Friday morning we left for Vålerbanen, where the Norwegian championship final was to be held. Before pratice at 1400, my mechanic checked over the car and everything looked fine. After 4-5 laps on the second practice I saw a lot of white smoke coming out of hood. I thought maybe the turbo was broken, but then the flames came. A lot of flames! I quickly released the fire extinguisher and got out of the car. Fire personell managed to put the fire out, but the car looked bad...really bad. Here are some pictures of the drama:

FOTO: Racefoto.se

I thought all hope was gone, and I was beyond devistated. My fantastic mechanic Ole Johnny said that this was no problem at that I would race saturday. We went to pick up some new parts and by 2230 the car was ready for saturday. On saturday we had some trouble with the temperature on the car, as there was some damage to the radiator and hoses. OJ and Øyvind fixed the problem and I finsihed 10th in saturdays race! :)

FOTO: Jørn Pettersen

When the fire was put out they used powder and foam extinguishers. This has started to eat away at hoses and electrical wires in the car. On saturday night it was clear that the map sensor was broken, and we were not going to race on sunday.The reason for the fire was the the pin-bolts between the turbo and the exhaust flens loosended, directing all the heat straight to the hood. The turbo is now closer to the hood after having a new manifold built(because to fit the manifold pipes it needed a 5 cm adapter on the flens) and is probably the reason why it caught fire so quickly. To avoid the same situation again(this I hope will never happen again) we will modify the new hood so that there is more clearance to the turbo.

Anders Ringstad, my main sponsor borrowed my new car for the weekend. He qualified best in GT4 and won the first race. This was fantastic, especially after what we had been through with the Nissan. He suggested we both drive the 30 lap race on sunday. On sunday it rained a lot! The rain tyres I had brought for the Altezza turned out to be atleast 6-7 years old, but we didn't know that, they just looked good! I started the race, but the tyres were so bad that I couldn't get any grip in the car. I just slided in every turn. I drove in after 5 laps, and Anders took over. He had the same problem and we got a bad result. Had we had better tyres and softened the car a bit the result could probably been as good as on dry tarmac.

We had a great weekend with Anders and his mechanic Øyvind!I was also given a "dont give up" prize from the Chamionship committee on saturday. It was completley unexpected and has definitley given me the motivation to keep going! :)

The Nissan is for sale, so we now have some cosmetic work to do before a new owner can take over. I plan to drive the Altezza at every possible trackday to get the practice i need before next years season.

Thanks for reading!

Molly