Fredrik Ekblom doubles up in second race at Mantorp Park
Fredrik Ekblom continued his domination of the final round of the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship by taking a comfortable lights-to-flag victory in the second race at Mantorp Park.
The Kristoffersson Motorsport driver made a clean start from pole position to ease to victory over 2017 STCC champion Robert Dahlgren.
Mattias Andersson claimed the final step on the podium with third after falling to Dahlgren’s PWR SEAT late in the race.
After the first race carnage, only 14 cars took the start, with Albin Wänerlöv and John Bryant-Meisner not making it out for the second race.
Ekblom and Andersson fought tooth-and-nail on the run into the first corner, with Ekblom’s KMS Volkswagen Golf GTI edging its nose in front to consolidate the lead. From then on, Ekblom wasn’t seen until the flag fell but behind, the battle for best-of-the-rest raged on – and off – the track.
Ekblom’s KMS team-mate Fredrik Blomstedt briefly held third place but was handed a drive-through penalty for jumping the start. Blomstedt was later excluded after serving his penalty too late.
Dahlgren’s route to the podium was especially impressive, having started 11th. The new champion made swift work after a good start and made the most of contact between Micke Ohlsson’s Brink Motorsport Audi RS 3 LMS and the Lestrup Volkswagen of Andreas Wernersson at Turn Five.
Wernersson dug heavily into the gravel trap, eventually bouncing out the other side seemingly unscathed. He finished a credible seventh – of nine runners – at the end.
With Wernersson and Blomstedt out of the way – and now Ohlsson, who also received a drive through – Dahlgren’s fourth place became third when PWR team-mate Daniel Haglöf pulled up halfway down the back-straight with a mechanical gremlin from second place.
His perfectly-judged move on Andersson with four laps to go completed Dahlgren’s comeback. The SEAT driver left it impossibly late to dive up the inside of Andersson’s Honda Civic, but he made it stick. Andersson was well beaten by the leading duo out front and had to make do with the final podium position.
Tobias Brink made it another double points finish for Brink Motorsport with fourth, ahead of race-one podium finisher Andreas Ahlberg in the Micke Kågered Racing Volkswagen.
Marcus Annervi scored an unlikely sixth place in the Rent-a-Wreck Honda Civic, beating the recovering Wernersson and Ohlsson, while Reuben Kressner was the last of the classified runners in ninth – albeit a lap down.
The final race of the 2017 season takes place at 15:55 CET.
