Invited by ERC24 Anton Marklund is sharing exclusive information with all our readers here:
Hello! Now we have started our journey from a cold and wet Skellefteå, where the weather forecast is telling us that we may have snow within the next 24 hours to come. But we are changing that for a hopefully dry and little bit warmer Germany.
Last weekend’s race has slowly but surely begun to sink in, but still it feels a little bit unreal what we have achieved this year. It is an amazing feeling and it becomes a constant reminder of what was done. Back home there are many people who call and congratulate. But as we all know, it’s still another race before the season is over, and since we already have secured gold, there is nothing to lose yet! We will do everything possible to beat all the other 22 competitors and take home the victory of the last race of the year too. We will show everybody who is the one who picked up the gold medal to bring it home.
We look forward to the coming weekend and hope that it will be a great event, ending this year’s European Rallycross Championship, which for us will be the last race in the TouringCars class. And then we step up to the SuperCars category, coming back next year in a VW Polo.
Anton
Marklund Motorsport
27.09.2012
Hi! Now we have been at home for about a month since our last victory in Holland. The race in Valkenswaard did not start as I wanted, with only three training laps before the timed practice. But as the weekend went on the pace was going faster and faster. And in the A final I eventually managed to score a start-to-finish victory.
But now we are turning our focus to Kouvola in Finland were we will go for another victory, not only in the race but also in the championship. We are currently 17 points ahead of Derek Tohill and if we manage to finish in Finland on the position right behind Derek or in front of him we will bring the European Rallycross Championship title home to Sweden! I will, as I said, go for the win in this penultimate round of the ERC, but I not going to risk anything in the A final to thereby postponing the title chase to the Finale in Germany. Me and my team will do a tactical race in Finland, not risking a black flag. We rather take a second place, as we did before. We will see who can keep his nerves under control, me or Tohill… ;)
Anton
Marklund Motorsport
21.09.2012
Hejsan! Round 7 of the ERC in Belgium is soon to begin. We are very pleased with how the race in Höljes has ended. We had a 3rd place, but during post race checking the scrutineers discovered a non-conformity with the rules of Enerberg’s car and he was disqualified, so we finished in 2nd place and regained the lead in the standings, three points ahead of Tohill.
Since then we have been resting from Rallycross for one month and have had some time for a lot of fun. It started with a race of the Scandinavian Porsche Carrera Cup at the Swedish Mantorp Park circuit, the weekend after Höljes. The event ended for me with a fine 7th place after some overtaking, although I had an engine stop during the start…
After this we went home to have a few free days before the ‘Norrlandsveckan’ in Northern Sweden with three Rallycross races in just seven days. It was really nice just to be at the site and being a spectator for once.
I’m now very psyched up and eager for the race in Belgium where I think we have very good opportunities to take another victory. We’ve been racing there before and by then I got on very well with the track. But I think it could be a tough race with some local drivers who have driven there a lot, which makes them usually very fast. However, they can steal as how many points as they want from the other competitors, but they won’t catch me! :-)
Anton
Marklund Motorsport
01.08.2012
Hi! We are ready for Sweden and our “home” track Höljes! We have left the last race behind us with a disappointing 6th place in Norway. With a 1st, and two 2nd times in the heats I was actually looking forward to a better A final result…
But now we are just concentrating on the “magic weekend” here in Höljes. On the weather forecast it looks like it will be another wet race. But I like the slippery conditions we will possibly have and I think that it will be as much action as usual.
We absolutely go for the win here so we can step up to be the total leader in the championship. Currently we are on second place, just 1 point behind Derek Tohill, but 9 points ahead of Roman Častoral. However, the win is far away yet with many competitors at the venue and maybe 6 drivers who are able to take the pole for the A final. So the first task is just to be in the A final, and – well, there we will give you all some good entertainment and hopefully a podium finish for me!
Anton
Marklund Motorsport
29.06.2012
Hejsan! Norway is ahead of us and it is the last race of the first half of the season, so after this weekend we will count the best four out of five races for the provisional point standings. We bagged one victory and three second places so far. Now we go for another win at the Lånkebanen, so that we can drop one of the three second places. This is the first and probably the last time this season I can go with my own car to a race, with only 65 Swedish Miles [650kms] to drive to Hell.
Anton
Marklund Motorsport
21.06.2012
Hi again! Now we are preparing for the flight that will take us to Vienna tomorrow at lunch time for the third ERC race in Greinbach.
It will probably become one of the toughest race weekends for this season so far with at least five drivers who can take the pole position for the A final. I’ll need to do better starts in Greinbach than I did in France otherwise I will not make it to the first row of the grid. This track will be new for me, as Dreux and Lydden Hill have been, but with my nice car and some good training sessions I hope for a good result.
Anton
Marklund Motorsport
23.05.2012
Hi all! It’s been some time without an ERC race, but last week we went to Höljes for testing.
We did try out some new settings for my car. It was a good test because we had both, dry and wet conditions during the two day test. Before the test drive we heard some strange ticking in the engine. So we’ve send it to Julian Godfrey in England for to check and instead put the spare engine in the Fiesta. But by the end of the first test day I had zero oil pressure, the belt for the oilpump was gone and we had to drive 480kms to get a new one for the tests of the second day. However, here everything worked out well.
Now we are looking forward to the race in Greinbach, hope to see you there!
Anton
Marklund Motorsport
20.05.2012
Hello! My name is Anton Marklund, I am 19 years old and live in the north of Sweden, near the town of Skellefteå. I use to work in a gold mine with exploration drilling. My hobby is Rallycross, during the Winter my other hobby are snowmobiles.
My motorsport career started with a 50cc quad, when I was just two-and-a-half years old. After that I’ve been driving motorbikes, mining machinery and construction equipment of all kind and shapes. In 2010 I started my Rallycross career, in 2011 I competed in the first ERC round and for 2012 I aim for a place in the overall top 3 of the TouringCars category.
Dreux in France:
We are travelling from a snowy Skellefteå to a probably rainy Dreux. We hope that our mechanics will have a bit less to do the coming race weekend than they did at Lydden Hill. There we had problems with my clutch and I had some contact with Tom Daniel Tånevik. It seems that we will have some rain this weekend. But we don’t have any problems with that as long it’s constant, so we get fair racing. We are looking forward to this round and go for a place on the podium again. But it will probably become a tough job to do as there are many competitors who want to reach the top spots as much as I do.
Anton
Marklund Motorsport
26.04.2012
Results 1st Free Practice
De Rooy third DS3 driver
Marklund to three X Games
Much the same
