Through qualifying and the first round of eliminations you’d have bet the house on Thomas Nataas and the Veidec/Biltema Andersen Racing collective to match their winning performance at Tierp. However, despite comfortably pacing the field in qualifying and setting meet low ET with a 4.109/289 in a first round win over Micke Kågered (the latter back in his own car after a brief liaison with RFM in Tierp), a sudden and dramatic loss of traction (“I thought the car had broken”) halted progress alongside Horto at the semi-final stage. “We’ll just have to win the next three events, and you can quote me on that!” joked co-owner and co-crew-chief Karsten Andersen, at least we think he was joking.

Lucas Oil/African Oil Products backed driver Chris Andrews has had a delayed start to his season and it looked as if things would stall further once it was determined that his initially proposed rent-a-ride from the Rune Fjeld stable was too small. A thrash to get the ex-Antron Brown 2012 DSR chassis ready meant skipping the first qualifying day and comparatively lowly 6th spot on the ladder, but, despite a first round loss at the hands of Lehtimäki, Andrews was in an upbeat mood after the event and will no doubt have plenty more opportunities to hurt cameramen’s ears for the rest of the season.