Tierp Arena, SWEDEN – 10th June 2018: As the final of Top fuel bike was ongoing and Pro stock bike finalists were preparing to do their burn-out, we spotted Super Street Bike (SSB) rider Ida Zetterström enjoying the burn-out of the pro stock bike. As previous ‘behind staging lane’ editions we went looking for the story behind the story: This is the story behind Ida Zetterström.
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Ida was born and raised in a ‘Drag Race’ family, with only a few weeks old she was already present at the track. It was obvious that you would find Ida at the track as her father (Richard Zetterström) used to race in the Pro stock class way before she was born. Her father has raced in several classes besides Pro stock and was always involved; building engines or helping teams out.
As Ida was growing up she starting sharing the same passion for drag racing, after all it is a family sport! She started racing Junior dragster at the age of 8 and got her super comp license at the age of 16. After taking a couple of years from the ‘Drag Racing World’ to spend some time to herself and finish her education, she returned to the Drag Racing World in a surprising way.
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Growing up in a ‘Car racing family’ she never tough that she would be ever racing bikes. She can still hear her mother telling her; ‘You can race anything you want, except funny cars or Bikes’. But all racers has one thing in common; ‘The need for speed ’. Ida’s boyfriend (Kim Hilander) who also shared the same passion for drag racing have started competing in Super Street Bikes class and Ida got introduced to the world of racing bikes.
She decided to give it a try and it was a match right away. The only thing left for her to do is for her to get her license to ride a bike on public roads. But hey, who needs that on the track???
Why Super street bike? Well hear her out! ‘we can popped wheelies at 300 meters, doing 300+ km/h’. This class is special: these are stock appearing bikes with unlimited engine modifications, without wheelie bars and beside that their engines need to be capable of firing up with their original starter.
When Ida decided to start racing bikes, she and her team bought a bike to compete in the super comp class. Unfortunately her super comp experience ended after a couple of tests as they resulted with a broken engine.
They needed to build a new engine; this was the moment she decided to move to Super Street bike class. She debuted in the SSB class in June 2017 at Tierp Arena. With a lot of technical challenges last year, Ida and her team worked the whole winter and think they got the right combination for this season. So far her Personal best is a great 7.63 seconds at 310 km/u.
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So what does Drag means to Ida? ‘I love everything about it! The feeling of arriving at the track, the thrill of twisting that throttle, the rush of going 300+km/h’.
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IDA’s #94 Bike info:
Build in: Aland Island by Alandia Motorsport
Make: Suzuki
Year: 2002
Engine: Suzuki Hayabusa 1299 cc, Gerret GT3582R Turbo
Glutch: MTC gen 2 Clutch
Story told by Ida Zetterström
Story edited by Benjamin Wefer
Pictures by Benjamin Wefer & Zetterström family
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