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Last weekend Jozsef and Judy Hadnagy and their S-Riders club in conjunction with Trakbak Racing played host to the first round of the 2010 UEM European Drag Racing Championship and hosted Kunmadaras' first-ever invitational race for FIA-class cars.

The weekend started early with a test session for UEM bikes on Thursday afternoon. The hot weather proved to be a welcome change for many of the teams on the Championship trail, given that parts of northern Europe are still in the icy grip of winter meaning that valuable testing time is in short supply.

With track preparation duties being fulfilled by Trakbak Racing's Darren Prentice, Steve Horn, David Warren, Ian Marshall and the S-Riders team for a full nine days before the event and an optimistic weather forecast the prospects for the forthcoming race were good. The results did not disappoint anyone.

This year's race at Kunmadaras attracted a huge attendance on all days and produced the highest Sunday crowd ever recorded at the venue. Spectators were treated to an exciting race that featured some of the most modern and up to date drag racing machinery seen anywhere in the world. The track at Kunmadaras has been starved of cars Pro cars in particular so the prospects for record performances from the FIA cars was limited. However what those runs lacked in records was more than made up for in sheer spectacle, matched equally by the wild commentary of Jozsef Hadnagy who was ably accompanied by Santa Pod's very own old war horse John Price!

In return the crowd responded to the team's efforts with massive enthusiasm and the teams were not slow to respond, taking crowd participation to levels not often seen outside the USA: handing out flyers and Paul Wratten out of the car signing autographs as they towed back to the pits in front of the grandstands...talk about milking it! The fact the Wratten brothers were able to travel to Hungary at all given their miniscule budget is a tribute to the support of all their loyal sponsors, in particular John F Hunt Hire Centre who not only provided a twelve-seater bus for the team to travel to Hungary but insured all team members so that they could share the driving duties, thank you very much.

Fast Freddy Fagerström and his crew were busy throwing T-Shirts to the crowd, and I saw the normally-reserved Jari Halinen bowing to a delighted crowd, that simply could not have asked for more.

Graham Ellis and his fabulous Superbird had a wild moment off the line but once Graham had a handle on the track he and Andy Robinson provided some wonderful side by side burnouts and some hard-running passes as did Fast Freddy. Current European Pro Mod Champion Mats Eriksson, realising he was unlikely to set any records, entered unknown territory by performing full quarter-mile burnouts!

Top Fuel did not disappoint with Risto Poutiainen making a storming pass smoking the tyres all the way down the quarter mile and Jari Halinen laying down a quick 5.67 sec pass. The methanol cars provided the crowd with an equally exciting weekend's racing with Danny Belio putting on a great show along with Paul Wratten

I would personally like to thank all the teams that made the trip to Hungary this year, both UEM and FIA. It is a long way to travel but the track is getting better every time we go there, and the crowd are getting more excited every time you teams roll into town and you all exceed expectations every time we race there. Thank you.

The track is being upgraded to allow the FIA Championship to go there in the very near future. In fact the future for drag racing in Hungary has never looked better. This was Trakbak Racing's second year of running Championship and Professional drag racing at the Kunmadaras drag strip and we are already looking forward to taking the whole event to the next level in 2011.

On a final note I would like to thank S-Riders for the very nice Goulash Wine and Folk Music evening they threw for all the teams. I saw some fine dance moves being performed by some of our more established drag racing team members!

It's a great race, it's a great place, the Hungarians are great people...are we all looking forward to going back? Yes we are.

Source: www.eurodragster.com