Five penalties issued after Knutstorp
A number of penalties have been issued after the Swedish Touring Car Championship premiere at Knutstorp. The amount of time taken to issue the penalties has been criticized after the race.
“We wanted to be completely sure before we issued the penalties and as we had problems with the TV-feed it took a lot of time,” said assistant race director Johnny Haraldsson.
One of the incidents that got most attention was the one between Robin Rudholm and Thed Björk for third place. Rudholm dove on the inside of Björk which resulted in quite heavy contact and Björk had to pit to change a tyre. The judgers, how ever, did not penalize Rudholm who instead will be under supervision during the next race at Sturup.
“The race directors will keep an extra eye on Rudholm during the next race. This kind of penalty is common in WTCC but has not been used in STCC before. It is almost like a yellow card in football,” said Haraldsson.
“Of course the best thing would have been to issue the penalties during the race. But since we had problems with the TV-feed we had to wait until the race was over. To be sure we questioned all involved drivers after the race,” said Haraldsson.
The following penalties were issued after the race:
Robin Rudholm: Rudholm under observation on Sturup due to overtaking Björk in an unfair way.
Carl Rosenblad: Disqualified because he hit Tommy Kristoffersson which resulted in the Audi-drivers retirement. (see the video below)
Tomas Engström: Five places down in the following qualifying session after the incident where he according to the race directors hit Roger Eriksson.
Mattias Andersson: Five places down in the following qualifying session after hitting Thomas Schie.
Thomas Schie: Five places down in the following qualifying session after the incident with Andersson where the Chevrolet-driver also hit Andersson.
The incident between Rosenblad and Kristoffersson was catched by the on board camera of Janne “Flash” Nilsson’s car shown below (00:25 in to the movie):
