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Written by Xosé Estrada   
Monday, 30 November 2009 00:48

1st: Vincent Staal


A great race for me, I'm glad that I took the win for DHR Simcraft. Altough Anderstorp was the home track for DMSv, it is also one of my favorite tracks which made me want to race.

I started quite late with practising, but it didn't take me long to get up to speed and hit the 1.29's. I tweaked the setup a bit more and could even break into the 1.28's.

The qualifying went ok and could take the pole infront of Roland who was really close troughout practise as expected. Mikko took 3rd and we where of to a great start. The race featured a damp track which didn't suit my setup and Roland was on a real charge right away. I made a bad exit in T1 and Roland got my slipstream so I defended on the inside and saw that Roland braked too late and spun it. This gave me some space to get used to the damp track and I started to put in some decent laptimes.

After the pitstop the track was nearly dry and the setup gripped again and I pushed a few laps to set the fastest lap which I did by almost 0.5 a sec. After that I tried to maintain the gap to Roland who got back in 2nd and in the ending stage I slowed down a bit to bring the car home.

My compliments to Roland who made a nice comback and to Mikko who took 3rd while struggling with the tyres.

Ps. I have to disagree on the straight-line speed difference between the vette and bmw on this track. I watched the replay and saw that the topspeed from the bmw was the same or even a tad higher then the vette compared to me.

2nd: Roland Ehnström


I'm disappointed, to be perfectly honest. I really wanted to beat Vincent on our home track, and it was quite frustrating when I found out in practice that my BMW wasn't as fast as his Corvette. In qualifying, as expected, Vincent drove a lap faster than my personal best, so I had to be happy with P2 on the grid - especially since I made a stupid error and went off the track on the out-lap.

In the race, my initial plan was to try and stay as close to Vincent as possible and make an early pit-stop to perhaps get in front, and then fight to stay in the lead while saving tires in the second stint. But directly after the start it was obvious that Vincent was struggeling quite a lot with the damp track, and I saw my chance to get past. It's of course extremely difficult to pass a Corvette with a BMW considering the difference in straight-line speed, but I made a good exit out of turn one, got a good slipstream down the straight, got Vincent to defend the wet inside line and then went to the dry left-hand side of the track before the braking. But I got it a bit wrong, changed to the left side too late, missed my braking point, got sideways and half-spun into the gravel.

So then my chances of a win were definately gone, and I could only switch focus to try to get back to second place, which I did successfully - with a few near-misses along the way, and some sharing of paint with Mikko. I was back up to second place before the pit-stop, and after the stop I had a gap and was pulling away from the pack, except Vincent who was too far ahead for me to have any chance of catching him. So after the exciting first stint, the second half of the race was lonely and boring, and a bit sad.

In the championship, this result means our lead dropped from 25 to 16 points with two races to go. For me personally there is not much more I can do now, as I have already driven my five races this season. So the final two races will be very nervous to watch from the sidelines!