Jurland, Frey and Hökfelt Conclude NXT Gen Cup Season at Mantorp Park

Linda Frey, Vera Jurland, and Siri Hökfelt wrapped up their NXT Gen Cup season at Mantorp Park during the Swedish Junior Championship. Each left their mark on the event: Jurland set the fastest lap in race one, Frey impressed with a lightning start in race two, and Hökfelt delivered steady runs around the edge of the top ten.

Photo credits: NXT Gen Cup

Linda Frey, Vera Jurland, and Siri Hökfelt wrapped up their NXT Gen Cup season at Mantorp Park during the Swedish Junior Championship. Each left their mark on the event: Jurland set the fastest lap in race one, Frey impressed with a lightning start in race two, and Hökfelt delivered steady runs around the edge of the top ten.

The main season of NXT Gen Cup finished at the end of August with a historic round at Sachsenring, during which Patricija Stalidzāne got first-ever female pole position and Siri Hökfelt getting the premiere female victory of the series in race two, as Stalidzāne eventually secured her first win in the series during race three. Despite that, the LRT NXT1s used in the series would have one more track action in 2025 – to determine the Swedish Junior Champion at Mantorp Park.

Three female drivers took part in the Swedish event: Linda Frey, Vera Jurland and Siri Hökfelt. All of them had previously competed in the main series. Hökfelt had emerged as the most promising, with the cherry on top being the win at Sachsenring. But Jurland and Frey were not doing too bad in the series either, as they were classified in overall standings in seventeenth and eighteenth respectively. For Frey the season finale was particularly positive, as she got her best finish in the last race of the season.

First running for the NXT Gen Cup Swedish Junior Championship competitors came on Thursday evening in the twenty-minute test session. Another twenty-minute session, this time free practice, took place on Friday. In both sessions Linda Frey showed promising pace, as she finished both of them in top 10. All of the female drivers completed around twenty laps across the two sessions, gaining valuable track-time around the home of Swedish motorsport in Mantorp.

Qualifying took place around noon on Friday and the best performance in it from the female drivers belonged to Vera Jurland. Around the half point of the session she set a 1:34.073, which remained her best time, and was enough to put her in P11. Just behind her, in P12 and P13 were Siri Hökfelt and Linda Frey respectively. In contrast to Jurland they set their fastest laps in the dying minutes of the qualifying session.

Later on Friday race one of the Swedish Junior Championship took place. Vera Jurland after starting P11 made her way into the top 10. She remained that place up until the last corner of the last lap, where a tiny mistake cost her the P10 and she concluded the race in twelfth. Despite that, she gained the fastest lap of the race – a 1:33.133. Her mistake allowed Siri Hökfelt to move up from P12 at the start to P11 at the chequered flag. The race was not as successful for Linda Frey as for other female drivers however, as she finished it in sixteenth.

Photo credits: NXT Gen Cup

The NXT Gen Cup action resumed on Saturday, this time with two races. Race two was the first one to be broadcast during the weekend. The starting positions were determined by finishing order from race 1, which meant that Hökfelt started in P11, Jurland next to her in P12 and Frey near the back of the grid in P16. At the start Jurland made a move on Hökfelt for P11. But this was short-lived as Linda Frey had an extraordinary pace at the start of race two.

She went from P16 on the grid to P11 at the start of lap two. Furthermore, on that lap she made a move on Daniel Varverud and found herself in the top 10. On the next lap Hökfelt and Jurland battled for P12, and in turn 2 Jurland ran wide and dropped to the back of the pack. On lap 6 Linda Frey fell out of the top 10 after getting re-overtaken by Daniel Varverud. And she could not relax, as Siri Hökfelt was just behind her aiming to progress into P11. Two laps later, the Swedish driver in fact made a move on the Liechtenstein-native.

Meanwhile after her mistake Vera Jurland was closing in rapidly to the No. 56 car of Elias Romstedt, but there was not enough time for her to overtake the German. The chequered flag fell, and it was Siri Hökfelt who was the best female driver in the race, finishing in P11. Just behind her was Linda Frey, and in eighteenth and last was Vera Jurland.

The definitive end of the 2025 NXT Gen Cup season was race three at around 2 pm local time. Hökfelt started it in P10, Jurland in P11 and Frey in P13. Just as the race began, Hökfelt unfortunately found her way into the gravel and despite getting out of it, she was running last. Even with that Vera Jurland remained in eleventh, although Linda Frey made her way up to P12. The race hit a hurdle for female drivers on lap 4, as the Liechtenstein driver first lost her twelfth running position to Sid Jensen, and later she locked up and sled which dropped her to P17.

The next lap saw Leonél Skaar’s car grinding into a halt and consequently him retiring from the race. Thanks to that both Frey and Hökfelt moved up one place. At that point Vera Jurland was still running in P11, but a lap later she was overtaken for that place by Lennart Wolf. At the same time Linda Frey, who had the lockup earlier on, started approaching Elias Romstedt quite quickly, and she overtook him for P15. At the end of the race, for the first time that weekend, Jurland was the best-placed female driver in the race – having kept her nose clean in race three. Frey crossed the line in P15 and Hökfelt finished her year in NXT Gen Cup in a frustrating P17.

“I think I drove my best race ever. Everything came together perfectly – the car, the mechanics, and my engineer. What a weekend!” Jurland concluded about her race three and the weekend as a whole.

The weekend at Mantorp Park was the conclusion to an extremely interesting season in the world’s first fully electric junior touring car cup. It saw the first female wins and pole positions, and despite the 2026 calendar not being yet announced, we can be sure that the fourth season of NXT Gen Cup will be as interesting as the third one. And for sure, it will include a bunch of very talented young women – both returning and debuting in the series.