| Race report by Robert Gustafsson |
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Furulunds RCK hosted this yearâ™s Swedish Nationals, and also the the 2004 World championship. The weather was great, with some clouds but mostly clear blue sky and just below 30°F.
Last time I was in Furulund was 2 years ago at the Worlds. When arriving at the track on Friday for two practice rounds, I was a bit amazed to see that no changes had been made since the World Championship. And by that I knew the home drivers were going to be very fast and consistent with many laps under the belt.
On Saturday morning, two practice/reseeding rounds were run, and straight away Mikael Palsson set the pace with putting down the fastest times in practice.
Qualification
As expected, the home drivers had a very fast and consistent pace, Mikael Palsson claimed the TQ position closely followed by Christoffer Svensson, Linus
Thern, and then myself in the 4th spot.
Mains
The Mains were going to turn out to be very interesting with the results from
qualification in mind. In semi-A we had Mikael Palsson, Linus Thern, Jonas
Eriksson, Magnus Amilon, Micky Jönsson and also XRAY driver Niklas
Hakansson. Mikael Palsson and Linus straight away put a gap between them and the rest of the field and were battling for the first few laps; by the 5min mark Palsson had pulled ahead of Linus and it looked like he was going to cruise to the win. But then Palsson had bad luck and caught a rock in the rear wheel and was suddenly standing still on the track and missed 3 laps because of it. Linus now got the lead and took the win, followed by Magnus Amilon, Jonas Eriksson, Jonas Larsson and young Furulund driver Marcus Sandberg.
Semi-B was also going to be a very close race. Christoffer Svensson and I got away from the rest of the field and were battling for the lead through the majority of the semi, with me making small mistakes and in the end giving Christoffer the win by only a few seconds. Also bumping up to the main were Andreas Edvinsson, Fredrik Mathiesen and Mikael Svensson. |
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When the main started, Linus kept his pole position for a few laps followed by me, Magnus Amilon, and Fredrik Mathiesen. It was really tight in the beginning of
the main, then at around the 5min mark Linus Thern flamed out by a rock in the
flywheel and I took the lead, Myself, Magnus Amilon, Fredrik Mathiesen were battling for first 25min changing leaders several times. At the 30min mark, Amilon got a small gap on me and Fredrik, but a mistake from him and we would have been up there again. Suddenly my car started to handle very strangely and I knew something was wrong. Passing the straight I could see what it was: my left rear tire was crazy unbalanced, the foam had blew up, and I knew I was out contention for the win. Fredrik had bad luck at the same time, as one cell on his receiver pack broke and he was also out of contention. So in the end, after the 30min mark Magnus Amilon cruised to his 7th Swedish Championship title.
Final Results
1. Magnus Amilon
2. Jonas Eriksson
3. Andreas Edvinsson
4. Robert Gustafsson XRAY XB8TQ
5. Linus Thern
6. Christoffer Svensson
7. Mikael Svensson XRAY XB8TQ
8. Jonas Larsson XRAY XB8TQ
9. Fredrik Mathiesen
10. Marcus Sandberg
Robert Gustafsson
Team XRAY |
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