Photo: Polestar Cyan Racing

Robert Dahlgren and Scott McLaughlin celebrate 1-2 in Skövde

Former team-mates in the V8 Supercars Championship Robert Dahlgren and Scott McLaughlin started the season with a 1-2 finish at the Skövde airport circuit, with Dahlgren announcing it’s “awesome” to be back racing, while McLaughlin aims to fix his starts for race two.

Dahlgren got away safely at the start, while McLaughlin dropped a spot to Flash Engineering’s Linus Ohlsson. The New Zealander then passed the Dacia of Mattias Andersson at the hairpin on lap one before catching and passing Ohlsson’s Saab on lap ten, but could do nothing about race leader Dahlgren, who took his first race victory since Mantorp Park in 2011 with the Volvo C30.

“From the first lap at this track the car has been perfect,” said Dahlgren. “In qualifying felt really good, and for the race I just wanted to get well off the line and put my head down for the first couple of laps and get a good gap…I’m really happy, I couldn’t ask for more.”

Reflecting on his year away from the circuit after he left the V8 Supercars Championship at the end of 2014, Dahlgren explained:

“I’ve been helping the development of the World Touring Car, which has been quite fun and also developing road cars for Volvo and Polestar, but I’ve really missed racing as well. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good year, but this is just awesome.”

McLaughlin was upset with himself for the start of the race, dropping from fourth to fifth in the Volvo S60, but with second place in the race, setting the fastest lap on the way and also after scoring 18 points for finishing second in Q1 on Saturday, the New Zealander finds himself Dahlgren’s closest rival in the standings after race one.

“The start sucked, I need to get used to that,” said McLaughlin. “That was one of my first starts, I did one yesterday and today was my first (in anger). Linus (Ohlsson) got an amazing start and I got a massive hit from behind I think it was from a black car and then a fire started,” he explained.

“On the first lap I had a really good battle, around Turn 1 and into Turn 3 it was all side-by-side, that’s what we have in Australia too, so it’s good to see it transitions all over the world. I had a good battle (with Ohlsson) and got past him at the hairpin, and then checked out trying to catch up to Robert, but he was cruising as he had a big lead, but just trying to get as many laps in my belt before the final race this afternoon.”

For the final race of the day, McLaughlin will start ninth courtesy of the Q1 reversed grid with Dahlgren tenth and last.

STCC standings after Race 1