Photo: STCC Media

Robert Dahlgren claims his first pole of the year in rain-hit qualifying

Championship leader Robert Dahlgren made the most of tricky conditions at Falkenberg to claim his first pole position of the 2018 STCC season, setting pole in his PWR Racing Cupra TCR ahead of the two Volkswagens of Andreas Wernersson and Johan Kristoffersson.

The qualifying session started in light rain conditions, with Dahlgren setting the early pace, albeit six seconds away from the dry pace seen earlier in the day, before Johan Kristoffersson jumped to the top of the time sheets in his KMS Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR.

The rain then intensified, ruling out any further improvements, which proved critical with early championship leader Daniel Haglöf just outside of the top 12 and therefore missing the cut to make Q2.

At the end of the session, Jessica Bäckman had two excursions at Turn 1 as the rain increased, one of which saw the safety car deployed.

The track was very wet when Q2 began, but was now beginning to dry out, with Johan Kristoffersson and Fredrik Ekblom setting down early markers, before Kristoffersson’s best time of 52.931 was set.

Robert Dahlgren ran into drama as his Cupra TCR returned to the pits with rear-end damage after he was hit by Hugo Nerman’s KMS Volkswagen. The team quickly repaired the car and he went back out and quickly set pole position with a time of 52.211.

Andreas Wernersson was able to break in between them, going second fastest in his Lestrup Volkswagen, just 0.018 seconds behind.

Fredrik Ekblom qualified fourth in the WestCoast Racing Volkswagen, with Andreas Ahlberg fifth in the Micke Kagered Racing Volkswagen.

Philip Morin was the best-placed JTCC driver in sixth in his PWR Cupra, ahead of Hugo Nerman’s Volkswagen and the MA:GP Honda of Mattias Andersson, followed by the Brink Motorsport Audis of Micke Ohlsson and Tobias Brink, who secure the front row for the reversed grid second race.

Race 1 is scheduled for 13:00 CEST tomorrow.