Andreas Myrberg wins Swedish PTCC 2001 final with his Factory Team TC3!

The PTCC series

Procar AB supports a winter indoor cup series that is held from November to the end of March spread all over Sweden. The series is run under the general touring rules (two classes) but with a one-make tire that everyone uses (M1 T27) and no tracktite is allowed either. The classes are modified and stock (with 23-turn sealed stock motors).

The Track

This year the series final was held by the SMK Trollhättan club on the west coast of Sweden with Dallas Mathiesen as referee on March 24-25. Trollhättan is about an hour's drive north of Göteborg and the track is situated in Volvo Aero's sporting hall for its employees. The surface was 2-meter wide carpet taped to the floor with the straight being three meters wide. The layout was designed by local guy Mikael Bengtsson and was quite open in its design compared to most indoor tracks that tend to be of "stop-n-go" type with a lot of 180-degree bends. This was sure to be an exciting race!

The Qualifying Saturday

From the word go, Andreas Myrberg set the pace with really fast laps in modified. In the end he was almost a full lap in front of last year's runner-up Jonas Andersson in second place. Andrea's TC3 was totally hooked and he could place it anywhere he wanted it to be on the track.

There were many other fast TC3 cars racing also, all in all the TC3 out-numbered all the other cars as the most popular car at the PTCC final. In the main final there where 6 TC3s, two Yokomos and two Schumacher cars.

In stock, Magnus Viktorsson (TC3) was five seconds clear
of the second placed driver Johan Lindberg.

The Main Finals Sunday

Every final (and sub-final) had the chance to run 3 rounds. In the first modified A main Andreas took off and by lap 2 or 3 was leading by the complete straight. Then disaster struck - his TC3 stopped! So that was a DNF for Andreas with two finals still to go. Jonas Andersson won that final with TC3 driver Arvid Stenberg in second place and Jonas Nyrén in third. It turned out that a metal washer was stuck between the magnets and armature in Andreas motor!

Final number 2 and Andreas made another getaway and never looked back. He won very convincingly with Jonas A in second and Jonas N in third. For the 3rd final the pressure was on Andreas and the common saying in the pits was that if he "only" stayed on the carpet for 5 minutes he would clearly win, and he did. He pulled away for about roughly a minute and then seemed to back off. Andreas was then just behind the fight for fourth place and he didn't want to get into that potential "wreck" so he backed off, not trying to lap them. He cruised to victory in seldom-seen superiority.

In the Stock Class pole-man Magnus Viktorsson won all three finals with his TC3 car in comfortable style.

Specs of Andreas Myrberg's car:

Factory Team TC3
Futaba 3PJS radio
Futaba S9450 servo
M1 T27 spec tyres
LRP Quantum
LRP Phaser
LRP Powers
LRP Quadra
LRP Fusion 9x3 (21/72T).

Special thanks to Niklas Edlund / Minicars Hobby AB - Sweden, for this report.