New weights and qualifying system for 2009

A number of changes have been made for the Swedish Touring Car Championship 2009. Two races will be held, a Formula One-style qualifying session will decide the first grid and the grid for the second race will be decided by reversing top eight. One million Swedish kronor (100.000 €) in prize money are available for the teams. The base weights for both front wheel-driven cars and rear wheel-driven cars have been changed.

The qualifying for the first race is started with a 20 minute session. When that session is over, the top eight drivers gets to run a final qualifying session for ten minutes.

The grid for the second race is decided by the usual reversed top eight and the other drivers starting in the position they finished race one in.

All sessions, except for a 15 minute roll out-session on friday, will be held on saturday during the 2009 season, including test, qualifying and the two races. Both of the races will have rolling starts.

The weights have been changed, making all cars heavier. FWD cars with sequential gearbox has got a new base weight of 1170 kilos (1140 last season) and the RWD cars has got the same base weight of 1170 kilos. The weight reduction for bio-ethanol cars have been changed from 12 kilos to 6 kilos for 2009.

Base weights for nationally homologated cars like the Volvo C30, the Volkswagen Scirocco and Peugeot 307 have not been set yet but will be set after the first official tests.

The exact rules for the new bio-gas (CNG) cars (Volkswagen) have not been revealed yet, but will be later in a bulletin.