Robert Dahlgren takes crucial win as Fredrik Ekblom is taken out
Robert Dahlgren’s STCC title aspirations were given a huge boost as he took victory in a chaotic second race at Anderstorp, while chief rival Fredrik Ekblom failed to score after an incident with Dahlgren’s team-mate Daniel Haglöf.
Dahlgren benefited from a slow-start from PWR Racing team-mate Haglöf to take second on the run into the first corner, before swapping the lead three times with pole-sitter Fredrik Blomstedt throughout a stop-start race.
Haglöf, who finished third on the road was handed a 30-second penalty for robustly forcing Ekblom off the track and into the gravel on the approach into Turn Two.
Ekblom dropped down the order to finish 12th, now trailing Dahlgren by 62 points in the standings, with just four races remaining.
The resulting penalty gave Finnish driver Joonas Lappalainen his maiden podium.
A near farcical recovery effort to retrieve Tobias Brink’s stricken Brink Motorsport Audi RS 3 LMS from the gravel – which brought out the Safety Car – ate up much of the time allocated for the race and left just six and a half minutes on the clock by the time racing resumed.
Brink was hit by team-mate Micke Ohlsson, himself on the receiving end of contact from Lappalainen as the field funnelled clumsily into the first turn.
Upon the restart, Blomstedt made a superb lunge into Turn Two to re-take the lead from Dahlgren at the same time as Ekblom tried his own move on Haglöf.
With Ekblom out of contention, Lappalainen forced his way past the Honda Civic of Mattias Andersson to take fourth, which became third at the end.
Further back, Mikaela Åhlin-Kottulinsky secured an on-the-road finish of fifth – a personal best for 2017 – but also received a penalty for contact with Lestrup Racing’s Dennis Strandberg, dropping her to 15th overall.
Strandberg’s tumultuous return to action continued when he spun out of 11th place on the first racing lap after the Safety Car.
Micke Ohlsson took fifth after prevailing in an epic race-long battle with Andreas Ahlberg’s Micke Kågered Racing VW Golf GTI. The pair swapped places regularly and were separated by less than a tenth as the flag fell, Ahlberg taking to the grass to attempt – in vein – an overtake.
Rounding out the points finishers were Reuben Kressner, Marcus Annervi, Olli Kangas and newcomer Joakim Darbom.
The final race of the day begins at 15:55 CET.
