The season started quite late for PWR Racing team. Cooperation with a new car manufacturer in STCC, SEAT, came public really late, so the team and it’s partners Combitech and Cliff model did a massive job to get three cars up and running to the first race weekend of the season.
It meant no testing with the car before the premier and two times 30 minutes test sessions before time qualifications were not enough to solve out some setup and technical issues. I must say that Skövde race weekend was absolutely the toughest in years… it really felt like everything was going wrong all the time. As I said, we had some technical issues, setup issues, and i must admit that my concentration wasn’t at the best either due to personal worries during the week.
In addition to all the tough occasions, our car crashed with a deer on the way to the hotel on Saturday night (time qualification day)… My engineer and I were fine but I couldn’t say the same about the deer nor the car. The time was about 1am when I was in bed and I had to wake up at 6:30am on a raceday. I don’t know if the short night sleep was the reason for my little mistake during race one when I turned the car into the first corner a bit too early trying to decrease understeering and hit just a bit the inner wall where the car just jumped to the outside wall which was really near.
I couldn’t continue the race and my mechanics did a massive job to get the car fixed to the next race. Unfortunately we were a bit too late on the grid so I had to start last (i should have started 4th). We didn’t have time to put the car on the scales before the race so when I was braking hard for the first time end of a long straight, my right front tyre locked up really badly because of the imbalance of the car and damaged the tyre heavily. I miscalculated the damage and thought I could continue with the tyre but when I was braking into the first corner, the wheels locked again and there was absolutely nothing I could do to save it because there was concrete walls all over. I crashed onto the wall very heavily.
What can I say… just absolutely unbelievably shit weekend. Something I definitely want to forget now that I’ve dealed with it in my head.
Luckily there are such great fans, supportive people and family all around me who are believing in me and supporting me. My racing family PWR Racing did a great job fixing the car but it just was a tough weekend for all of us. I’m just really proud of the team and its partners that we even had 3 cars at the first race weekend. The last car was ready on thursday morning at 5am… we will definitely be more prepared in Mantorp after 3 weeks and get on the highest step with good consistent job during the season.
