Rally of Scandinavia: Philip Allen wins qualifying

It was under the sun that the crews present in Karlstad were first able to complete a few runs on the 6-kilometer shakedown course located north of the nerve center of the event. They then set off in championship order. On an extremely fast section that was very representative of the rest of the course, the objective of the candidates for the overall victory was to set the best possible time in order to secure a good position on the road.

In this exercise, Philip Allen (Fabia) surprised everyone. Winner of the Power Stage at the last event in Hungary, the not always very lucky and often clumsy Englishman won, beating all the Nordic specialists and the main players in the championship. Among them, Andrea Mabellini (Fabia) was the fastest, ahead of his rivals Jon Armstrong (Fiesta) 4^e, Mads Ostberg (C3) 7^e and Mikolaj Marczyk (Fabia) 8^e.

Among the occasional presenters, Frank Tore Larsen demonstrated that the Polo R5 still has some good left with a 3^e position. Eyvind Brynildsen ranked 5^e and Henning Solberg (Fabia) 16^e.

On their home turf, the Swedes disappointed. Isak Reiersen (Fabia) only took 6th place.^e place and Mille Johansson ranked 12th^e.

For his part, Stéphane Lefebvre was able to measure the path he will have to take to understand how his Toyota Yaris Rally2 on gravel. From 14th place, he'll be among the frontrunners, and he won't have a well-cleaned road surface during the morning loop. Having not raced on this surface since 2021, he'll have nine special stages and just over 9 km of timed runs ahead of him to improve his feel for the track.