Fredrik Ekblom rues Volkswagen complexities for botched start

Fredrik Ekblom has admitted his poor getaway from pole position ‘probably decided’ the opening race of the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship at Ring Knutstorp.

The Kristoffersson Motorsport driver had dominated practice and took pole for two of the three races. However a slow start in race one, put down to both a complicated starting procedure specific to TCR specification Volkswagens, and a lack of practice.

Lestrup Racing’s Dennis Strandberg, also in a VW Golf GTI equally blamed the complexity of the car for his jump-start which gave the ex-British GT driver a drive-through penalty and cost him a possible fifth place.

Ekblom said: “we don’t have a handle on the starts because Volkswagen haven’t sorted it out perfectly either yet.

“What I hear is that it’s also a weak point in the TCR International Series as well. So it’s something I need to learn and do a better job with but we were limited to only one practice start per session on Friday,” Ekblom continued.

“We missed one because I had a problem with the car so I really only had one practice and then one again in the warm-up. For the start, I was able to find the bite-point, but the system isn’t really driver-friendly for me!”

Nevertheless, Ekblom praised the electric start from eventual race-winner Robert Dahlgren, who leaped from third to first before the first corner. It was a start according to Ekblom that ‘won him the race.’

“[Dahlgren] did a very good job, from P3. You know, that won the race for him.”