Photo: STCC

Johan Kristoffersson claims trio of Solvalla poles

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Johan Kristoffersson’s domination of the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship weekend at Solvalla continued by taking pole position for all three races.

Keeping up his test form, Kristoffersson set the fastest lap-time of the weekend with his Q3 effort in his Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR.

Daniel Haglöf and Robert Dahlgren gave PWR Racing some hope of a better weekend with second in races one and two respectively, but problems in Q2 means Haglöf will start tenth for the other races.

Audi’s struggles continued in qualifying as Joonas Lappalainen aside, none of the RS 3 LMS cars made it into the top ten, the best being Tobias Brink in 11th.

Fredrik Ekblom enjoyed a storng qualifying and will share the second-row with Kristoffersson Motorsport (KMS) team-mate Fredrik Blomstedt.

Q1

Kristoffersson quickly set the pace with 44.200 with around seven minutes remaining and was never headed for ultimate pace. Haglöf – a double winner in this event – managed to get in amongst the KMS cars by just two-hundredths of a second.

The lower echelons of the top ten became a full-on arm wrestle in the dying stages as positions swapped regularly. Annervi, who had dropped as low as 13th scraped into Q2 with a last-gasp effort, eliminating the Audis of Tobias Brink and Mikaela Åhlin-Kottulinsky.

There was trouble for Nicklas Oscarsson in the Kia Cee’d as he spun off deep into the gravel at the last corner; he will line up 17th. Mattias Andersson briefly joined Oscarsson in the same gravel trap seconds later as he spun his Honda Civic.

Q2

Kristoffersson remained on top in Q2 but was pushed much harder during the ten-minute session by Dahlgren. The SEAT got to within five-hundredths of a second and managed to split the KMS Volkswagens once more to secure a front row spot for race two.

PWR team-mate Haglöf was unable to repeat his Q1 feat after a suspected technical issue ruled him out of Q2.

Behind Ekblom and Blomstedt, Andersson took fifth ahead of Strandberg in the Lestrup Racing Volkswagen. Lappalainen took another impressive seventh in the Kart in Club Audi RS 3.

Mattias Andersson made the cut into Q3 but ended the session with his Honda smoking as he came into the pits.

Q3

The final five-minute session provided relatively few surprises other than Kristoffersson producing two stunning laps to dip into the 43s for the first time during the weekend. His second, a 43.8 was nearly two-tenths faster than Ekblom and a full four-tenths quicker than Dahlgren’s SEAT in third.

Blomstedt was fourth while Andersson failed to take part in the session owing to his mechanical woes from Q2.

The STCC field will take part in a 15-minute warm-up session from 09:20 CET, with the race race of the day starting at 11:10 CET.