NHRA Rookie Ida Zetterström Blog: We Can Run with the Best in the World

The Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals was probably the closest thing to a home race I can get here in the United States.

My family, my mom, and dad flew in from their home in the Åland Islands in Finland. And the Swedish National Team flew in—it was the first time they've been at an NHRA event. It was actually fun too, because this event was, of course, a home race for our team that is based here in Brownsburg, Indiana.

We even had reporters who flew in to cover the event for the Åland Islands—basically everybody back at home wants to see what's happening. So that was cool. There was a lot of Swedish speaking in the pit that weekend. It felt a little like a European race in that regard.

I've attended the U.S. Nationals before, but I'd never been in the in the driver's seat. At U.S. Nationals, I feel like everything was just more than normal—our schedules were packed more than normal, with everything from interviews and filmings and signings and everything you can can think of was just more than normal.

Everybody had their family there, which also puts more pressure on you, in a way, because everybody wants to do well when they have their family in the house.

Obviously having five qualifying rounds is also something that we're not used to. And you could really feel that. On Friday, we only had one run, and it was late. But we were still there early, so when Friday was done and we got home well after midnight, I felt like it had already been a whole week—and that was just after one day.

For me, the thing that was most different is usually when you come into a race—and there's, let's say, 16 contenders or less—you know that you're going to race on Sunday. At the U.S. Nationals, with so many trying to qualify, the pressure is different, kind of like a fear of not getting in.

I'm usually very, very calm when it comes to qualifying and testing as long as it's not race day; I do not have any type of nerves. But at the U.S. Nationals, I felt like I was nervous every day. It was like you were in race-day mode from day one.

And it's very strange. It's hard to explain, but being in that kind of race-day mode, and being nervous, it takes a lot of your energy and a lot of your headspace. I don't think I've been in a situation before when I've had that for four days in a row. So that was very different. Everybody wants it so badly, and you could just feel that everybody there was just a little more on edge.

We qualified 14th and won our first-round match and raced Steve Torrence in the next round after we beat him in the first round at Brainerd.

A little healthy rivalry is always good. And the last time, Torrence might have taken us lightly when we came into that round at Brainerd, it being our debut. They didn't really know what to expect with us. And obviously we won that first one on a hole shot, which is something that's always even sweeter for the driver because it shows we did our job.

I was obviously nervous, because you want to repeat what you did the last time. And he probably feels the same way—he's nervous because he doesn't want to repeat what happened the last time. You never want to lose.

After we lost that run at the U.S. Nationals—it was a really close race—of course, it hurt not to win it. But we went back, and we talked about it as a team, and and I still felt really good about it. We we were first out, we left the starting line first, and we also ran really strong.

We had a cylinder go out quite early, and that's basically what cost us that win. But looking at our numbers, if we wouldn't have had that cylinder go out—it was just a small-parts failure, and that happens—on paper, we should have won that run.

I know you can always say that in racing, but we know you never race on paper. But what makes that run feel good for me is that we know we have it. Okay, shit happens. This was not our race to win, but we still have it. We can run with the best in the world, and that is what drives us to continue for the next one.

This was definitely not an easy weekend for any of the teams out here. And yeah, obviously I would have loved to say I wanted to be top eight in qualifying. But looking back at it now and seeing that we qualified 14th, and we had some really big names behind us on that list, makes us feel better.

When you look at the sheet and you see some of the names that didn't qualify—like Doug Kalitta—or those who didn't make the Countdown to the Championship or so on, you do feel for them, because you know how hard everybody works. I think it's just proof of how hard it is out here.

It does put it in perspective and just makes it feel that what our team has accomplished in a very short amount of time is actually really big.

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 made her NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing debut in a JCM Racing dragster alongside teammate Tony Schumacher at Brainerd, Minnesota, August 16–18, and then finished sixth at the Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis August 28–September 2. This season, Zetterström is sharing her first-year NHRA experiences in blogs for Autoweek.