First victory of the season for Robert Dahlgren

Robert Dahlgren, driving a PWR Racing Cupra, took victory in the first of this weekend’s TCR Scandinavia races at Falkenberg, holding off a determined late charge from the Volkswagen Golf GTI of Johan Kristoffersson to win by 0.371 second. Dahlgren’s teammate Daniel Haglöf finished third after Andreas Wernersson was given a one-second penalty after the race.
Pole-sitter Dahlgren made a good start and led into Turn 1, with Mattias Andersson making the best start of all and leaping from eighth on the grid to fifth. After starting from thirteenth place, Haglöf had already made up seven places by the end of lap 2.
The safety car was deployed twice; once on lap 5 after a collision between Olli Kangas and Jessica Bäckman left the WestCoast Racing Volkswagen in need of recovery and again almost immediately after the restart on lap 7 when the VW cars of Hugo Nerman and Oliver Söderström collided while fighting for tenth place. After several laps behind the safety car, Kristoffersson passed Wernersson for second place on lap 16 and Andreas Bäckman snatched tenth place from Andreas Ahlberg two laps later.
Despite the close attentions of Kristofferson, Dahlgren was able to hold on to take the victory, with Wernersson’s penalty for unfair driving elevating Haglöf to third after the chequered flag.
This was the first victory of the season for the reigning champion Dahlgren who stretched his lead in the standings to 25 and 27 points clear of Kristoffersson and Haglöf.
Race 2 begins at 15:20 local time with Tobias Brink’s Audi RS3 LMS on pole.