Richard Göransson in Profile – All-Rounder

If you haven’t heard of Richard Göransson before, then it’s about time you had. A four-time STCC champion, the 36 year old is one of Sweden’s top professional racers and alongside his regular commitments in Scandinavia’s premier touring car series, can be found in machinery as diverse as GT’s and rallycross – one of that increasingly rare breed of all-rounders with the insatiable desire to compete in anything and everything. 

Like his countryman Mattias Ekström, a double DTM champion who mixed it with the good ole’ boys of NASCAR before setting up his own rallycross team, Göransson has long held an interest in trying new avenues of the sport, stemming from his father’s hobbying in rallycross, a sport which runs in the blood in Scandinavia. But while a year of broadening his horizons is something Göransson has long desired, it largely comes about as the result of circumstance.

One of Göransson's many different ventures this year came in the Swedish GT
championship, driving a Ferrari Challenge with Martin Nelson (Martin Palm)

“Before when I raced I was so connected to BMW, so I had a lot of offers from different people to do different things, but I always said no,” says the Swede. “I’ve been with West Coast Racing and BMW for many years, but they had a tough winter financially and couldn’t offer me a good drive in time for this season – so having changed to another team which is not working so closely with a manufacturer, it opened up the opportunity for me as a driver to do different things, which fitted quite well with what I wanted to do this year anyway. 

"I said to myself that I would like to have one season where I evaluate different categories to try and find my way for the next three years, whether we’re going to do STCC again, or rallycross or GTs, planning for the future.”

It makes for a busy schedule and a lot of readjusting, as one might expect considering the evident disparities between a Saab TTA silhouette, 4WD Ford Fiesta RX Lite and his VLN Mercedes SLS AMG GT3, but that’s all part of the plan as Göransson evaluates his next steps. In the ever-changing landscape that is motorsport, even those with proven track records can’t afford to stand still. 

With rallycross on a seemingly indefinite rise, attracting FIA World Championship status for the first time and a cast list including 2003 WRC champion Petter Solberg and 1997 Formula 1 champion Jacques Villeneuve, there is no better time than the present to test the waters, especially in a transitional year where he is not expected to fight for the STCC title.

Göransson attacks the famous Höljes jump on his way to third
place in front of the passionate Swedish fans (Martin Palm)

“There’s a lot going on in motorsport at the moment, some championships are growing but a lot of them are decreasing as well,” Göransson points out. “On one hand you have rallycross, which is a sport with a lot of enthusiastic teams and drivers at the moment and on the other the STCC, which has been chaotic with different owners coming and going; it’s not been a stable championship. As a professional driver, you can’t just be in one place if you’re going to continue some more years because it’s tough to quickly change to something else.”

But that’s not to say the STCC no longer holds any appeal. Göransson is the first to admit that the championship has lost some of the lustre it enjoyed during the Super 2000 era before the disastrous split in 2012 – when the likes of Colin Turkington, James Thompson and Rickard Rydell elevated the series to one of the best touring car championships in the world – but the prospect of winning a fifth title, his first in the new TTA machinery, is one too good to pass up.

“Of course I would like to win with these new regulations, they’re good fun to drive with no electronic systems to help you, so it’s down to the driver and the engineer to get the best setup,” he says. “It’s a silhouette car, so they all have the same chassis, but they’re very well-balanced and they have a lot of power for Swedish circuits; they’re smaller than Knockhill, Croft and Oulton Park and quite twisty, so the only downside might be that they have a little bit too good brakes. 

“It’s a lot of work to prepare the car for different philosophies, to make it go quick in slow speed corners or braking or high speed and so on. It’s not like you spend a lot of money to develop a new suspension or a new engine, you spend the money on time to prepare the car and optimise it.”

Göransson took a season's best finish of second at
Gothenburg with his new team. (STCC Official)

Making that fifth title a reality would mean building Team Tidö, a young team in only its third year of competition into regular winners, but the foundations are already in place and the results will surely follow. After the Solvalla double-header, where he was joined at the team by the returning Janne ‘Flash’ Nilsson, Göransson sits fifth in points with a best finish of second at Gothenburg.

“I did the Safari Rally with Team Tidö and they asked me if I would be interested in joining their STCC team,” Göransson reveals. “It’s nice to have a challenge to help a small team and there’s some good people connected with the team who I worked with before when we won the STCC title in 2008 with Flash Engineering.

“Now when I race I want to have fun, so it’s really important to find a group of people to work with that you really like. Everyone there is committed to winning and when you have all these elements together then, if we have some time to build this up, I’m confident that we can have some success together.”

Beyond Scandinavia, the accolade Göransson really wants on his CV is the Nürburgring 24 Hours. The Nordschleife is a window into a bygone era of the sport and takes no prisoners. Up there with the classics of endurance racing, Spa, Daytona, Le Mans, success at the Nürburgring does not come about by luck. It must be earned the hard way, and Göransson has certainly paid his dues to the circuit over the last decade, a close second in the 2013 classic his best finish in eight attempts. 

The Nürburgring 24 Hours remains the one that Göransson really wants to win (Martin Palm)

Bad luck hit again this year as his ROWE Racing Mercedes was eliminated after being caught up in a few incidents, but the longer his wait goes on, the more determined he becomes.

“It’s quite interesting to see how there are drivers that do Le Mans and drivers that do the Nürburgring, there’s not that many that do both because they are two completely different races, even if they are both 24 hours,” he said. 

“I’ve raced there for many years and it’s one of those races I’d really like to win, but it’s so difficult to predict how it’s going to go even if you know on paper you have the package to win. Things can change so quickly in a 24 hour race with just one technical issue or one small accident. The check-box is not filled yet.”