Sums up THE weekend of the year, the one and only outing in 2020 for Sjödin Motorsport / ÅBM Racing will be the test weekend at Hudik Raceway 21-23 of August! And what a great place to be at, nice crew, good track and what more can you ask for?! 🙂 Relaxed, nice and simple! No arguing about anything it was just fun and all about dragracing and nothing else and that’s how I like it! I am really impressed what the crew at Hudik Raceway have accomplished in such a short time!
Photo credit to Photograph Cenneth Schiller for the pic above!
It looks nice don’t you think!?
This test weekend was not planned at all, we actually started to service the Chevelle less than one week before the event started and haven’t even touched it since I turned of the motor at Santa Pod in May 2019!
I told my dad that we must do something fun also, I need something to live on so I can survive the coming winter!.. We can’t just work ALL the time and put our fun part in life to the side, well our company have been little bit of a big mess the last 2 years and now finally things start to work out really good, better than what it have been for many many years actually!… So let’s give it a chance and see if the car is happy after the last race in England, I said if something is broken and to hard or expensive to fix this is just not meant to be and we won’t go and rest in Hudik, simple as that!
This is all that we needed to change when made a complete service on the whole car! Pretty good if you ask me, we did not even change the rod bearings in the motor after making 4 passes between 5.88 to 5.98 and becoming the worlds fastest conventional headed Big Block Chevrolet!
And then this year is extra special to me also because in September we are having an little anniversary because it will be 10 years since I made my first ever test pass in the newly built Chevelle at Kjula Dragway and the day to be exact was September 19 2010! It’s kind of crazy because it doesn’t feel like 10 years already!!..
Next thing was that just before me and Sofi started to tear down the whole car we did reach a goal on the trailer that we have been working on pretty much since the beginning of July and this made it possible to leave the shop with the trailer and that’s a pretty good thing if you want to go to a race track!… Thanks to Bengtssons Smide for helping us out getting there!!
Anyway I did know we would be a little short on people in the team but still in the end the ones that really needs to be around the car to make it go down the track!
So me and Sofi got to the track on Thursday evening and started to build our pit area, thanks to Stefan and Victor from LL Racing for helping us out with our tents!
Friday morning we unloaded the Chevelle and after that we started to get the last stuff finished that we didn’t do in the shop and get it all done for the first pass, dad showed up around 1:00 and after something to eat we did fire up the car for the first time in over 450 days and it sounded happy for sure, and I felt that I was alive again!!! =)
First pass out directly from the trailer 0.9987 60ft, 4.0255 @ 289.23km/h! This was actually the first pass in 451 days, yes last pass I made with the Chevelle was our record setting 5.88@ 242mph at Santa Pod in May 2019! So I must say that this simple first pass felt really good and I was back in the car again and it felt really awesome!! And I was amazed about the track, I mean I went out checking it so I did know what to do about my tune but still it was even better than what I thought!
But before I did put my fire suit on I needed to do one last really important thing to me! Ulf King Korv Schill (that once was a part of P & G Top Fuel Racing with Pelle Lindelöw behind the wheel) is a big part why I’m able to do what I do today! He was the founder of the company Winassist System and have been helping me out both in a personal way and trough Winassist as a partner! We lost him last year from planet earth but he will NEVER be forgotten! I miss you my friend! 🙁
A big thanks to Micke and the awesome guys at Clearwrap for the help with the decals in such a short notice!
Also after this pass Max came to Hudik Raceway in Sofis “Plutten” or “blueberry” that Max calls it and joined up with us and now we were complete the complete team again and that felt good so we could prepare for the coming rounds on Saturday.
Second round for the weekend and first on Saturday I wanted a little bit too much and spun the tires pretty much directly off the line… I must be honest and say that it took a little time to go back in race mode and read all the graphs correctly after being away from it for about 15 months so it might be that I made a mistake also, but just maybe! 😉
Third round I did back off a little on the tune and went straight down again with a 4.0109 @ 305.78km/h and I must say that it feels so good to drive a race car again!!!
After that we turned around the car really quick because I wanted one more pass to see if I wanted to change stator in the converter and do some changes to the transmission during the evening. But when I was strapped in the car and ready to fire up the motor Charlie Östedt did an Amazing saving with the Amazon Delivery and kept it on all 4 wheels! Thank God for that! And after that it started to drizzle a bit so the crew called the day because all this happened just before they need to stop making noise for the day. Well it was one more day of testing left and nobody got hurted and that’s the most important thing if you ask me!
Fourth pass for the weekend and first on Sunday I was a bit aggressive again and did hit a shake after half track but it was the best 330ft time of the weekend with a 2.6783! Right here I did know I should make some changes to the transmission…! But I was lazy and wanted to try tune around it instead…
Fifth pass I did back off a little again and went down with a 4.0170 @ 303.54km/h! Ok so I have found that sweet spot of making 4.0 passes all day long but of course I wasn’t satisfied with that!
Sixth and last pass I was tired of all of these 4.0 rounds and made a lot of changes to the car, it worked better but it of course resulted with a shake pretty early in the round but ended up with the weekends best 60ft with a 0.9854!
Right after that round the weather started to get a little bad, windy, dark clouds and some drizzling so we decided to start pack things up before it started to rain for real, and it was a good decision because the track time was running out and it also started to rain so pretty soon after we started to load things back in the trailer they called the day and the test weekend at Hudik Raceway was over.
Well, at least we ended up as the second quickest car of the test weekend!
Back home again but I’m more than happy with the weekend, it was the first time for us on that track and it was really fun and I look forward to the next time already! Thanks again to Hudik Raceway and the crew you have done a great job and I’m sure the track and everything around it will get better and better I the future!
Also a HUGE thanks to my love and best friend in life Sofi, without her it wouldn’t been possible to get to Hudik! She have spent many sunny warm days inside the shop helping me out with stuff during a couple of weeks before hitting the road to Hudik, guess I need to pay for that some day soon and I’m happy to do that!
And of course my dad Åke and the always stand up friend Max, I have said it before. We four are the dream team and I love you all!
I really look forward to go back to Hudik Raceway again and be less lazy!… I know I need to do some changes to the transmission because I was too aggressive for the track but I was too lazy to take both my transmissions apart and build one with the right first gear ratio, but at least I know it and I even might get one more trans during the winter to make that swap a lite easier. But good part is that I did learn a lot about my shocks and adjusting them which I never been playing around with this much earlier so it was good for me being lazy and trying to tune around it and take away power and change the shocks to get down the track instead of taking both my transmissions apart and build a new trans, also it feels like I’m back in racing I now sit every day watching Racepak graphs and movies and dreams about the next time I’m behind the steering wheel again!
To be honest I really don’t know what to do in 2021 or what it have to give to us, all I can say is that we are going to England and Santa Pod Raceway for the Doorslammers and Main Event if we get the opportunity to do that, I am more than sure I will go to Hudik Raceway for some testing or maybe even some real racing! (I hope that at least!) Of course testing and just driving the car is fun but I miss to compete against someone else, that’s the real fun part of racing!…. And then we got the Top Doorslammer series and Pro Extreme Challenge series and I really don’t know what will happen with those two to next year!?..
But I do know one thing, Sjödin Motorsport / ÅBM Racing are looking for new partners for the 2021 season! We need all help we can get and we got a lot of different options and fun things we can do together and for your company! Are you interested in more info about that? Don’t hesitate to contact Andreas Sjödin at andreas@abmracing.se and we will work out something great together!
