Robert Dahlgren - Sweden’s top racer?

Robert Dahlgren. 2021 STCC TCR Scandinavia champion. Photo: Joakim Åström

Just five years ago, it could have been argued that Robert Dahlgren was an unsuccessful footnote in Swedish touring car racing history. The quiet Skellefteån had not won a single championship title, and had just been dropped from the Volvo motorsport programme.

Now, the 41-year-old has claimed the most victories in Swedish touring car history after racking up his 45th career win at Mantorp Park, while simultaneously securing his third drivers’ title in five years.

And it’s perfectly possible that he could match the achievement of former team-mate and arch rival Richard Göransson and claim five titles, unless another driver or team can step up to the plate.

It actually took Dahlgren 13 years after his first touring car race to win his first title.

With eleven campaigns in Sweden, as well as spells in perhaps the two toughest touring car series in the world, the Australian and World championships, Dahlgren won his first title in 2017 at the age of 36, and since then he’s been on the rise.

The early racing years

A graduate of single-seaters, racing for two years in the British Formula 3 championship in 2002-2003, he settled back home in touring car racing during the period where the STCC was the biggest national motorsport in the early 2000s.

He joined Jan ‘Flash’ Nilsson’s Volvo team and won the opening race of the season at Knutstorp, and went on to win two more races to secure second in the drivers’ standings in his debut season, while Göransson won his first title with WestCoast Racing.

Nilsson sold his team to Christian Dahl’s Polestar Racing operation the next year, and Dahlgren stayed with the team. After a few more seasons of consistent scoring, and another runner-up year in 2007, Dahlgren came closest to winning his first title in 2010, but was pipped to the post in a thrilling season finale at Mantorp Park, again to Göransson.

An experimental season on the world stage

Robert Dahlgren’s Volvo Polestar Racing C30 DRIVe at Macau. Photo: Volvo Cars Media

In 2011, Polestar Racing started what would be the first step in was certainly a very long game to get to the world stage, running a single car in the FIA World Touring Car Championship (WTCC), while running two cars in the STCC to keep winning at Volvo’s home base.

Oddly, Dahlgren was chosen for the world programme - and I say oddly, as it was James Thompson, who was a five-year veteran in the world championship, who joined Volvo’s Scandinavian programme.

In the WTCC, in a year of changing technical regulations and Chevrolet dominance, little was expected of the single-car Volvo entry. The team very much signposted this as its expectation as well, with “Evaluation Season” written all over the car.

Starting with the five-cylinder, two-litre naturally aspirated engine in its C30, before upgrading to a current-specification 1.6 litre flat-four turbocharged engine from the Brno round, Dahlgren’s best result was fourth place in a season where he was having to learn nearly every circuit.

The Super 2000-specification C30 was also well behind the Chevrolet Cruzes from RML, and the already well run-in BMW 320 TCs and SEAT Leons in terms of development.

The only circuit Dahlgren did know was Donington Park, which he knew from his British F3 days. In wet conditions (of course) it looked like he had a chance of qualifying up front, until he ran off circuit on his flying run and left himself with the challenge of fighting his back up the order in both races in what was his best chance of scoring a podium.

At the season finale at Macau, Dahlgren broke his thumb in a crash in qualifying, and the team packed up its WTCC programme and headed back to war-torn Sweden, where Polestar Racing was instrumental in breaking away from the STCC in an argument over the future technical direction of the championship.

Robert Dahlgren in the 2013 STCC in the Volvo Polestar Racing S60. Photo: Volvo Cars Media

Dahlgren, along with a stellar line-up of Thed Björk, Fredrik Ekblom, and Tommy Rustad, contested the new Racing Elite Series season in 2021 in all-new Solution-F Volvo S60s, with Dahlgren’s team-mate Ekblom taking the title with two victories, while Dahlgren was winless in the eight-round season.

In 2013, the STCC and the Racing Elite Series reunited after the unfortunate one-year divorce, and Dahlgren again was again winless in a year which team-mate and future world champion Thed Björk took the title.

To Australia and back

Robert Dahlgren and Scott McLaughlin at the launch of the Volvo Polestar Racing S60 in Australia. Photo: Volvo Cars Media

In 2014, Volvo embarked on a brand-new project, and Dahlgren was chosen to join the manufacturer’s entry into the V8 Supercars Championship.

Volvo Polestar Racing teamed up with the eccentric Garry Rogers Motorsport team to develop and race an S60 ‘down under’, running against the established Ford and Holdens, in what was certainly a marketing success.

Dahlgren and his family relocated to Melbourne, where the average temperature was around 20 degrees hotter than his native Skellefteå - and he was paired up with relative newcomer Scott McLaughlin. A tough benchmark, and I think we all realise that even more now.

It was a bruising year for Dahlgren. Of course he had no experience of any of the Australian circuits, which are worlds apart compared to the short and ‘squirty’ Swedish tracks.

Nor really did the technical front-wheel drive cars he’d driven previously compare to the muscly 5.0-litre rear-wheel drive Aussie tourers, and he was racing in a series where some drivers spend years working their way up to the top league on the development ladders.

Dahlgren would finish 25th in the standings with a best result of 12th at Surfers Paradise.

The next year, Dahlgren wouldn’t race, but would be a part of the R&D programme of Polestar Racing’s next venture, as it prepared to rejoin the WTCC with a TC1 specification version of the Volvo S60.

In 2016 however, Polestar (now Cyan Racing) chose Ekblom and Björk to race in the WTCC, and Dahlgren stayed at home to compete in what would be the last year of the Solution-F era STCC, paired with his former title rival Richard Göransson in a team which carried the Polestar name, but was actually run by Göransson’s long-term partners WestCoast Racing.

2016 would be Dahlgren’s last year as part of Volvo’s touring car programme, a team which had been his home now for 13 years.

Dahlgren lost out in the STCC title fight to team-mate Richard Göransson in a close finish at Ring Knutstorp, with Göransson winning his fifth title, while Dahlgren again had failed to capitalise on what had been another strong season.

A guest run in three rounds of the 2016 WTCC replacing Ekblom seemed to indicate the team could be evaluating him to join their WTCC programme for 2017, but alas both Ekblom and Dahlgren were dropped, with the team instead opting for international talent in Néstor Girolami and Nicky Catsburg alongside eventual champion Thed Björk.

After this, Dahlgren announced his retirement from motorsport, without a championship title to his name, and returned home to Skellefteå.

This ending certainly became a very important new beginning.

The PWR Racing years - and championship success

Robert Dahlgren’s PWR Racing SEAT Leon TCR in 2017. Photo: Joakim Åström

Dahlgren was very quickly persuaded out of retirement by Daniel Haglöf, the team owner and driver of PWR Racing. The team was eyeing up a move to the big league in the 2017 STCC, which was now known as the STCC TCR Scandinavia championship as it signed up for the new global TCR technical regulations.

The SEAT-supported squad were taking on Swedish motorsport powerhouse Kristoffersson Motorsport (KMS), and were also aiming to make the most of the absence of Cyan Racing and WestCoast Racing, which were now focussed on their WTCC and TCR International Series programmes respectively.

Dahlgren, along with team owners Haglöf and Poker Wallenberg, and along with Mikaela Åhlin-Kottulinsky, made up the four-strong effort in 2017, and with Ekblom and KMS faltering, Dahlgren took his first championship title comfortably, despite a valiant late charge from his former team-mate and three-time champion Ekblom.

Heading into 2018, PWR Racing now had to battle against the return of Johan Kristoffersson at KMS, as well as WestCoast Racing, which had signed Ekblom.

It was a tumultuous season, full of arguments and protests. PWR Racing won the teams’ title, which was a key aim, but Dahlgren wasn’t able to defend his title against three-time World Rallycross champion and 2012 Scandinavian touring car champion Kristoffersson.

Arguably Dahlgren would have won the 2018 title if it hadn’t been for the rain-affected Rudskogen round in Norway, which allowed Kristoffersson to make the most of his rallycross skills to turn a bad qualifying day into a double-victory.

In 2019, with the STCC organisation going bankrupt and the championship relaunched as the TCR Scandinavia championship, a smaller season saw Dahlgren fighting off an unexpectedly strong charge from Brink Motorsport, with drivers Andreas Wernersson and Tobias Brink both proving to be strong rivals for the title, but Dahlgren was able to hold off the challenge at a cold Mantorp Park finale and win his second title.

In 2020, Dahlgren lost out to Rob Huff, with the 2012 world champion a surprise entry as Lestrup Racing Team returned with the objective of coming in hard and taking on PWR Racing.

The season was disrupted due to the coronavirus pandemic, and had been shortened to four events held over a short period.

This didn’t help, as Dahlgren and PWR Racing were also adapting to their new car, as PWR Racing were the first team to take delivery of the new Cupra Leon Competición. The threat of Huff and Lestrup Racing Team may not have been fully realised, as his Volkswagen-equipped team chased an engine anomaly for the first half of the season. This was turned around in the last part of the championship, with Huff grabbing a double-victory at the season finale at Knutstorp to take a shock championship win, the first for a non-Scandinavian in 17 years, before leaving to go back to the world championship this year.

Without Huff, Lestrup Racing Team’s charge faded a little, and Brink Motorsport have seemed to be on the back foot as a two-car programme in the last few years, which left Dahlgren and PWR Racing, now with a year’s worth of data with the new Cupra, basically unstoppable this season.

Dahlgren has won every race where the grid was decided on pace, and took nine pole positions from ten, only deprived by 0.066 seconds last weekend from getting a perfect ten - and has battled back to score strong points and three podiums in the reversed grid races to take the championship well ahead of schedule.

He’s certainly beatable; Kristoffersson and Huff have proven that, but then again, that’s what you would expect from FIA world champions, who are unlikely to be gracing the grid of the Swedish series too often.

The question is how long will the Dahlgren and PWR Racing dream partnership carry on, and whether anyone from inside or outside of the championship will be able to stop the 41-year-old’s run?

While you could try and argue that Dahlgren hasn’t had the same level of competition as he had pre-2017, not counting Huff and Kristoffersson - to do so would probably be doing the efforts of Brink Motorsport and Lestrup Racing Team a bit of a disservice.

While the lack of a gargantuan touring car operation like Cyan Racing from the grid has trimmed a little off the top of the championship, it’s actually helped balance the championship more than anything - a world championship level operation isn’t usually to be found engaging in national, dealer-supported series.

Dahlgren’s plans for 2022 are still unknown. Whether he continues on, or decides to hang up his helmet and re-retire. If he does stop, this time, it won’t be about what might have been.

Dahlgren’s three titles and 45 victories have proven sometimes, when it looks like your career is over, it may only just be getting to the fun bit.

Robert Dahlgren’s 2021 championship-winning Cupra Leon Competición. Photo: Joakim Åström

STCC drivers’ champions

1996 - Jan Nilsson

1997 - Jan Nilsson

1998 - Fredrik Ekblom

1999 - Mattias Ekstrom

2000 - Tommy Rustad

2001 - Roberto Colciago

2002 - Roberto Colciago

2003 - Fredrik Ekblom

2004 - Richard Goransson

2005 - Richard Goransson

2006 - Thed Bjork

2007 - Fredrik Ekblom

2008 - Richard Goransson

2009 - Tommy Rustad

2010 - Richard Goransson

2011 - Rickard Rydell

2012 - Johan Kristoffersson

2013 - Thed Bjork

2014 - Thed Bjork

2015 - Thed Bjork

2016 - Richard Goransson

2017 - Robert Dahlgren

2018 - Johan Kristoffersson

2019 - Robert Dahlgren

2020 - Rob Huff

2021 - Robert Dahlgren