Friday 24 of April it was time to make the trip down to Gothenburg to the first race for the season, we had booked a small hotel in Surte where most of us drivers would stay.
We took the opportunity to inspect the car already on arrival, then we got extra time in the morning. After we had checked-in it was dinner time and lots of rally talk, all drivers was charged up to the teeth, and the weather would be great so everything looked very promising. The first start was at 11.00 and we had start number 9. I was a little extra nervous because I had not driven the car since the last race 2008, but when we come to the first special stage the most of the nerves disappeared SS1 was a short bit on a couple of km, we came away well and won the stage 1 tenths before Jonas Gustavsson SMK Gävle also in a Saab, SS2 even a short distance of 3 km, we got beaten by 3-tenths of a second by Jonas.
SS3 was the longest special stage near 17km this stage would be important, as always, it is the long stages that usually decide, that I was aware of and I charged maybe a little to much sometimes over blind crest but you should be lucky too, and quite rightly I won the stage with 11.5 sec over nearest competitors and the third driver was a further 10sek behind. SS4 was 11km and we won that to. On the two last special stage we took it a little bit easier and won the class by 22.6 seconds, something I am really happy with. Now we have some work to do on the car for the next rally in early June.
