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Anderstorp Official Test

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The STCC teams finally made their first official test of the season. The location was Anderstorp and present were around 14 cars. The track was a bit wet from some rain during the night, but dried up quickly during the day.

Tomas Engström managed to set the quickest lap of all drivers. And the Honda-man was very pleased despite that the car still had some damage from a big crash last season.

– It felt perfect as soon as I got in the car. I haven’t used any new tyres yet, so the times are good, Engström said.

Second fastest was touring car ace Duncan Huisman, proving that WestCoastRacing will be title contenders despite sticking with the older BMW E46 model. Team mate Rudholm was third.

An interestning car on the track is the new Opel Astra OPC, driven by Nicklas Karlsson. The Astra is the only of its kind in Super 2000 spec’, and the new car showed promising performance despite doing its first laps on track.

The team made a short shake-down before just before Anderstorp. Today Karlsson managed to do over 80 laps, setting times close to the old Astra from last year. Karlsson briefly went in to the gravel trap, but could continue after behing towed in to the pits, as seen in the pictures article.

Calle Rosenblad also made his debut in a brand new car – the BMW 320si E90. The engine arrived only yesterday so the team considered this test as a shake down. His best time was 1:42.477 which was 12:th fastest. Rosenblad reported that he only had time to do three real laps and promised that they will be in the top in the following tests.

Johan Stureson in the Peugeot 407 only managed to do around 15 laps before he was forced in to the pits. Problems with the engine stopped him from doing further times, but Stureson was pleased still.

– I’ve been looking forward to get back out on the track. We have many new improvments on the car for this season, new aerodynamics, a new rear suspension and a stronger engine, Stureson said.

Fredrik Ekblom was sixth in his upgraded Audi A4. The team recently got back from testing in Spain. A new engine and aerodynamic changes is said to be the formula for Audi success this year. His team mate Thed Björk out paced his team mate in the last minutes of testing and took fifth.

The Volvo team was pleased with the pace from both drivers. Dahlgren topped the first session of the day and was fourth in the second session. Dahlgren was really pushing it which resulted in a spin in the last corner of the lap, fortiunately without any damage on the car.

His new team mate Alexander Storckenfeldt took over the car in the second session. Unfortiunately after only a few laps he had to pit with gearbox problems.

Flash Engineering were not present at this test as we reported earlier. The engines have not arrived yet for their new BMW E90. The Mercedes-team were not there either, but are expected to show up later this week.

Next official test will take place at Gelleråsen this Sunday. Don’t miss the pictures from the test!