After Roberts Vitols had stamped his authority on the Supercar Lites category with four victories from the opening five rounds of the 2026 season, Alex Lindeqvist used the sixth meeting of the year to make his mark by claiming the first victory of his career at Honkajoki.
While Kevin Daarbak had already managed to halt the Latvian driver’s dominance by winning Race 2 at Tierp, it was this time the Swede’s turn to get the better of Roberts Vitols on Sunday.
Already extremely close to the championship leader during the opening day of competition in Finland, the former CrossCar driver left no opportunity whatsoever to his Team Faren rival this time around.
After securing three consecutive qualifying heat victories, Lindeqvist showed no signs of pressure heading into a final that naturally promised to be highly intense. Making perfect use of his pole position, the Swede went on to claim victory ahead of Kevin Daarbak while Roberts Vitols had to settle for the third step of the podium.
“In the final, starting from pole position was absolutely crucial. Roberts Vitols and I were incredibly close on lap times throughout the entire weekend, so managing to hold onto pole today gave us a very important advantage to control the race and dictate our pace.”
Throughout the weekend, the Swede was forced to deal with strong opposition led by Roberts Vitols, who once again proved highly competitive despite finishing third in Race 2.
“It’s really enjoyable racing against a driver like him because he races very cleanly. On my side, I also tried to stay as clean as possible in our battles and I think that created a really good fight throughout the race.”
The second driver after Kevin Daarbak to genuinely challenge the championship leader on outright pace since the beginning of the season, Lindeqvist now hopes this first victory can help him take another step forward in his progression.
“I obviously hope this victory can become a real turning point for the rest of our season. Even so, we know there are still many areas where we need to improve.”
Fully aware that there is still significant room for improvement despite this breakthrough success, the Swedish driver is now determined to continue working in order to establish himself among the leading contenders in Supercar Lites.
“We still need to improve our starts and find even more outright pace on track. We’re now going back to the workshop to keep working and hopefully take another step forward over the next races.”
On the other side of the paddock, although Roberts Vitols was unable to secure another victory, the Latvian driver nevertheless felt the Honkajoki event had provided valuable experience while he still maintains control of the championship with a ten-point advantage over the Daarbak / Lindeqvist duo.
“Even without the victory, it still remains a very positive weekend in terms of experience and learning.”
Used to controlling proceedings since the start of the season, Vitols this time had to cope with a far more intense race situation deep inside the pack.
“You can’t always be at the front, and you also need to learn how to fight when you’re not starting from the first position on the grid. Today, I genuinely believe we had the pace to fight for the win, but I simply didn’t manage to put everything together properly during qualifying.”
“At the start of the final, I tried something around the outside with a different line, but it didn’t work as planned. From that moment on, I constantly had to fight back to recover the positions I had lost, just as had already been the case during the qualifying heats.”
“Despite that, the pace was clearly there throughout the final. Unfortunately, I made a mistake on lap two, and that was the moment when my chances of victory disappeared.”