Leanders bros. Kick off usa tour 2010 at gatornationals

LEANDERS BROS. KICK OFF USA TOUR 2010 AT GATORNATIONALS
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Gainesville, Fla. – In September of 1979, legendary Swedish rock band ABBA kicked off their first North American tour after spending nearly a decade honing their craft and developing a world-wide fan following. This weekend in Gainesville, Fla., a Swedish invasion of another form will rock the NHRA Tire Kingdom Gatornationals in the highly competitive Top Alcohol Funny Car division.

Defending two-time FIA Top Methanol Funny Car champion Ulf Leanders will drive his 2009 Dodge Charger-bodied blown alcohol flopper for the first time in NHRA competition at the 41st edition of the legendary NHRA National Event. And after nearly a decade of racing against the best in Europe, the Alfta, Sweden based team is ready to compete with the best North America has to offer.

“We have been planning to run our Leander Clutch / Haas Automation TAFC in the United States for a few years,” noted team crew chief Jorgen Leanders, the brother of the team’s driver Ulf. “We have been working with ADRL PRO EXTREME racer Todd Tuttorow with our new clutch and saw the success he had with our product here in the USA so we figured we would try to see how we could match up against the best on this side of the Atlantic. We believe our car will run much quicker on the smooth racing surface of Gainseville Raceway and we hope to learn from our experience here. Hopefully we can find the winner circle while we are racing in our North American 2010 tour.”

The team is no stranger to the winner circle in Europe. Having captured two FIA TMFC championships racing on very marginal race tracks, the owners of Leanders Clutch (http://www.leandersclutch.com) are looking forward to seeing how their car with the same quality parts as the North American teams match-up on a NHRA National Event prepared racing surface.

“Having raced on some tricky tracks in our days in Europe, racing at Gainesville will be very exciting,” said driver Ulf Leanders. “We have run as quickly as 5.69 at 401 kilometers per hour at the FHRA Nitro Nationals in Finland and we believe if we can get a good baseline in testing in Bradenton, Fla. a few days before the Nationals we could improve our best elapsed time by nearly a tenth of a second. If nothing else, we simply want to see what we can do against the best of the best. And the best place to race is at a historic NHRA event like the gators.”

Leander’s will get his shot when he and the Leanders Clutch/Haas Automation TAFC team begin their qualifying attempt on Friday March, 12th scheduled to begin at 11:00 EST. The team will receive a total of three attempts to qualify for the 16-car field. Eliminations are scheduled to begin on Saturday afternoon.