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Robert Dahlgren on Saturday Skövde performance: “It’s been unreal”

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Robert Dahlgren put on a dominant performance throughout all of Saturday’s running for the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship opener at the Skövde airport circuit, and the 36-year-old is delighted with the performance of the Polestar Cyan Racing Volvo S60 on his return to competitive racing.

Dahlgren sat out the 2015 season after leaving the V8 Supercars Championship, instead working on the development of Polestar’s new WTCC challenger, but is back racing for this season as part of a three car programme for the Swedish manufacturer in the STCC, with two strong team-mates this weekend with four-time champion Richard Göransson and a one-off run for his former V8 Supercars team-mate Scott McLaughlin.

Dahlgren topped both of the day’s practice sessions, and then in qualifying set a circuit lap record in Q1 of 49.479, scoring him 25 points towards the championship, and then followed that up with another fast lap in the one-lap shootout Q2, which secured him pole position for the first race of the day on Sunday.

“It’s been unreal,” said Dahlgren to TouringCarTimes. “The car felt great from the first lap. We didn’t change much (between sessions), just some small tweaks for the time of day. Coming to qualifying it felt like it was up to me to deliver a result as the team had given me an awesome car, so in Q1, I went all-in, I tried to bank one in, but I thought it might not be enough so I went again.

“In Q2, when I heard the lap times they were doing it felt like I could definitely grab this, but you want to play it a bit safe but still go quick. I think I nearly played it too safe, so I was worried when I passed the line, but when I saw then line I thought ‘thank you’, and I’m so happy for the team who gave me a great car.”

Dahlgren starts from pole position for race one with team-mate Göransson alongside, while for race two he will start tenth and last from the small grid, with his other Volvo team-mates McLaughlin and Göransson ahead, but believes he has a car he can race with as well as qualify with.

“We have a car that works well over a race distance,” said Dahlgren. “We did quite a few laps in practice and do 49s after almost 20 laps, so I feel really good for tomorrow, but then there’s many things that could go wrong. I’ll just put my head down at the start and just get going.”