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BMW 1-2 in Knutstorp main race

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Thed Björk won the first race of the STCC season 2005. Björk headed a BMW 1-2 with his team mate and 2004 STCC champion Richard Göransson second. “Fantastic! It felt great to see the team extatic when I crossed the finish line,” Björk said immideately after the race.

“I was right behind Rustad at the start of the race. We were so evenly matched so I could only stay behind him waiting for a mistake. As he missed a brake point I went past and then I really had to push when Göransson was behind me.”

Göransson was pleased with his second place and decided during the race that he would not try to pass Björk.

“When I was behind Thed I said to the team that I would stay behind him. I just followed him in his pace,” Göransson said.

Tommy Rustad held pole position but couldn´t hold for long against the charging BMW´s. As Rustad made a mistake only a few laps in to the race Björk was quick to get past. Only a couple of corners later Göransson took advantage of Rustad being out of rythm and passed.

But the beginning of the race almost ended in tears for Peugeot´s Johan Stureson. Ekblom and Stureson were fighting hard for positions. Ekblom put his font-end of the car at the back-end of Sturesson coming in to the “Micro-corner”.

This sent Sturesson in to a spin. Amazingly enough Sturesson put the power hard down and managed to recover the spin and continue. Though contact with the top was lost completely for Stureson who finished 10:th.

As the race progressed a furious fight for seventh place started. Haglöf, Engström, Andersson, Dahlgren and Flash were all together fighting hard.

The bad luck continnued for Volvo´s Dahlgren. He managed to out brake him self coming in to the first corner going off in the gravel, rejoining far behind.

Honda´s Tomas Engström came out infront from the battle for seventh place. Despite the modest previous results from the first two qualifying race Ensgröm proved that his Honda is right on pace. His laptimes were equal to the two BMW´s in front.

The winner of the first qualifying race Edward Sandström took fourth place. He finished right ahead of the two Audi drivers of Fredrik Ekblom and Tommy Kristoffersson.

Tommy was ahead of Fredrik at the beginning of the race. But as Ekblom closed up on his team mate Kristoffersson let him past. The Audi team have openly stated that they will promote Ekblom mainly for the championship.