Swedish nitro on-road championships – Report

The annual Swedish nitro on-road championships took place at the Staffanstorp Raceway close to Malmö in the South of Sweden. Drivers came from all over Sweden and also some guest drivers from Denmark and Norway made the trip to compete with the best Swedish drivers. Saturday morning started with a dry track despite some rain on Friday evening, but during practice and in the first round of qualifying the rain came back. At the end only the final round of qualifiers would count as a dry round for all drivers.

In the 1/8th class it was Serpent ace Mikael Fransson who secured the TQ  in the final round, followed by Markus Lindner (Shepherd), Christoffer Hedlund (BMT) and Mattias Ericsson (Mugen). In the 1/10th class Viktor Wilck (Serpent) took TQ, followed by Markus Hellquist (Xray) and Andreas Husman (Mugen) while Per-Ola Hard completed the top 4.

Sunday started with a lot of guesswork regarding the weather conditions as at first the track dried up but more rain came and so the rain cars were pulled out for the shortened finals. First up was the 1/8th class final that was shortened from 45 to 20 minutes due to the weather conditions. TQ Fransson took the lead and he kept it for 19 minutes until too much water in the engine stopped him, allowing Markus Lindner to take the lead and the race win ahead of Mattias Ericsson (Mugen) and Mikael Fransson (Serpent).

By the time of the 20 minute 200mm class final it was still raining and TQ driver Wilck and his mechanic decided to save the car and to sit out the race, allowing Markus Hellquist to take the early race lead until Per-Ola Hard (Serpent) took over the lead to keep it until the end. Mickael Brandt (Xray) finished the final a few laps down on Per-Ola, Thomas Gidlund (Serpent) completed the final in 3rd position.

Source: Serpent [serpent.com]