It’s always easy to remember the strangest thing you saw in any location. At Hot Rod’s Drag Week 2o17, that answer was easy: it was blue and was the biggest car racing. The 1967 Plymouth VIP is a well-known monster over in Finland, where it was the first registered vehicle to break the seven second mark, and the team of Janne Uskali and Jyrki Aukio had seen the successes and fun that other Finnish racers had experienced on earlier Drag Weeks. So the Plymouth was shipped over and shortly after arriving in the States, the big blue Yank tank decided that it was the perfect time to drop a valve. And that’s just the start of the fun that went down for the Finns…in addition to engines hell-bent on self-destruction, you had Janne’s hospital trip, including for metal in his eye (screaming internally. -ed.) and the kick in the kiddies when they were unable to make the full Drag Week program. By the end of the week, anyone who was around this team could pretty much tell you exactly what the word perkele probably meant. But when you’ve traveled so far and worked your ass off, you don’t pack it in and head back home. You fix things, get the car moving and you make every last run you can. The car is a beast and the team’s actions are heroic. Check it out: