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Going back further, Bjornstad seems to have started racing in late 1932 with a Monza Alfa Romeo, when he ran in the Munknasaloppet in Helsinki, finishing a strong fourth behind three of the best Scandinavian drivers of the time - Per-Viktor Widengren, Karl Ebb and Asser Wallenius - despite losing a wheel at one point in the race.
In 1933 he was third in a short ice race at Hjalmaren in Sweden, but retired from the major Finnish event the Elaintarha Ajot. In June, Bjornstad, Ebb and Widengren took a trip across the Baltic and entered the Lwow GP in Poland. There was little opposition, and after a race-long duel with Widengren, Bjornstad ran out the winner from Widengren when the Swede's car proved reluctant to start after a fuel stop. Some results give Renato Balestrero as second in this race, but he was later disqualified. Third was Pierre Veyron's Bugatti T51A voiturette.
That summer, the new Swedish Summer GP attracted the attention of a few foreign drivers and Whitney Straight, Louis Chiron and Antonio Brivio arrived at Vram to contest it. Chiron was eliminated in a multiple smash on the first lap, but Brivio and Straight showed their class and placed 1-2. Bjornstad was the best of the locals, in third place.
He did better in the Elaintarha Ajot this year, winning from the visiting Paul Pietsch, Ebb and Wallenius.
Later in the year, he made the long trip to San Sebastian for the Spanish GP, only to be disqualified before the race because his car was overweight! Just a week later, he was in Brno for the Masarykuv Okruh (aka the Czech GP), where he retired at about half distance.
Having modified his old Alfa to near Tipo B specification, he ran in just two small GP Formula races in 1935, the Bogstadtvannetloppet in Norway (5th) and the Vallentunaloppet (2nd). He was also, as noted above, 9th in the Formule Libre Finnish GP - see Leif's site for a full history of that event.
1936 again saw him restrict his activities to Scandinavia, but for 1937 he obviously decided the old Alfa was now totally outdated, despite winning a couple of ice races as noted above, and he bought the ERA to contest Voiturette events.
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