Jan Brunstedt took his third win when Swedish GT visited Gothenburg and their City Race. The JB Motorsport qualified third behind the Ferrari´s of Italian Matteo Babalus and Hampus Rydman – the former in a 458 Challenge car and the latter driving an ex- GT2 430. But Babalus co-driver – Jerry Wiener – crashed the 458 at the end of qualifying, which unfortunately made them a non-starter.
Race day was wet and it was the Ferrari 430 of Rydman who led the field, ahead of Johan Sturesson´s Porsche and the Audi of Brunstedt. In a bid to catch the Ferrari, Sturesson lost the car in the Turn 1 and crashed into the tyre wall, bringing out the Safety Car. Brunstedt was first to react and made his pit-stop one lap earlier than Rydman and took over the lead once all cars had pitted. During the closing laps the gap between them came down from eight to five seconds, before another period behind the Safety Car, caused by Peter Wallenberg hitting the barriers in his Aston Martin GT4. Before that the slippery surface had caught out the GT4 Ford Mustang of Martin Sventén and the Chevron of Jimmy Johansson – the GR8 losing it´s rear wing which didn´t stop Johansson. After an extra pit stop he could continue and drove bravely to the finish without much rear grip.
GT4 was dominated by the Ginetta G50 of Peter Larsen/Johan Rosén, who led from start to finish. Peter Wallenberg and the G50 of Norwegian driver Aleksander Schjerpen had a good fight for second, before Wallenbergs crash, and the BMW M3 of Joakim Söderström/Milton Lundström came home third.
A thin field of only 11 cars took part, showing that street circuits are not very popular among the GT teams. Next time the grid will be much bigger as the Avon European GT4 Cup joins Swedish GT at Anderstorp on August 16-18. Before that some of the Scandinavian GT4 teams will go to Spa-Francorchamps for the third round of the European Series.
