended.
Then came the big test for us, we entered the FIA Championship going back to Tierp in August. This time with the goal of making it all the way to the top-end. We struggled, like many others, to get the car off the line, but the big breakthrough came Saturday evening when we got it to hook up and took us about 150 meters out before going in to tyreshake. With the newfound data we set the car back up again for a chance of bringing it down the whole way and giving the number one qualifier a good fight.
And put up a fight was exactly what we did. We took it all the way to the finish line, even though on a super soft and safe set-up and three wet cylinders. About at that point we got the loudest cheer from the crowd at Tierp Arena, the team and driver had finally gotten all the way and even though we did not advance to the second round, we were super happy with the fact that we had managed to get down the track.
What seemed like a distant dream this time around last year, we actually managed to pull off. Now, after hundreds of hours of work, we will reset for next season and make some adjustments to come out even stronger. Hopefully we can bring enough partners on this fantastic journey so that one day we can make the full FIA European Championship tour.
A big thank-you to everyone who helped us to make this a reality, the team, our families and to all of our sponsors: DeWalt, Mobil 1, O’Learys, Ahlsell, Ironside, SkellefteReklam, Fordonsmontage i Norr AB, Karlssons Maskinentreprenad AB, and Ströms Bärgningstjänst.
Interested in following our journey? Follow us on:
Hampus Staflund on Facebook
Staflundracing on Instagram.
Stafundracing on TikTok
Text: Hampus Staflund, Remco Scheelings
Photos: Remco Scheelings