The 2nd round of the Swedish Cup was held on June 2/3 in Bor?s in the west side of Sweden close to Gothenburg. The weather was very good with a temperature around 25°C. Finally summer has arrived here and everyone was happy.
The track was changed a bit since past year, with some new jumps and some corner sections changed. These improvements made everyone happy since the old layout had a few years on its neck.
Qualifiers went smoothly for me and my fellow XRAY teammate Joakim Hansson. We were both up for the TQ spot until last round but Linus Thern got away with it in the end. I was in 2nd place after qualifiers.
Joakim Hansson was really fast during the weekend but had some issues during semi-A and did not make the main unfortunately. Linus Thern won the semi.
In semi-B Cristoffer Svensson flew away at the start and I followed but I wasn't able to catch him, but I secured 3rd place and got my spot for the main.
Christoffer Svensson was on pole in the main, and most expected drivers were there: Linus, Pallson, myself and also some new drivers able to steal some spots from the more experienced drivers, such as Jesper Hagstrom (XRAY) and Henrik Nilsson.
(click to enlarge)
From the beginning of the main, Linus and Christoffer got away with a small lead, I was a bit far back and tried to move up faster to get closer to both of them, but struggling from the back can sometimes be hard when the track wasn't that hard and not so technical which made my main very difficult for me. But after half the race both Christoffer and Linus had some technical issues, and I was suddenly in 2nd place hunting Henrik Nilsson. With around 10min to go I had to push a bit harder to catch Henrik, which I did, but of course by pushing hard mistakes also come. So that was what happened during the end… I closed fast and made mistakes several times and wasn't able to get away with the win. Henrik was more consistent during the main and took the win.
By getting 2nd place in this second round I was able to take the overall lead in the Cup.
Next round is in the end of the summer in Mjölby.
1 Henrik Nilsson 2 Robert Gustafsson XRAY XB8EC
3 Mikael Pallson
4 Robert Haggren
5 Per Carlsson
6 Niklas Brunsberg 7 Jesper Hagstrom XRAY XB8EC
8 Rickard Hellsten
9 Christoffer Svensson
10 Linus Thern