The Stadium Super Trucks‘ upcoming race weekend at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach will have a little Norwegian flair. On Saturday, sports car racer Mads Siljehaug announced he will make his series début at the street circuit on 24–26 September, piloting a Crosley Brands truck. He will be the first Scandinavian to compete in SST.
“24-26. September this Norwegian ‘farmer’ will fly through the street in Long Beach with over 80.000 spectators,” posted Siljehaug on social media. “Forever grateful for this opportunity.. All thanks to @bolemastus (Crosley Brands CEO Bo LeMastus)!”
Siljehaug mainly competes in the Pirelli GT4 America and 24H GT Series, the former of which saw him finish fourth in 2020 SprintX Silver points alongside Marco Polo Motorsports team-mate Nicolai Elghanayan. Despite skipping two rounds that year, the duo scored three wins at Sonoma and a sweep at Road America. Eight races into 2021 (though they did not run the latest weekend at Watkins Glen), the Siljehaug/Elghanayan combo sits sixth in the Silver Drivers championship, while MPM is eighth in the Teams category, with a class podium in the second race at Sonoma where they finished third.
In the 24H GT’s GTX class, he drives for Reiter Engineering with Eike Angermayr and Horst Felbermaye Jr. The team has never finished lower than second in the division in 2021 and are third in the standings with three wins—Mugello, Paul Ricard, and Catalunya—in four starts.
After rising through the ranks in Norway, Siljehaug won the inaugural ADAC GT4 Germany championship in 2019 with Angermayr. He has also raced in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup, where he and Reiter notched a runner-up class finish at Silverstone in 2018, and the GT4 European Series, scoring a third overall at Zandvoort in 2019.
The Lillehammer native is just the third driver of European nationality to race in SST, joining Anthony Gandon (French) and Max Papis (Italian). Representation from the continent is fairly rare, which is perhaps understandable as SST has never run a points race there (though the trucks participated at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2015) and the COVID-19 pandemic would have greatly restricted any recent travel opportunities to the American-based series.
A full entry list for Long Beach has not been released as the weekend is still over a week away, but Crosley is expected to field another considerably-sized fleet of drivers. At Nashville in August, five of thirteen trucks were sponsored by the company: LeMastus, SST newcomer Jacob Abel, Ricky Johnson, Arie Luyendyk Jr., and Jeff Ward; Abel scored a podium in the second race.
LeMastus has written on Facebook about planning a six-truck Crosley armada for Long Beach, with most of those from Nashville expected to return; Ward explicitly confirmed his intent to run Long Beach after joining the Nashville lineup. Other posts from LeMastus regarded potential drivers in his trucks, with some on the very intriguing side such as NASCAR veterans Sterling Marlin and Ken Schrader, and he also listed current Camping World Truck Series driver Todd Gilliland and his father David as possible names; the former’s truck is partly sponsored by Crosley while LeMastus co-owned the latter’s Truck Series team through 2020. Crosley-affiliated Brandon Parrish, a former superbike rider and founder of RiderSurance, tested an SST at series headquarters last Tuesday.
