Liv Eklund

Liv Eklund is a race car driver from Malmö, Sweden. She made her debut in stock cars in the TM Lights series in 2018. Despite not winning a race, her rate of improvement caught the attention of Lynxe Racing and she was promoted after team leader Divina Henton was ruled out for the season after a highway crash.

Background
Eklund entered the Lynxe Driver Development program in 2016, with her initial focus on touring cars and GTs. In 2017, Eklund competed in the eGT class of the North American GT series, a class reserved for electric vehicles, carrying Lynxe sponsorship in a Gessler BW25. In weekends where the eGT class did not appear, Eklund's team competed in the NA1 class with a Volpi SR570. Eklund and co-driver Lia Serroni scored 5 wins out of 8 meetings for the eGT class, being the only repeat winners in their class all season. Lynxe offered both Eklund a TM Lights test after the NAGT/TM Lights race at Provo Motorsports Park, driving one of Ingrid Haddeland's backup cars. Eklund impressed enough to earn another test with Lynxe's TM Lights team during the offseason.

In January, Lynxe Racing named Eklund as their 4th driver for their 2018 TM Lights effort, taking over Ingrid Haddeland's ride, as Haddeland moved up to the TM Master Cup level. Eklund's car carried #14, her jersey number when she briefly played youth hockey in Sweden. Her best finishes in 2018 were only a pair of 11th place efforts, making her the only one of Lynxe's regular TM Lights drivers to fail to score a top 5 result. However, Clair Auxier noted Eklund's rate of improvement, particularly in the latter half of the season, and her willingness to learn.

2019
After Divina Henton was injured in an off-track automobile accident, Eklund was controversially given Henton's seat on a temporary basis. Veteran drivers such as Leonid Roderick warned that Eklund would be out of her depth and that her substitution role could permanently damage her career. Others argued that some of Lynxe's other development drivers, such as Alicia Reyes and A.J. Martin were more suited to the drive, since both had more experience than Eklund.

Eklund's limited testing and lack of pace seemed to validate all of those concerns, as she had a poor showing in practice and qualifying for her debut in San Antonio. During the race, Eklund stormed her way through the field with a series of aggressive moves early, before the engine gave out 38 laps in. Some onlookers speculated that Eklund and Lynxe Racing knew that the engine was not going to last after warmups, and that Eklund was instructed to run qualifying laps until it inevitably failed, but Eklund denied it.

In her second race at the Maxwell Center, Eklund qualified 27th, well ahead of where her practice pace suggested she would wind up on the grid. When the race began, Eklund worked her way into the points and dueled with teammate Ingrid Haddeland for several laps. Both Lynxe drivers wore each other and their tires down, and both were so focused on beating each other that they ended up impacting the battle for the lead.

Eklund and Haddeland were both eventually lapped, but, refusing to let the other win, raced each other aggressively, which ultimately cost Ryan Matthews a shot at winning the race. Eklund dismissed Matthews's concerns, saying; "if he's faster than me, than he should pass me", and repeatedly quoted the TM Master Cup series rulebook about blue flags in the media center.

During the driver's meeting at the following race at Carbondale, Eklund was confronted by Saul Fischel after she refused to change seats. Fischel claimed Eklund had made open displays of antisemitism, which was refuted by most onlookers. Despite this, she was docked 25 drivers points for actions detrimental to stock car racing. This penalty is still to be repealed. Adrien Devereux, who had been seated in front of Eklund, claimed she had said nothing to Fischel and was sitting quietly.

Eklund responded with a second place result at Road Atlanta and led 6 laps, ahead of teammate Haddeland, who came in fifth. During her podium interview, she deliberately did not answer any questions about the driver's meeting incident, and otherwise gave short answers. She started the European tour with a quiet 17th place finish in the Round of France. before unveiling an Alexis Rainsford tribute for her home race.

Lynxe revealed that Tessa Strassenberg would make her debut in the number 11 car for Eklund's home race, but the reason was due to having a Promoter's Option already set for Eklund since the start of the season. Lynxe did not re-apply to have the Promoter's Option apply to Strassenberg in time, so Eklund's side of the Lynxe garage used the Promoter's Option. She ran a tribute livery to Alexis Rainsford, with a car that was similar in design to Rainsford's 2010 title-winning Volpi, but in yellow and blue. To make the tribute more obvious, the car carried Rainsford's number, 27, and featured a little bit of ruby red on it. The car was originally supposed to carry number 14, Eklund's TM Lights number, and also a number she wore when playing youth hockey. In light of the accusations leveled against her by Fischel, however, Eklund opted not to use 14.

In the race itself, Eklund led two laps and recorded the fastest lap of the race, but an ailing turbo hampered her late in the race and she dropped to fourth. In her post race interview, Eklund said that "it's nice to race in front of a home crowd, but Ingrid [Haddeland] is closer to her home town than I am", a comment that, while not incorrect, appeared to perplex Channel 44 interviewers.

Eklund easily qualified for her maiden Karjala Grand Prix, and because of how quick her second-fastest timed lap was, she started the race in 22nd place. She went on to make several ambitious passes as she made her way to the front of the field, eventually finishing second to Haddeland.

Personal
Eklund has cited Alexis Rainsford as her idol in motorsport, and claims to own every single team hat Rainsford has ever used, as other forms of memorabilia were out of her means. The two met in 2018 over lunch, a meeting Eklund described as; "reassuringly casual".

While she is very public on social media about her tastes in eyeliner, shoes, and rivalry with teammate Ingrid Haddeland, Eklund has almost the opposite attitude towards the press. Even for a driver with so little exposure at the top level, Eklund has gained notoriety for seldom granting interviews or for giving short, literal responses.

Eklund is on the autism spectrum, with her car displaying the rainbow infinity symbol next to her driver signature. She only explained it to a Swedish pit reporter who mistook it for a pride flag.

In addition to her native Swedish, Eklund speaks English and can "understand and read" Danish and Norwegian.