He wasn’t the only one; in qualifying both THR cars seemed to lift as they got towards the S/F line, guaranteeing that they would be outside of the top 15 and crucially giving them free choice of tyre to start on. Everyone inside the top 15 would have to start on their qualifying tyre, which for Monza was the C5.
Speaking of qualifying; Dylan Fisher was a polesitter for the first time in Superleague, just pipping Jan Granqvist and Xavi Ros, with Alex Maggio in P4. Championship leader Loic Meunier had a poor qualifying by his standards, down in P8.
This proved to be a huge advantage in the race for Teien, despite his lowly starting position. Avoiding the soft compound tyre altogether meant the one-stop strategy was easier to execute, and although the two-stoppers were able to compete, it was clear saving that pitstop was important for overall race time. Throw in the use of the C4 medium instead of the C5 soft, and you had a perfect recipe.
At the start, Tomasz Wach and Sergio Fletcher came together coming into turn one. It was difficult to see who was predominantly at fault, as Wach seemed to be trying to squeeze into a gap that Fletcher was closing. Nevertheless, both continued, only for Fletcher to be involved in contact in turn 2 that took multiple drivers out of the running and ending Sergio’s race.
It wasn’t completely straightforward for Jarl, however. Alex Lehoux, Laurent Keersmaeckers and Jasse Lahtinen all had to be overtaken. Tom Stevens was following Teien’s strategy and came across Lahtinen at the Ascari chicane, taking himself, Lahtinen, Lehoux and Moritz Kropp out of the race. It wasn’t the best judgement from Stevens who surely has seen his championship chances fall away with another DNF.
However, Jarl was undeterred. Skipping across the gravel, he avoided contact and moved up the field before the front runners made their first stop, with Fisher pitting first from 3rd on the road on lap 12. At this point, Teien was in 12th, on the C3 hard compound, and only soft runners in front of him. He was less than 15 seconds off the lead.
In between, Granqvist had passed Fisher and was ahead of Maggio, and was leading at this point. Ros had made a couple of mistakes, including one at Ascari that took his front wing and required an early pit stop for a repair. It was clear, by the time Maggio and Granqvist had pitted, that the 2 stop strategy was being favoured by the earlier stoppers, but some were trying to go from softs to hard on a one stop, so they needed to extend to around lap 20. One of those, who had quietly worked his way up into contention, was Marc Schlueter. Qualifying 5th he found himself with Szymon Frelik at the front of the field.
By lap 19, Schlueter pitted for hards, with Frelik following a lap later. They had 34-35 laps to do on the hards until the end; this would be a stretch, but doable. However, Teien had halved the deficit and when Frelik entered the pitlane, he was only 6 seconds back from the lead, ahead of Maggio (who had already stopped) by a further 6 seconds. He had clean air and around ten laps before he would need to stop.
Sven Schubert had appeared at this point as well. He was following the THR strategy and was sitting pretty in third, albeit 8 seconds behind Jarl Teien.
So began ten laps of waiting for Teien to pit. Maggio had pitted early on but didn’t seem to have that much pace on Jarl; he was only a couple of tenths a lap faster. Suddenly, there were calculations being done: where would he come out?
Carlos Martin and Robin Pansar came to blows, and the Spaniard dropped down the order as a result. This still could be a good result for TOP at this point, with Frelik fighting for the win.
However it seemed that Schlueter was more comfortable on the hard tyre than the Pole, and when Teien finally stopped on lap 31, he was the de facto leader.
We were robbed of a fun battle between two-stoppers and one-stoppers though. Maggio disconnected again and his luck doesn’t seem to last the whole race, ever.
Jarl came out in 11th, but there was still others yet to pit. By the end of the lap he was 8th, with Keersmaeckers making his stop. At the beginning of lap 35 he overtook Carlos Martin, who did his best to break the slipstream, down into turn 1 to move up to 5th, having dispatched Heigo Poom and Tomasz Wach. He was flying, over a second faster than the leaders at one stage, 18 seconds back with 18 laps to go. It was going to be tight for the victory, but an unbelievable podium was on the cards from 27th on the grid.
But on the Norwegian marched. Soon, he was on the coattails of Loic Meunier. The Frenchman didn’t make it difficult – through went Jarl. P3. Next, was Frelik. On the start of lap 50, with only 3 laps left afterwards, he went by down into turn 1. P2 was Jarl’s, and he was still on pace to catch Schlueter.
However, Jarl was nearly out of Push to Pass. He probably only had one opportunity. Xavi Ros came out of the pitlane between the leaders, but thankfully his fresh tyres enabled him to get past Marc and didn’t cause either of them to lose time. Coming in to the final lap, Teien got within DRS. Both drivers used every last ounce of P2P they had, but Jarl sent it down the inside, minor contact was made but through he went. Victory was his.
An astonishing drive, he made up 26 places in the race. The strategy was perfect, the execution was measured and calculated.
THR have won two races in a row, and there seems to be no stopping them right now. Teien, now only 31 points back from Meunier and having taken 21 points from him in the last two races, is licking his lips at the prospect of being a Superleague champion; something that looked very unlikely just a couple of rounds ago.
