The Nordic European Championships were held at the beautiful Väst-8 facility in Gothenburg, Sweden.
I arrived at the track on Wednesday before the race to run in new engines and fine tune my starting setup. The car felt good from the start and I went faster as traction gradually increased.
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In qualifying I could win all 4 rounds easily with an overall TQ time of 4 seconds in front of Mugen driver Mikael Fransson. My TQ run was the quickest ever on this track and I also set a new lap record of 14.95.
Norwegian XRAY driver Adrian Berntsen showed a good pace and was able to qualify 3rd overall.
For the final the weather was very unpredictable and the first 20 minutes was run on a wet track. However after consultation with my mechanic we decided in the last minutes before the start which wet tire to use, and the choice proved to be the right one since I had a lot more traction than the competition.
The difference was so big, that by the 10 minute mark I had built up a 5 lap lead. By the 4th pit stop the track had dried almost completely so we decided to switch to foam tires. Even though the tire change made me loose almost 3 laps I still had a comfortable lead to 2nd placed Magnus Vässmar. The positions stayed like this all the way to the finish line after a trouble free race also on the dry track.
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Final results
1 Alexander Hagberg XRAY NT1
2 Magnus Vässmar 3 Adrian Berntsen XRAY NT1
4 Bengt Andersson XRAY NT1
5 Tom Erik Haaversen 6 Frank Andersen XRAY NT1
7 Mikael Fransson 8 Mickael Brandt XRAY NT1
9 Per-Ola Hard
10 Martin Christensen
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All in all it was another great win for me with the NT1 and I am now looking forward to the EFRA GP which is held at this track in July. I want to thank my mechanic Niclas Nilsson, Edwin Suneson, Klas Runesson among others for all the help.
