Richard Göransson: “Thed Björk should remember 2009”

With only three race weekends left of the 2013 STCC season, the mind games have begun between title rivals Thed Björk and Richard Göransson.
“Thed Björk should remember 2009 when he lost the title in the final race to Rustad, or 2005 when we were team mates and he headed the championship with four races left. I won then and I have raced for so many years that I know that it isn’t over until it’s over,” said Göransson.

While Björk lost the STCC title in 2009 to Volvo’s Tommy Rustad after a controversial crash between Björk and Rustad’s team mate Robert Dahlgren (current manufacturer colleague to Björk), this season is different as Björk has got a 38 point lead over Göransson.
“We have a tough situation, we are aware of that. But there are many points left to drive for and it can go both ways this weekend, from that Thed almost secures the title to that we take over the lead,” said Göransson.

Voices in the STCC pits have been raised recently that Volvo has got an unfair advantage over BMW this season as they are fielding five cars compared to BMW’s three, which were decimated to two in the last race, and that it gives the team a big advantage in the setup work. But Göransson thinks otherwise.
“We are the team with the best qualifying score this year. If you look at the qualifying points, you have got my team mate Fredrik Larsson in the lead with 11 points and Björk and me in second place on 9 points each,” said Göransson.

The Volvo team was also criticized after the race in Falkenberg when Fredrik Ekblom made it easy for team mate Björk to take the lead.
“That is the way the championship is this year. We’ll have to hope that Haglöf, Mangs or Graff can continue the trend to be fast and steal points from Björk. It is so close in this championship that small things can have a big impact,” said Göransson.

STCC continues this weekend at Karlskoga with two of the five remaining race heats of the season.