For the grand season finale of the FIM Drag Racing European Championship, the European drag racing elite headed to Santa Pod (GB) on the second weekend of September. Once again, the legendary track provided the stage for the final race weekend of the season \u2013 and the last opportunity for the European drag racing elite to secure their championship titles.<\/p>\n
However, the weather on Sunday really did upset the plans.\u00a0The difficult conditions meant that the eliminations could not get underway until around 5:00 pm. As a result, there was no time left for the scheduled final rounds. Championship points were therefore awarded based on the results from the elimination rounds that were actually completed, as well as qualifying.<\/p>\n
TOP FUEL BIKE<\/strong><\/p>\n Following his victory in Sweden and another strong performance at the NitrOlympX, Luke Farrugia arrived at Santa Pod as the Top Fuel Bike championship leader. The Maltese rider had delivered a season of impressive speeds and consistency, including his remarkable 6.146-second pass at the NOX.<\/p>\n With Farrugia being eliminated in the only elimination round run on Sunday, the spotlight shifted to his rivals. Jiri Lukes, Thomas Pettersson, Stuart Crane and Glenn Borg each won their opening rounds before the weather-shortened programme came to an end. Last year\u2019s champion, Rikard Gustafsson, who tragically passed away in May, still managed to finish sixth in the final standings with 94 points thanks to his victory at the season opener.<\/p>\n Although Farrugia did not add another race win to his season tally, the advantage he had built up in the previous rounds proved decisive. With 206 points \u2013 42 points clear of Thomas Pettersson (164 points) \u2013 the Maltese rider secured the 2026 European Championship title in Top Fuel Bike. Thanks to his strong performance at Santa Pod, which earned him 58 points, Stuart Crane moved up to third place in the overall standings with 137 points. There were no German competitors in this class.<\/p>\n SUPER TWIN BIKE<\/strong><\/p>\n The Super Twin Bike championship was largely shaped by the outstanding results of Marcus Christiansen. The Dane, who won both the season opener in England and the round in Sweden, also scored strongly at the NitrOlympX \u2013 despite the event being cut short due to the weather.<\/p>\n At Santa Pod, Martin B\u00fchler (CH) and Roman Sixta (CZE) emerged as the winners of the opening elimination round before the event was stopped here as well. Sixta scored the highest points haul of the weekend with 51 points, followed by B\u00fchler (42 points) and Christiansen (34 points).<\/p>\n However, these results did little to threaten Christiansen\u2019s commanding championship lead. The Dane finished the season on 249 points to secure the 2026 European Championship title in Super Twin Bike. His fellow countryman Anders Jensen finished second with 146 points, despite scoring no points at the final round, while Sixta moved into third place overall with 129 points thanks to his strong result at the European Finals in Santa Pod. The only German competitor in this class, \u201cNitrohunter\u201d Christian J\u00e4ger, competed only at the NOX and finished 11th in the overall standings.<\/p>\n PRO STOCK BIKE<\/strong><\/p>\n Few riders could look back on a championship season as dominant as that of German rider J\u00f6rg Lymant in Pro Stock Bike. After victories at the first two rounds in Santa Pod and at Tierp Arena, followed by another 47 points at the Rico Anthes Quartermile, the German arrived at the season finale with a comfortable championship lead.<\/p>\n On Sunday, Brit Martin Newbury, J\u00f6rg Lymant (GER) and Martin Bishop (GBR) each won their respective opening-round eliminations. Lymant scored another 53 points at the event, narrowly finishing ahead of Newbury (52 points) and Bishop (49 points).<\/p>\n That was more than enough to cap off his outstanding season. Lymant finished the championship with 265 points \u2013 a remarkable 120-point advantage over runner-up Martin Bishop (145 points). Karl-Heinz Weikum, the second German rider in the class and one of the front-runners at the NitrOlympX, completed the championship top three with 99 points. With his win at the Pod, Lymant claimed the Pro Stock Bike European Championship title for the third consecutive year.<\/p>\n SUPER STREET BIKE<\/strong><\/p>\n The closest title battle of the season finale took place in Super Street Bike. Dani\u00ebl Donat Lencses (HUN) won the season opener in England, before Jake Mechaell (GBR) hit back with a victory in Sweden. At the NitrOlympX, the championship standings shifted once again when Alan Morrison (GBR) scored the highest points total of the event, leaving the title wide open heading into the European Finals.<\/p>\n Lencses made the most of the decisive day, adding 63 points to his championship tally to finish the season on 328 points. Greece\u2019s Ioannis Lampropoulos scored 59 points at Santa Pod and finished runner-up in the championship with 305 points \u2013 just 23 points behind the leader. Mechaell collected 57 points and secured third place overall with 291 points. After a season in which he was consistently among the title contenders, Lencses was crowned Super Street Bike European Champion for the second time, following his first title in 2022.<\/p>\n The German competitors in this class, Clemens \u201cWally\u201d Walleit and his son Ricardo Grauer, finished 14th and 17th respectively in the championship standings (out of 27 competitors). Austria\u2019s Erich Gruber finished 20th.<\/p>\n JUNIOR DRAG BIKE CUP<\/strong><\/p>\n Young British rider Harry Isaacs finished the championship with 214 points, followed by fellow Brit Leah Morrison on 183 points and Hollie King on 156 points. Isaacs therefore secured the overall 2026 Junior Drag Bike Cup title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the grand season finale of the FIM Drag Racing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcements"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nitrolympx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nitrolympx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nitrolympx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nitrolympx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nitrolympx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nitrolympx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12793,"href":"https:\/\/www.nitrolympx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12792\/revisions\/12793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nitrolympx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nitrolympx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nitrolympx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nitrolympx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}