SEAT Dealer Team disappointed with exclusion: “We didn’t cheat”

SEAT Dealer Team PWR Racing driver and team principal Daniel Haglöf has voiced his disappointment with the STCC organisers over the exclusion of Johan Kristoffersson’s car from the fifth round of the season in Karlskoga, after the Swede’s car was found to be missing the championship seals on its front dampers.

Kristofferson, who up until last weekend at Solvalla was in contention for this year’s title, has now dropped to fifth in the standings following the STCC’s decision to exclude him from both races from the preceding race in Karlskoga.

“(It’s a) bizarre situation,” said Haglöf to TouringCarTimes. “PWR have rented two cars from Greger Petersson for this season (Owner of the TCTA, supplier of the spare parts and cars for the STCC).

“One of the cars we rented had missing stickers, what they call a seal, on the front dampers.

“From what I understand, one of the cars we rented has not raced since 2012 and the stickers were introduced in 2013, so hence it was missing the sticker.”

“The dampers was sent to France for checks and they were correct according to build specs. (Their) report states: ‘FL13 and FR13 haven’t been modified internally and the oil hasn’t been changed,’ according to Eric Vuillemin of Solution-F.

“But since the SBF (had) already received a technical report and they can only make decisions on facts, and the rules state that you need to have seals, they have decided to disqualify (Johan) from Q2 in Karlskoga, so no results can be counted from Race 1 or 2 from that weekend.”

Kristoffersson was absent from Solvalla where he instead took part in his full-time scheduled meeting of the World Rallycross Championship in France, where he took his first win of the season. As a result, Solvalla counts as Kristoffersson’s worst result for the purposes of the dropped score system for this year, with the 27-year-old’s Karlskoga weekend costing him a further four points.

“For the team and for Johan this means we lose four points in the championship, but we have decided not to take further action,” added Haglöf.

“I am very disappointed in the way that situation appeared, since we practically rented the cars from the organiser and they’ve provided cars that do not meet the technical regulations, and then on top of that they disqualify us.

“I believe that the matter could have been handled in a much better way… I believe that the point of scrutineering should be that teams don’t cheat and we clearly haven’t done that.”

“If we would have had better results on the weekend we would have been forced to take the matter further and make it into something legal, but I am glad that we don’t have to do that, we are here to race, not to be in court.”