2010 Nordics
 
I was looking forward to this race. It was on my home track, and I was sure to do well I thought. All the fastest Scandinavians except Christoffer Svensson and Teemu Leino showed up, so it was shaping up to be a good race. It rained on Friday, so there was no practice, so the schedule was changed a bit, to get some practice on Saturday before the 3 qualifying rounds. Ari Heinonen TQ:ed the 1st round, and as he has TQ:ed way too many races already I really had to step it up to beat him. Somehow I pulled it off and TQ:ed the last 2 rounds with actual track records of 9 laps. No one has ever gone 9 laps on that track in race conditions, and now I did it twice, so that was cool!
 Track was covered in an effort to keep it driveable for the race. It worked.
For the mains I was quite confident, as I saw the Swedish drivers were still making many mistakes on the difficult track. In the semi Ari and I cruised winning both our semis, and then on to the main. All the main players made it as far as I can remember. Ari 1st, and me 2nd. The main started with disaster. I crashed on the first lap, for no apparent reason, I don’t know what I did, or what I hit, but my car just flipped over in an easy corner. And I went from 2nd to 8th or something. Then Ari crashed so worst case scenario, Ari and me at the back, and Thern and Ronnefak up front. I managed to make some quick passes and was soon up to 3rd. Then at 7:30 I was right behind Thern and Ronnefalk, as Thern came in for fuel, and Ronnefalk and me continued. We battled a bit, and I got by. Then Ronnefalk passed me back during the fuelstop, and so did Thern.
The next 5min was fun as the three of us battled, but some mistakes from the Swedes meant that I got the lead, and started extending it. Then at 18min I ran out of fuel, with a comfortable lead, and that was it. Ronnefalk blasted by and never looked back. I tried catching up for about 20min but I was only up to 5th so I reverted to stunt driving and having some fun instead. Recently I have had no luck at all at the Nordics, now with 3 years in a row of “ I’m going to win this -> Disaster! I used to love this race but now it’s a nightmare. Next Year I might just stay home and punch myself in the face a few times and watch some reality TV as that would be just as much fun. I have had a servo arm come off, servo saver work loose, run out of fuel, a bearing break in my engine and frankly don’t even want to know what happens next year.
 Ronnefalk chasing me before I ran out of fuel.  The Finnish Team won the Nations Cup, probably for the first time.  Top 3, David Ronnefalk, Linus Thern, Ari Heinonen.
Pictures by Carl Magnus Fager. Here are more.
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