Rickard Rydell: “It’s nice to have the luck on my side now”

Rickard Rydell claimed only his third pole of the season for Round 14 of the 2012 Scandinavian Touring Car Championship, and hopes for a strong race today at Knutstorp.

Rydell’s worst finish of the season has been fifth in a year of consistency for both the 44-year-old and his main rival, Volkwagen Team Biogas’s Johan Kristoffersson. Both drivers scored the same number of points last time out at Jyllandsringen, whilst Rydell closed by just one point at the previous round at Östersund.

In fact, since the last time the Championship visited Knutstorp in May, the biggest sway in points between Kristoffersson and Rydell has been just four from any individual race meeting, which has kept the drivers’ title staying intensely close. Rydell’s Chevrolet team-mate Michel Nykjaer remains a short way behind, the Dane’s worst score came at Knutstorp in May when he was black-flagged for a false start.

“I wasn’t really happy with Q1, as it’s quite cold I locked up the front tyres into Turn 1 as basically my front tyres weren’t hot enough,” said Rydell to TouringCarTimes. “So in Q2, we changed the procedures so I had more temperature in the tyres, so Q2 was much better.”

“First and third for me and first and third for Michel is great for the team – though we have Kristoffersson in second as well which will be very interesting.”

Rydell is in only his second full season in what was previously known as the Swedish Touring Car Championship, and after many years on the international racing scene in the World Touring Car Championship and FIA GT, and prior to that the UK’s circuits in the BTCC, Rydell finds his ‘home’ tracks take some getting used to.

“It’s very different to drive these types of tracks, like Knutstorp, Sturup, Jylland – there’s a lot of long corners and hairpins. Turn 1 here is more than 90 degrees, so it’s got characteristics like a hairpin…so you basically have five hairpins, one fast corner and one third-gear not-so-fast corner.”

“To be honest I’m more used to tyre warmers and faster tracks, where you have one or two slow corners and more medium speed and faster corners, and I think that’s also the reason why even Gabriele (Tarquini) struggled when he came here last year and qualified 12th and 13th…and I know it’s because of the characteristics of the circuit, it’s really difficult.”

Rydell initially scored pole last time out at Jyllandsringen, leading a Chevrolet 1-2, but both he and Nykjaer had their fastest lap times taken away as they were deemed to have been set whilst the yellow flags were out. The team also struggle in race trim against the Biogas-powered Volkswagen Sciroccos, whose 2.0 litre CNG engines provide more speed in a straight-line against the boost limited WTCC-specification 1.6 turbos of the Chevrolets.

“I’ve been a little bit unlucky in the last few races so it’s nice to have the luck on my side now,” said Rydell.

“We were focussing a lot on qualifying, as with these circuits it’s hard to pass and for us it’s hard to pass in the races, so we needed to be fast in qualifying.”