Robert Dahlgren battles Brink’s Audi to take pole by 0.015 seconds

Robert Dahlgren has claimed his second pole position of the 2019 TCR Scandinavia Touring Car Championship season at Falkenberg, though it was nearly a miss, with Tobias Brink almost securing his first career pole position for Audi.

In the first part of qualifying, it was Dahlgren’s PWR Racing team-mate Mikaela Åhlin-Kottulinsky who led the way, setting a time of 45.368, just 0.028 seconds clear of Tobias Brink’s Audi, and 0.039 seconds ahead of the Micke Kågered Racing Volkswagen of Andreas Ahlberg.

Robert Dahlgren did his runs at the start of the session, with the PWR Racing team trusting his time would be good enough to get him through to Q2.

It was a gamble the top eight drivers took, all remaining in the pits in the final minutes, but Hannes Morin was able to make a late improvement in his Brink Motorsport Audi to go seventh, and eliminated the Kågered Volkswagen of Tomas Engström in the process.

In Q2, after one run, Tobias Brink put down the best time seen of the weekend so far of 45.235 in his Audi RS 3 LMS, while Andreas Ahlberg was close behind in second, with the two PWR Racing Cupras in fifth and sixth as the field came into the pits.

Heading out for a second stab, Dahlgren put his Cupra on top of the time sheets with a time of 45.220, just 0.015 seconds faster than Brink, while Åhlin-Kottulinsky fell in just behind, just three-hundredths of a second short of Brink’s time.

Mattias Andersson would qualify his Honda Civic TCR in fourth ahead of Ahlberg’s Volkswagen, while Andreas Wernersson qualified sixth in his Audi RS 3 LMS, with Wernersson crucially securing pole position for the reversed grid second race.

The first race is scheduled for 13:00 CEST tomorrow.