The 1969 Chevelle of Andreas Arthursson and PPF Racing made its debut last weekend at the season opener in the UK, at the legendary Santa Pod Raceway, wanting to make a claim on the FIA Pro Mod Championship.
It is the first time the team have taken their PLR Hemi powered race car so far, normally preferring to stick to tracks in Scandinavia.
Originally, the now 37 year old Andreas was a street racer, racing high performance BMW’s which escalated to form his business, Pure Performance Factory www.pure-pf.com, which he owns with his partner Andreas Bäckström.
As with most drag racers, the need for speed saw him swap out and up many race cars and combinations, from a turbo charged Nova V8 to an LS twin turbo engine, which back in 2012 became the quickest LS car in the world.
As the business grew so did the race team, becoming quicker and faster until an order for the Chevelle Pro Mod was placed with chassis builder Mats Brag in Sweden.
The goal was set to become the quickest Pro Mod car in Europe!
Additionally, in the fall of 2017, PPF Racing decided to sell their old engine combination and replace it with the Pro Line Racing Hemi and drivetrain from Troy Coughlin’s Pro Mod Corvette. The same combination that Coughlin won the 2017 NHRA Pro Mod Championship with!
A race package was put together and the PPF team made the trek to Bahrain to meet Eric Dillard, Steve Petty and Brandon Stroud as they were supporting and running the Q80 Racing Team in January 2018.
As such, a great learning and education was provided to the PPF team, and on location in Bahrain too!
By the spring of 2018 PPF’s marketing partner, Pa-So Produkter, enabled PLR tuner Brandon Stroud to join them in Malmo for testing after the ‘set-up’ baseline was developed between PLR and PPF. Testing was a great success and PPF recognized Stroud’s help, professionalism and knowledge of his craft.
And the results spoke for themselves as the team won 2 FIA Pro Mod events at Tierp Arena in Sweden, and Andreas Arthursson raced his way to become the 2019 Pro Mod Swedish Champ, bagging number one spot in the Summit Racing EDRS Series for 2018.
As the team’s confidence grew the records fell, with PPF Racing resetting the European ET Record 4 times to a new record time of 5.751 ET.
The have now turned their attention to the 2019 FIA Championship. The first race in Santa Pod saw them qualify well in third spot with a 5.86. The weather on race day was slightly colder, and with a suitable tune up on board, Andreas Arthursson got around Fredrik Fagerstrom with an improved 5.81 ET in the first elimination, but red lit in the second round, finishing their first FIA Pro Mod Championship outing a little earlier than they hoped.
They won’t have long to analyze the data and make a plan as they head to Tierp in Sweden for the next round of FIA Pro Mod in 2 weeks time.
We hope that they have a more rewarding result for this passionate team!
