Chaos at the Knutstorp race!

The Swedish Touring Car Championship race at Knutstorp became one of the most confusing ones in history. Alexander Storckenfeldt took his first ever victory ahead of his team mate Robert Dahlgren and Alfa Romeo driver Mattias Andersson in third.
“This is wonderful! I have taken my first STCC win in my career and I am very pleased. We chose the right strategy and followed the rules,” said Storckenfeldt.

Though when the race was over Janne “Flash” Nilsson crossed the line first. But the BMW-man was only minutes after the race given a 30 second penalty after an incident with Mattias Andersson.
“He was driving so slow and his defensive manouvres were really ugly. I went for the inside and he turned in – we made contact. It was never my intention to hit Andersson, but I am really disapointed in my penalty since other much worse incidents have been much ligther penalised,” said Nilsson.

Andersson was disapointed over loosing the chance to take his first victory.
“Of course I am disapointed. We made a perfectly timed potstop, got out in the lead. My tyres got more and more worn. Nilsson made a couple of attempts, but with five laps left I decided to not let him past. He was not any closer in his last passing attempt than in the others. I just felt a bang in my rear end and he sent me off the track,” said Andersson.

More penalties were to come. A total of seven penalties were issued when this article was written. Title contender Richard Göransson lost his third place as he got penalised with 30 seconds as his team Flash Engineering had two cars in the pitlane during the pitstop, something that is not allowed. Frank Stippler and the Audi team were also penalised for the same thing.

The two WestCoast Racing drivers Robin Rudholm and Fredrik Ekblom initially were in the fight for the lead. But when the safety car was issued and almost the entire field dove in to the pits, they stayed out and lost all chances to win the race. Team boss Dick Jönsson Wigroth was very upset after the race.
– The lights for the pits were red when everyone dove in to the pits. So we decided to stay out since we natrually assumed that the pits were closed. But afterwards we found out that the lights were broken and should have been ignored. But that was far too late when we found that out. The STCC organisation made a mistake that costed us very dearly, said a fuming Wigroth.

A large number of protests have been filed and the results are far from final. Stay tuned for more news on the subject!