Ida Zetterstrom isn’t very good at sitting around waiting for somebody to give her something to race.
She came to America to drive a Top Fuel dragster, and that remains the plan. The problem is Top Fuel opportunities aren’t exactly growing on trees, particularly when somebody else is paying the bills.
So Zetterstrom has gone looking for seat time wherever she can find it.
Earlier this season, Jim Whiteley handed her the proverbial keys to his Pro Modified. She’s spent time working with NHRA’s announcing team, and recently at Indianapolis Raceway Park, Ryan Oehler gave her something considerably different.
A Pro Stock Motorcycle.
For Zetterstrom, it was actually a return to familiar territory, although familiar might be stretching things a little.
“It’s actually, it’s really fun. I have not raced a bike in six years, so I don’t think a lot of people realize it’s been that long,” Zetterstrom said. “I keep hearing we got to get back on a bike and yeah, it’s been a few years. 2020 was the last year I raced a Super Street bike.”
The bike wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment answer to a quiet Top Fuel schedule. Zetterstrom and Oehler had been kicking around the idea since before the season started.
And anybody assuming this means Zetterstrom is abandoning Top Fuel hasn’t been paying attention.
“What they don’t know is me and Ryan have been working on this since before the season started,” Zetterstrom said. “So we talked about at some point getting on a bike and getting my license and then see from there what might happen. We don’t have a solid plan as of right now, but all I know is I’m really competitive and I don’t want to be outside standing just watching everybody else race.”
This has become a familiar theme with Zetterstrom. Earlier this season, she climbed into Whiteley’s blown Pro Mod during the World Series of Pro Mod in Bradenton, Florida, making several shakedown runs but stopping short of completing her license.
The motorcycle opportunity came from the same place. Zetterstrom wants options, particularly when the cost of operating a Top Fuel dragster can limit how often she races.
“I do know people have asked like, ‘Oh, you’re switching to two wheels now? You’re going to try to run Top Fuel.’ And that’s not really the case,” Zetterstrom said. “I’m still working really hard on Top Fuel dream and I will actually be in a car quite soon.
“We’re announcing it here really soon. So I will run more this year and I’m still working on next year. But for me, I think that this is also something that’s really cool to have as an ace up my sleeve. I ran a Pro Mod car for the same reason in the beginning of the year to try to have some more opportunities. Sometimes you’ll have sponsors coming around and they want you on track. And we all know that Top Fuel costs a ton of money.
“And there are other classes that are just as competitive and just as hard to drive, that costs less. And I just don’t want to be limited to sitting out and running like I’ve done this year, just a few races. I want to make sure that I have more to offer my sponsors to stay in this country and just race as much as possible.”
Zetterstrom entered 2026 sharing driving duties with Shawn Reed in Reed’s Top Fuel operation, an arrangement designed to keep the car on the full NHRA schedule while Reed devoted additional time to his business. Her limited seat time, however, has done nothing to satisfy a racer who crossed an ocean intending to make a career in America.
Getting back on a motorcycle was hardly a matter of dusting off an old skill set. Zetterstrom’s Super Street experience came aboard a considerably different machine, and Oehler’s Pro Stock Motorcycle introduced a wheelie bar, slick tire and riding techniques she had never used.
“That’s one thing. The wheelie bar and the slick tire, that’s very different,” Zetterstrom said. “And then also how these bike, not just how they handle, but a little bit of. It’s been new things for me how you grip the throttle on these bikes compared to how we do the bikes. On the turbo bikes, you kind of roll and ease in on the throttle.”
Even shifting required some retraining. Actions that had become automatic during her previous motorcycle career suddenly required thought.
“There’s some things in my mind that I’ve had as a routine for many years that I’ve kind of had to throw out the window and try to relearn,” Zetterstrom said. “The burnouts are a little different on these bikes than it is on the other. So basically, there’s a lot of differences.”
Her quickest run produced a 7.18-second elapsed time despite Zetterstrom short-shifting and lifting near 1,000 feet. It was her first run in which she was able to work through the gears as intended, even though she did not stay in the throttle through the finish line.
The appearance at Cars and Coffee wasn’t originally part of the plan. A scheduled test session had been canceled, and neither Zetterstrom nor Oehler wanted to wait months for another opportunity.
“This was not how we planned it. We planned to be all alone at a test session, but a test session that we were going to make yesterday got canceled and we didn’t want to sit out and wait too long,” Zetterstrom said. “I made some passes on some earlier test sessions here and I struggled getting the gears in. I struggled with some stuff and some mechanical things for me to figure out how to do it.”
For somebody accustomed to driving a nitromethane-burning dragster, Zetterstrom doesn’t ignore the difficulty involved with racing a Pro Stock Motorcycle. If anything, her brief experience has increased her respect for the riders who make a brutally precise category occasionally look easier than it is.
“I think the riders that run these bikes, it’s some of the hardest class that you can run within drag racing, in my opinion,” Zetterstrom said. “And the margin for error is very small and the numbers between all the best bikes in the class are so small that one little mistake can be the difference from being number 1 to being number 12 on the qualifying sheets.”
There is no commitment yet for Zetterstrom to race Oehler’s motorcycle. There is, however, a desire to finish the licensing process and see where another open door might lead.
Top Fuel remains the destination. Zetterstrom is just refusing to spend the journey standing beside the racetrack waiting for somebody else to decide when she gets to race.
“No matter if I’ve raced the Top Fuel car or raced a bike, for me it’s been about winning and being the best you can at it,” Zetterstrom said. “And with Ryan really wanting to do this and see if I can get my license and if we can potentially do something together, I’m very excited. I’m on if he asked and he wants to do it.”
