A lights-to-flag win for Mattias Andersson
Mattias Andersson took a remarkable victory in Race 2 at Falkenberg, securing what was virtually a lights-to-flag win by just 0.141 second over Fredrik Ekblom. Pole-sitter Tobias Brink finished third ahead of Andreas Wernersson – those four drivers separated by a little over 1.2 seconds.
Andersson, driving a Honda Civic, made a perfect start from third on the grid to beat the two Audi RS3 LMS cars of Brink and Micke Ohlsson to the first corner. He then controlled the race from the front, only threatened when a safety car period ended with a handful of laps remaining. He controlled the restart to perfection to head away from the threat posed by Ekblom’s Volkswagen Golf GTI and crossed the line to record his and Honda’s first victory in TCR Scandinavia.
The race wasn’t without incident. Apart from a safety car intervention, while the Volkswagen of Nicklas Oscarsson was recovered, Philip Morin half-spun on lap 3 after making contact with Ohlsson; Morin dropped from fourth to eleventh while Ohlsson retired with driveshaft failure soon afterwards. On lap 20, Johan Kristofferson suffered a front-left puncture while lying in second place and ran through the gravel. The Golf headed to the pits for a fresh tyre and eventually crossed the line in last place.
Race 1 winner Robert Dahlgren was in fourth place at the start of lap 23, but a slight mistake meant he dropped two places and so finished sixth behind Wernersson and the highest-placed Junior driver Hugo Nerman. Morin recovered to finish seventh, while Oliver Söderström, Mikaela Åhlin-Kottulinksky and Daniel Haglöf completed the top ten.
The results from Falkenberg mean that Dahlgren has extended his lead in the Drivers’ championship to 31 points. Wernersson is now in second place, with Kristofferson dropping to third a further two points behind thanks to that puncture.
The series next heads to Karlskoga on August 18th/19th.
