Marius Solberg Hansen endures promising but frustrating STCC debut

Marius Solberg Hansen made his STCC TCR Scandinavia debut at Ljungbyhed, a frustrating but promising race weekend for the Norwegian.

“We are happy with the weekend in general as we made strong progress, unfortunately it ended a bit too soon,” said Solberg Hansen to TouringCarTimes.

The MSH Motorsport driver was consistently fastest of the independent drivers during practice and started the one-lap qualifying session by setting the fifth fastest sector overall when disaster struck.

The Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR driver went off at Turn 6 in spectacular fashion and was forced to start at the back of the grid.

“We felt that we had a good setup before qualifying and I had strong confidence in the car,” said Solberg Hansen.

“But it was a completely new experience for me with the one-lap shoot out. The rear let go in one of the fastest corners unfortunately as it was difficult to get the right temperature in the tyres.

“I pushed a bit too hard, but we will bring that with us as a new experience.”

Things turned for the worse at the start of the race when he was hit from behind by Rasmus Hedberg at Turn 1 and was then struck by Christian Skaar, ending the race with a broken front suspension.

“I got a good start, but in the middle of the first turn I was hit by another car and it caused so much damage that we had to retire,” said Solberg Hansen.

“But all in all, we are happy with the potential that we have shown this race weekend and we look forward to the next.”