Richard Göransson takes a record fifth title in the STCC season finale
Richard Göransson has won his fifth STCC drivers’ title in the final race of the season, while it was Dacia’s Mattias Andersson who took his first win of the year at Knutstorp, fighting a late charge from title hopeful Robert Dahlgren who narrowly missed out on his first championship.
Andersson had started from the reversed grid on pole position and led the way ahead of the two Flash Engineering Saabs of Bjorn Wirdheim and Reuben Kressner at the start.
Behind them was the Nissan of Linus Ohlsson, followed closely by the fast-starting Volvos of Richard Göransson and Robert Dahlgren, which were now up to fifth and sixth.
With Dahlgren having to finish on the podium to even stand a chance of lifting the title, the 36-year-old Swede was pushing hard, making his move past Göransson for fifth on lap four as they were held up behind Ohlsson’s Nissan Nismo.
Johan Kristoffersson caught and joined the battle in his Race 1 winning SEAT, passing Göransson on lap five around the outside at Turn 1 and into sixth position, and then followed Dahlgren through as he and passed Ohlsson one lap later, with the Volvo driver now in fourth.
The top three had quietly managed to break away, but Dahlgren was hauling them in fast, passing Kressner’s car without difficulty on lap ten and then closed down Wirdheim.
Göransson was able to get back ahead of Kristoffersson’s SEAT for fifth on lap 14, and then overtook Kressner’s Saab two laps later, keeping enough points in the bank and forcing Dahlgren to push further up the order.
Dahlgren blasted pass Wirdheim’s Saab on the penultimate lap, with both sustaining light damage, but with Göransson running in fourth, Dahlgren needed to win to secure his first STCC title, which would have been on countback of victories as the two would be tied on points.
The Volvo driver was catching Andersson’s Dacia on the final lap, but wasn’t able to get close enough to make a move, crossing the line agonisingly just under a second behind the Dacia driver, who took his first win of the season as the Romanian manufacturer leaves the championship, with no TCR class car available for the marque to continue next year.
Wirdheim completed the podium, while fourth for Göransson was enough for the 38-year-old to win his fifth STCC title, one clear of Thed Björk’s tally of four. Göransson’s 2016 drivers’ title is his first for Volvo, and his fourth for WestCoast Racing, who have taken over behind the scenes of the Volvo STCC factory team this season while the Cyan Racing operation runs the WTCC programme.
Göransson and Volvo’s championship victory closes the book on the four-year Solution-F silhouette racing era of the STCC, which now adopts the TCR technical blueprint for 2017 as the championship rebrands to STCC TCR Scandinavia.
