There's more than one World Championship snowmobile race in North America , but there's only one racer in that circuit from another part of the world.

Tomi Ahmasalo of Finland has been among the best on every continent he races. This will be his third full season on the small, aggressive courses.

"It's been a great four years for me. I have been learning a lot of things here, he said. The industry here is much bigger, so I got to know all the right people and hopefully this helps the other racers in Europe later on. If they want to come here I can help them."

When he was on the way to winning the European Sno-cross Championship, the brothers of Warnert Racing were scouting for talent.

"Tomi impressed me from the standpoint that he is not only a good racer but he's mechanically and intellectually a very smart driver. You can see that on and off the track," said Mark Warnert.

The change from 20-minute heats to five short laps of tight racing seemed easy for Ahmasalo, Warnert said, and he soon developed his own style to win.

"Tomi never rides the same line as the guy in front of him. The old rule is 'You can't pass someone unless you drive over the top of them.' He knows how to pass."

"He's very focused, "Warnert said. "It's been a pleasure having him on our team."

Joining the team was something Ahmasalo wondered about. Racing in North America from 1994 to 1996, "Everybody started thinking, can we do it"" he said. He raced once here in 1997 and twice in 1998 before making the big leap onto the Pro Stock and Pro Open Circuits with the Warnert Team. His #27 Ski-Doo runs under the primary sponsorship of XP-S Lubricants.

Ahmasalo said the track isn't the only huge difference, though he misses the longer races when the positioning in the first seconds is less critical. "Of course the tracks are totally different. I think the biggest difference between Europe and the U.S. is the competition level here. It's very high, and there's many more racers."

The number of fans and sponsors equals larger prizes for the winners. "The prizes are larger, yeah. I think it's probably twice as much," he said. That factor is part of what keeps him in races so far from his family.

"My wife and two kids live in Finland, in my home town Rovaniemi. Of course every summer I go back home and do a few races in the spring back home." For the long months when he's away they see each other's faces and voices through the internet, but it's still hard. "You never know, but I think it will be my last season here," Ahmasalo said.

He's hoping to make his last season a winner, though a knee injury received in the first weekend of February has slowed him down.

"It was going really well until the X-Games," he said. "It was not those huge jumps, but just big enough and I kind of overjumped it and landed a little bad and hit my leg straight into the running board and it tried to bend back. It hyper-extended. Nothing is really broken, but it's a big impact for the knee."

One week later he was limping at the National races in Green Bay's Lambeau Field, but he still raced in the finals. "I have been making all the finals, even with the hurt knee."

Racing in the US is simply more dangerous, he said. "We have bigger jumps and the tracks are really tight so there's a lot of more close racing. We are going side-by-side in the jumps."

Accidents add to the usual mechanical trouble. Whenever there's a problem, Warnert noticed that Ahmasalo always knows what's wrong with the snowmobile before he arrives in the repair area.

Ahmasalo said, "My father used to work in the snowmobile factory in west Finland . When I started sno-cross racing, my father said "You need to know how the snowmobile works.'"

His mechanic, Levi Michel joined the team this year and said Ahmasalo keeps his machine in the best condition of anyone. "It makes it a lot easier for me. We can get it fixed again and get it right back out," he said.

Differences aren't too numerous, Michel said, between this European and the American racers. "He gets up pretty early in the morning where a lot of the other guys sleep in," he said. "But I think a lot of that is time zone stuff, so he can talk to his family, which is kind of neat. You learn something every day from him. He's from a different part of the world."

Once Ahmasalo returns to Finland for good there might be no European racers in the North American races.

"There was a few Swedish guys and one guy from Norway who did a few races at the start of the season, but now they stay there," Ahmasalo said. He has heard of racers thinking of coming, but doesn't know if they will.

With almost everyone from the same continent, it's ironic that several of the races here are called the "World Championship."

"It's kind of a little bit funny, but hopefully in the future we can have the real world championship race. We can get the best guys from here and from Europe and hopefully have a real world champion."

Story also submitted to Swedish-language Snowmobile Industry Magazine "Skoter", with non-exclusive publishing rights.