Ed Note: We recently had the chance to sit down with Edelbrock Group partner and FIA Europe Top Fuel Driver Ida Zetterström to learn her story and future goals during the Performance Racing Industry trade show in Indianapolis. We’d like to thank Ida for taking the time out of her extremely hectic schedule during the show to chat with us.
How does a Swedish gymnast become the fastest woman in Europe? Well, sit right back, and you’ll hear a tale!
Europe isn’t the first place that jumps to mind when it comes to straight-line racing. However, there is a passionate niche of people who like horsepower and going fast in the quarter-mile. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Scandanavian/Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Some of the most passionate car people in the world live there. They like anything that goes fast, and they love good old American horsepower too.
Though the drag racing season isn’t very long, the events are extremely well attended. It’s not uncommon to have 30-40,000 spectators at an event. At one event in Hockenheim, Germany, there were 80,000 spectators.
A Star Is Born
On May 2, 1994, Richard and Carola Zetterström gave birth to a healthy blonded-headed daughter in Stockholm, Sweden. To say Ida Zetterström was born with fuel running through her veins is an understatement. Her first visit to a racetrack was just three weeks later, and she’s been there ever since. Her dad has owned a shop fixing and repairing American cars and building high-powered engines for boats and drag cars since before Ida was born. He was also a Pro Stock racer and Pro Mod license instructor, so young Ida certainly had the pedigree to follow in his footsteps.
As far back as she can remember, Ida was an adrenaline junkie — if it was fast and dangerous, she would try it. She immediately took to gymnastics from a young age and competed at a high level until the family moved to Aland Islands, Finland, when she was 12. The islands didn’t afford the same level of competition as she progressed, so she started teaching gymnastics, coaching both girls and boys.
Ida always wanted to go fast. Luckily, she had parents who knew how to satisfy their daughter’s need for speed. Her dad built her first Junior dragster when Ida was just eight years old. They traveled with a Pro Mod team that match-raced all over Europe, so she never raced a full season with one series, but she won a lot of races. Ida ran the Junior dragster until she outgrew it when she was 16. She’s tall, and Junior dragsters are not very tall-kid-friendly.
Being only 16, she didn’t have the budget to afford a full-size race car, so she was out of a ride for while but was still around the track. However, the team that Richard worked with bought a Super Comp dragster from America and let her drive it during a few events that year to get her SC license. This just stoked the fire more, and Ida set a goal of making it to Top Fuel someday. She didn’t know exactly how at the time, but she knew that is what she wanted to do.
Two-Wheel Terror
It wasn’t until her boyfriend, Kim Hilander, started drag racing motorcycles that she made it back into racing. Richard and Kim had formed a drag bike team to field in the Super Street Bike class, equivalent to the Pro Street Bike class in the U.S., except with a shorter 68-inch wheelbase and a few other rules. They are the most extreme bikes you can run with a street tire and no wheelie bar, pushing around 750 horsepower and running a turbo.
At first, Ida wasn’t really into the bike scene, though she had run some motocross before. She was focused on her goal to make it to Top Fuel. However, the more she worked on the bike, it didn’t take her long to figure out that bikes are less expensive than cars; plus, the growth and popularity of the class at events were exciting. She soon fell in love with the class and saw it as an opportunity to get back on track. She figured racing on two wheels is better than not racing at all!
Ida first started out with a naturally aspirated 1585cc Hayabusa to get her feet wet before she got a turbo Hayabusa in 2017. She credits that first turbo bike for building her racecraft and learning how to understand what the machine wants and needs. The turbo Hayabusa was a beast that would wheelie all the time off the line. She learned to control the wheelies and keep it pointed straight down the strip, but it was a bit of a handful. She had to “become one with the bike” to control it, which helped her later on when she upgraded bikes.
Ida bought the iconic Lucky #13 bike in the U.S. to compete in the Scandanavian Championship for the 2019 season. The team rebuilt the bike and put in their own engine setup to make it a more powerful Super Street Bike. They fought new-bike gremlins throughout the year while Ida learned how the new bike reacted. She says Lucky #13 was actually smoother and easier to handle than her previous bikes, but it tended to wheelie further down track, which was more dangerous. Ida felt comfortable dealing with the power difference as she could control it from her experience with the turbo Hayabusa.
Ida set several personal bests right out of the gate and ended up in the finals in only her second SSB race of the season. Remarkably, in the next race, she became the first woman to ever win in the Scandanavian SSB class. It didn’t stop there. In the final race of the season, she again went to the finals, finishing Second. The points were enough to make her the first woman to win the Scandanavian SSB champion — in her first season with the new bike! She received the VP Racing Fuels Most Notable Achievement award for her efforts.
In July 2020, Ida became the first woman to ever clock a sub-6-second run in any bike class with street tires and no wheelie bars, clocking 6.985 seconds at 205.9mph. She bested that just one race later with a 6.885-second run. It made them only the second team in the 6.8-second zone and was the second-fastest SSB run in history at the time. Ida was making her mark, not only in bikes but drag racing in general. However, she still dreamed of going to Top Fuel and never gave up on achieving it.
The Push for Top Fuel
Ida has always wanted to drive Top Fuel and set a three-year plan to make it there. The goal was to win the Nordic series in 2019 (which she did), then compete in the European series for 2020. The third year would be competing with the bike while licensing for TopFuel. Covid put a kink in Ida’s plans as Europe virtually shut down in 2020/2021 — there was no FIA European Championship either year. Luckily, she was still able to compete against her biggest competition on the bike in the Finnish series in 2020 and took the championship.
To keep her three-year plan from turning into a five-year plan, Ida reached out to Anita Mäkelä (who was the current champion) toward the end of 2020 to see what she needed to do to get her license. Anita told her to contact Rune Fjeld Motorsport. Rune has been drag racing for more than 40 years. He is like the Don Schumacher of Europe and is the go-to guy when it comes to running Top Fuel.
The timing was great for Ida. Because there was no FIA racing in 2021, she was able to make all of her licensing runs except one full pass at Bug Jam 2021. At the Euro finals in 2022, Ida laid down the quickest licensing pass ever with a 3.862 in 1,000 feet. It also made her the fourth fastest Top Fuel driver in Europe.
With her license secured and a seat opening up with RF Motorsport, Ida jumped at the chance, leaving behind the plan to race for the European SSB championship. Her sponsors understood the opportunity, and most came along with her to the Top Fuel team. In the first official FIA event of 2022 at Santa Pod Raceway in England, Ida and the RF Motorsport team set a new European record of 3.782 at 301.92mph, becoming the first team to clock a 3.7-second run in Europe.
The following event was at Tierp Arena near Stockholm, Sweden. Despite hot and humid conditions, Ida held Q1 with a 3.89 run on Friday night but was bested on Saturday’s session. On Sunday, she got through the first round with a 3.83 pass before the track temps crept up. The finals were a pedal fest, but Ida was able to come out on top in only her second official event. She ended up finishing Third in the points championship in her first full year.
The Next Steps
At just 28 years old, Ida is far from finished. She runs her own marketing firm, Ida Zetterström Creative, specializing in social media marketing, website development and design. Of course, she has a special love for motorsports marketing and helps several clients in that realm. She recognizes the importance of marketing, social media, and keeping her sponsors happy.
Ida’s personality is one that keeps her always in motion, always learning, and always trying new things. In whatever she does, she doesn’t just want to participate — she wants to compete and wants to dominate — she considers herself stubborn in that regard. However, despite being one of the most driven people you could ever meet, Ida is one of the most approachable, bubbly, down-to-earth, personable people on the planet. That is something that will help in her drive toward the next goal.
Kim and Ida bought a ‘68 Camaro in 2016 and just pulled it out of a barn to start restoring it. The plan is to build a twin-turbo engine for it. They plan to document it with videos along the way on her YouTube channel.
For 2023, her plan is to compete in the FIA T/F championship, but she also hopes to catch a ride for an event or two with an NHRA team in the U.S. if the opportunity presents itself. Ida often says, “if you want to be the best, you have to compete against the best.” She knows that the short racing season and smaller fields in Europe will eventually hold her back from becoming her absolute best. Her ultimate goal is to become a full-time NHRA driver. If her ambition has anything to do with it, there is no doubt that Ida will accomplish that goal just like every other goal she has crushed along the way.
