Fiery and victorious STCC debut for Kia
The first ever Scandinavian Touring Car Championship race weekend for Kia became fiery as well as victorious. While Andreas Wernersson’s car caught fire and Linus Ohlsson was pushed off track, Mattias Lindberg won the first race.
”It was amazing to score a win in Team Kia’s first ever race. It was unfortunate with Linus and Andreas, but Mattias made an amazing first race,” said Team Manager Tobias Johansson.
Lindberg started second for the first race thanks to the reversed grid and made his way past pole man Erik Jonsson early in the race. The Kia driver pulled up a comfortable lead and crossed the line 1.2 seconds ahead of BMW driver Philip Forsman.
”The victory was perfect, I got a good start and I made a really good pass on Erik (Jonsson). I was able to pull away after that and I never felt threatened,” said Lindberg.
Team mate Wernersson had a tough weekend with a broken gearbox in qualifying, fought his way up to sixth position in the first race only to be forced to retire after the rear bumper caught fire due to an earlier clash.
”The gearbox failure on Friday laid the foundation for the weekend. It was a crap weekend that we have to get revenge for in the next race. But I had good speed, I was able to pass Fredrik Ekblom who won the second race for example,” said Wernersson.
Former Volvo driver Ohlsson had to retire from the first race after being hit from behind by Richard Göransson, an incident which the Saab driver was penalized for.
”Not the best weekend of my career. We made slow but good progress with the car. I am disappointed with the weekend overall, but if I hadn’t been hit in the first race I think I would have had a shot for a podium finish,” said Ohlsson.
Race one winner Lindberg is the best placed driver in the championship with fourth position on 31 points and Team Kia are fourth in the teams’ championship 37 points.
”We are really pleased with our first race weekend and hope to remain in the top for the coming race in Gothenburg in four weeks,” said Johansson.
