This time of year it is time for the annual "Lusse-race" in Boras. Since this more or less was Alexander's first big race indoors when he started competing it has always been a bit of a dream of his to win this race, and it has finally come true.
This year the organizing club had done some modifications to the race format. The qualifiers were run according to normal format, but the top five finishers were going to decide their starting order with a one lap shoot-out from a standing start, pass the lap counting loop and just one lap. Whoever was quickest in that from the top five would start on pole in the first final. The second final was run in reverse starting order, so the pole-sitter would start as number ten and the penultimate round of finals had the starting order decided based on the total result of the two first final runs. A completely new experience for us, so we didn't know exactly what to expect.
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In the first two practice runs it was evident that Alexander was very confident with the car and it was working to his liking and he seeded first. We made a small adjustment of the front droop to gain a little bit more on-power steering, and that was all that was needed as far as adjustments go. In the first qualifier Alexander took a commanding TQ spot, and was still very happy with the car. He also managed to TQ round 2 and 3, which meant that he had secured the provisional TQ spot by that. In the fourth qualifier he went out to scrub in a new set of tires for the coming one lap shoot-out to decide the top five starting positions.
Since Alexander was TQ, he went out last of the top five on the shoot-out. Everybody else had put in good laps, and nobody had really made a mistake on their one lap attempts. In this case Alexander pulled out the speed when it was needed the most, and put down a lap that was practically identical to his previous fastest lap in all of the qualifying about three tenths quicker than anybody else in the shoot-out, and by that secured the overall TQ spot followed by Wilhelm Skjöldebrand and Rasmus Thulin.
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On to finals. In the first final Alexander took it a bit too easy in the start and got a lot of pressure from behind and made a small mistake that dropped him down the order, but he managed to fight his way back to third in that round. The first round was won by Marcus Lind.
In the second round Alexander would start from tenth on the grid with the reverse starting order, which was of course very different. In this round he produced a balanced and smart drive and was able to come home second from tenth on the grid. This round was won by Jesper Uvehall.
Last round the starting order was decided by the overall result from the first two rounds, and that meant that Alexander was again back on pole with Marcus Lind and Wilhelm Skjöldebrand in place two and three. By that Alexander again had everything in his own hands, he just needed to go out and finish first on a quicker time than the previous winners to be able to take the overall victory. Alexander did just that and produced an almost perfect drive from tone to tone to take the overall win.
Car and electronics were working out great and we found a setup that felt really balanced for this type of track.
