Sweden’s Ida Zetterström brings her NHRA dragster dreams to Brainerd

The NHRA national event arrives at Brainerd International Raceway for the 42nd time with qualifying runs Friday. Year after year, the leading contenders in the main events are mostly familiar, although the most familiar of all, John Force, will not be on one of the world’s fastest quarter-miles.

Force, 75 and still trying to time the lights, crashed his Funny Car on June 23 at Virginia Motorsports Park. He came away with a diagnosis of a traumatic brain injury. He was released from a Richmond hospital on July 9 and is attempting to recover.

Jack Beckman has replaced him as a driver on the Force team. Austin Prock is leading the Funny Car points standings for the Force team, and Brittany Force, John’s daughter, is tenth in the Top Fuel standings.

Obviously, the circumstance that forced the great character of drag racing out of the picture for now was horrendous, but it is also true one negative at the top levels of NHRA is that there often seems to be a dearth of new talent.

Which brings up quite a positive for this weekend at BIR: Ida Zetterström, 30 and a very successful driver in Europe, will be making her NHRA debut in a Top Fuel dragster. She is a JMC racing teammate with one of those honored vets, Tony Schumacher.

“Tony has been great to me,” Zetterström said. “He has been very encouraging.”

Zetterström was in the Twin Cities and promoted her debut with a couple of television interviews. This is a new age for promotion, though, and she has gone from 20,000 to more than 200,000 followers on Instagram.

That has a chance to put a substantial number of young eyes on drag racing that never would have considered the possibility.

Zetterström was born in Stockholm with a Swedish father and Finnish mother. The family lived on Åland Island in the Baltic Sea. “It is a Finnish territory, but we all speak Swedish,” said Zetterström, smiling.

Her parents were involved in racing, and Ida was 8 when starting in a junior dragster. She has been dedicated to speed ever since — jet skis and dirt bikes as hobbies, super bikes and then dragsters.

Major drag racing events are limited in Europe, which runs under the auspices of Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), located in Paris.

Zetterström started gaining notice racing super street bikes. She was the first woman to win a championship in that category in 2019 and was a two-time champion.

“It was close to 50-50 between women and men as competitors,” Zetterström said. “There were times when the three racers on the podium were women. The only problem was people would see that photo and think, ‘Oh, it was women’s race.’ It wasn’t.”

She earned a Top Fuel license from the FIA in 2021 with the quickest licensing run in European drag racing history (3.862 seconds in 1,000 feet). In 2022, she became the first European to go under 3.8 seconds.

Still, if you want to reach the top in drag racing, the NHRA — with its opener at historic Gainesville (Fla.) Raceway in early March and Finals in Pomona, Calif. in mid-November — is the place you have to run.

“I got together with JCM at the end of last year. I came over in February and we started getting our team ready,” Zetterström said. “Jon Schaffer is my crew chief. He’s terrific. I can’t wait to get started in Brainerd. I’ve heard a lot about that place.”

Definitely unique — a very fast drag strip carved into what was designed as a road racing course, up there in the north woods. And also “The Zoo,” a gathering place for behavior not as rowdy as in days of yore, but still a place to quench a thirst and holler for no good reason.

“I’ve heard about ‘The Zoo,’” said Zetterström, and “Zoo’' sounded even more worth visiting in her Swedish accent.

Then again, BIR’s Zoo would have no chance to be the zaniest crowd she has seen in racing. “I’ve raced at Hockenheimring in Germany,” she said. “They have 80,000 people there, partying.”

Zetterström has a trio of inspirational sayings tattooed on her left arm. The words are in Swedish, of course, and she translated the top one: “Be strong when you feel weak.”

Ida Zetterström has been living in a foreign land, outside Indianapolis, for seven months, preparing for what she will be facing this weekend in Brainerd.

And you get the impression Zetterström’s not feeling weak at all — just anxious for the possibility of bringing younger eyes to a sport that needs them.