NHRA Rookie Ida Zetterström Exclusive: My Expectations Are Very High

People ask me if this whole thing and my move to the United States are what I thought they would be.

Well, yes and no.

I haven't raced yet, so that question might be easier to answer later. But right now everything I've kind of built up in my mind about NHRA has been kind of the same. We basically race the same we as we do over in Europe; it's just on a higher level with more cars, bigger budgets, more parts. Everything is just basically bigger over here than it is back home in Europe.

Waiting is the hardest part for me. When I saw myself in this situation of having to wait until August to race, I didn't know what it would feel like to be sidelined, kind of waiting to get in. That's what I've had to work on the most—just being on the sidelines.

Right now I'm at the track. I get to see the track and work with the team. I mix teammate Tony Schumacher's fuel, pack the chutes when needed. I don't like to stand still. It's still a good opportunity to work with all our sponsors.

I feel like I'm doing everything a driver does except driving the car. That is hard. You do everything you normally do as a racer, except you don't step on the pedal when you go the line.

The thing that keeps me sane, honestly, is that I see all the work the team is putting into making this happen. My crew chiefs Jon Schaffer and Mike Neff and the crew we've hired at JCM Racing are there every day back at the shop. I fly out to the races, and when I come back to Indiana on Monday morning, I head straight to the shop, and they're all there working on my stuff, and that keeps me sane.

If the trailer and the car just stood there, and nobody was working on it, and I wasn't allowed to drive it—that would stress me out. But that's not the case. We see everything getting built up. Every day new parts come in. Things are coming together. When I'm at the track, I have a lot to do, but I'm almost even more busy when I'm back in Brownsburg at the shop because I'm always working on stuff.

If it's not being hands-on with the car, I work on my computer for social media, sponsors, marketing decks, or sitting in meetings with potential sponsors. There's so many things happening behind the scenes that I can't even share that take up a lot of my time. That keeps me busy and also keeps me sane.

I know all the hard work I've put into this sport for so many years, and I also know that I wasn't just handpicked to come over here and do this because I won a championship. The way I work with my sponsors and my social media plays a big role. Knowing how to work with sponsors is a big part of all of this.

I've made all of 20 runs in testing, including 10 in Tony's car. And it's the first time I've been in a canopy car.

I have experience from before, but it's just not in the same car, and everybody knows you've got to get familiar with your own car to get the feeling of it and perform your absolute best. So, I'm still only a few runs into my own car. There's also the issue of data. This is a new car, a new team—we need to learn one another's routines, and we need to find data for this car.

My teammate Tony Schumacher, of course, is a great driver, and he's great in the car. I'm also relying on a lot of knowledge from my crew chiefs and from the team itself. Every driver drives their car a little differently. There might be something I can pick up from Tony, and there might be stuff he can pick up from me.

Ultimately, we're not trying to be identical as drivers. We have our own style, and I know that my style works for me to drive. If the crew chiefs want me to change something or make changes for the setup we're doing on my car, we'll do it. Tony and I are not trying to create two replicas of each other.

As a racer, my expectations on myself are always very, very high. I really want to come out there and show that I know what I'm doing. I know everybody else has a lot of high expectations, and I'm trying to live up to all of this that we have built up over a long time.

The thing I need to do now is remember that of course we don't have a lot of testing, I'm new to all these tracks, and I'm still becoming one with the car. So coming out here and saying, 'Hey, I'm going to win Brainerd'—that's probably aiming a little high, but I really wish for us to be a top qualifier, and I really wish for us to make sure we can make sure we can win rounds. That's ultimately what I want to come out there and do.

This is a hard year in the series. There's a lot of good drivers out there. We've had a lot of different winners. We've had a lot of good drivers go out early all of a sudden and others go high up on Sunday into semifinals and finals when we didn't think they would be there. When Tony won at Bristol, he won from the 12th qualifying position. In the final, it was No. 13 Doug Kalitta against Tony, who was 12th. That says quite a lot if you can qualify 12th or 13th, and that's the final pairing. That shows there's a lot of good cars out there. It's very competitive, very hard out here.

Could I even beat Tony? Looking at it from a team perspective, if I were to beat him, I would prefer it to be in a final round. That would mean we would have both cars going deep into Sunday.

But we have so many big names in this sport, and just to think about being able to take out any of these names—you get goose bumps thinking of stuff like that, because it's been something I've dreamt about for so many years.

And, yes, I do feel the pressure.

Ida Zetterström, 30, is a native of Stockholm, Sweden, and the 2023 FIA European Top Fuel drag-racing champion and 2019 Scandinavian Super Street Bike champion. Zetterström is making her NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing debut in a JCM Racing dragster alongside teammate Tony Schumacher at Brainerd, Minnesota, Aug. 16–18. This season Zetterström is sharing her first-year NHRA experiences in periodic columns with Autoweek.