Photo: Mediaempire.se

Rydell just beats Thompson to Gothenburg pole

Rickard Rydell just beat James Thompson to claim pole position for the STCC race at Gothenburg City Race Arena. The Chevrolet driver was just 0.014 seconds ahead of the Volvo driver.

Fredrik Ekblom, pole man of the previous race at Mantorp Park, was third fastest, 0.176 seconds from pole.

Tomas Engström continues to show strong form with fourth on the grid ahead of top BMW man Johan Stureson. The IPS Motorsport driver was 0.312 seconds from the top while his fellow BMW drivers were far behind in the session.

Viktor Hallrup claimed his best qualifying session of the year in sixth ahead of Tommy Rustad who failed to set a complete lap time. Rustad lost control and hit the barriers, although only light and will be available to start the race.

Mattias Andersson was a DNS for the second qualifying session as he stopped on track due to technical problems in the first qualifying session.

Roger Eriksson was the first man outside top nine ahead of returning champion Richard Göransson in tenth. Colin Turkington missed top ten and is going to start eleventh, with a lap time in Q1 that was 0.3 seconds from the fastest time.