Robert Dahlgren: 100% sure we couldn’t win after Alastaro

PWR Racing’s Robert Dahlgren believes set-up changes made to his car after a troublesome Alastaro weekend were key to returning to the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship points lead at Solvalla.

The SEAT Dealer driver endured a difficult qualifying on Friday, trailing Kristoffersson Motorsport’s Johan Kristofferson in all three segments.

But two second places in the first two races, rounded off with victory in the final encounter enabled Dahlgren to usurp the other KMS Volkswagen driver Fredrik Ekblom at the top of the standings by 19 points.

Speaking to TouringCarTimes, Dahlgren said: “After the weekend we had in Finland, I was 100‰ sure we weren’t going to win here.

“But clearly the changes the team made to the car – and there were a lot – worked and we were able to get a good result this weekend.”

Dahlgren was invariably helped to second place in Race 1 due to his team-mate Daniel Haglöf’s jump-start. While disappointed for the team – who lost further ground in the championship to KMS after Haglöf received two successive stop-and-go penalties – Dahlgren was relieved to have found a way to second in the opening race.

“It was frustrating for Daniel for sure but in a way it helped because he dragged in Ekblom who also jumped the start,” Dahlgren said.

“It gave us enough points to lead the championship again but more importantly, we were a lot closer to the Volkswagens on pure pace which we can hopefully take to Falkenberg next month.

The next round at Falkenberg takes place on the weekend of 8-9 July.