Mattias Andersson focussing on lightning Honda starts after strong qualifying at Falkenberg

MA:GP driver Mattias Andersson starts from the front end of the grid for both of today’s races at Falkenberg, with the team having found more performance in each session throughout Saturday.

Andersson qualified fourth in a close session, missing pole by just 0.073 seconds and will start behind pole-sitter Robert Dahlgren, the Audi of Tobias Brink and the Cupra of Mikaela Åhlin-Kottulinsky for Race 1 this afternoon.

The team had changed the engine for the second race meeting in a row on his Civic Type R FK2 TCR in the morning ahead of the second practice session, with Andersson finishing ninth in both of the practice sessions, between eight-tenths to a second off the pace, but was right up with the Cupras and Audis come qualifying.

“We found something, I think it was a combination of engine and set up,” said Andersson to TouringCarTimes.

“We didn’t feel like we had the right power when compared to last year, so we changed the engine, and we changed a lot of the set up before Practice 2 and more before qualifying.

“My goal before the weekend was to be in the top six, while after this morning I felt just making it into Q2, but we ended up P4. I also had a last try in qualifying but I had some traffic with an Audi.”

With the Civic FK2 known for being the fastest starting of all the TCR cars, Andersson knows this will be key to both races this afternoon.

“We start third and fourth; sixth and first would be better, but we’ll just see if we can do a good start, we’ve done it in the past here.”