TCR World and life

You took a second TCR Scandinavia title in three years at the end of a hard-fought season. Who were your toughest competitors and how did you manage to beat them? “It has been a tough season, indeed. The performance of all the title contenders changed from track to track and it was never easy. We had changeable weather conditions in many events and this made things even more difficult. The Audi cars of Brink Motorsport were the toughest opposition, Mattias Andersson and his Honda were mega- quick on some circuits and really slow on some others. The top five cars – mine, Tobias Brink’s and Andreas Wernesson’s Audi cars, Andersson’s Honda and Andreas Ahlberg’s Volkswagen Golf – were on a very good level and this ensured close competition. And so sometimes I had to focus on scoring points rather than trying to go for victory. My teammate Mikaela Åhlin-Kottulinsky had a very good season too, though with a few ups and downs. She can be very quick on her day, but she lacked some experience in adapting the car to the changeable weather conditions.” TCR is becoming more and more popular in Sweden and the whole Nordic region. How do you explain this? “Absolutely! The popularity of TCR is growing very well in the region with teams, drivers and fans. This is especially true for Sweden, but the interest is growing in Denmark and Norway too. I haven’t seen this happening in a long time. There have been many different categories in recent years, but TCR is really catching on and with merit. I can see a brilliant future for the category in the whole region and I think TCR Scandinavia will be even stronger next year.” One of the assets of TCR is that you can race the same car in different series and PWR Racing is proving it with parallel programmes in TCR Scandinavia and WTCR. This offered you the opportunity to make a guest appearance in Macau. It has been announced that you’ll stay with the team in 2020, but do you already know in which championship? “I’m definitely staying with PWR. The plan is to focus on defending the TCR Scandinavia title, but I would also like to do some races abroad. This year we raced in Denmark and I really enjoyed going back to Jyllandsringen. I have always liked the track and our CUPRA suited it brilliantly, so we had our best weekend there. It was also good to fight again with the local hero Casper Elgaard who was bloody quick. For the time being I don’t know what the team’s plans will be outside Scandinavia, but I really would like to compete in some races in TCR Denmark and TCR Europe, or even enjoying another guest participation in WTCR.” Three questions to… Robert Dahlgren