A brief summary of the 2008 season, seen through the eyes of Team Rolfstad.
After a rather struggling season in America last year, when we couldn’t get the old Cat to work with us at all. We are very happy that we cured the main problem this winter and got back on track.
First I will say thank You! To all the people congratulating us and wishing us all the best after our win in the European Championship in Super Twin Top Fuel this season.
Second I will say: It hasn’t come for free… In the spring we where low on parts and we were a little off on the tune up due to the problems from last year. After the first race we knew that the main problem with the ignition was solved, and at the Main event at Santa Pod we qualified number 3 before the rain called the rest of the weekend off.
Then we blew the engine in the Norwegian championship at Gardermoen the first weekend of June.
After several hours of labour and a lot of new parts we were back for Finland. Where we kept the guys at the track busy bringing our pushrods back.(We are still missing a few).
The first descent pass came in the last qualification round, after the crew more or less had given up.
Since then the bike has turned out to be almost a bracket bike, being very consistent.
After some really tight racing we won both at Alastaro in Finland and at Mantorp in Sweden, which was far better than we ever expected. I think this also surprised our fellow racers that we had come this far.
At Gardermoen in Norway we where ready to put the last nail in, to secure the championship at this point.
We wanted to do a good race at our home track and found a few more ponies for the second qualification run, with the result of the wildest ride of my racing career so far.
Then the rain came and we where number 3 qualifier again.
For the Finals at Santa Pod we knew that by qualifying as number 5 or better would bring us the championship.
Unfortunately Friday and Saturday rained away. But on Sunday the crew at Santa Pod did a tremendous job to prepare the track for racing in between the rain showers. Thanks to all of You!
This time we did our job well, I got a bad tire shake about 50 meters from the starting line but managed to ride the bike through it and qualified as number 1 for the first time this year.
The next pass was a by run but we went for lane choice in the semi-final and we got it.
Sorry to say but the rain came back and we started preparing for winning the Banquet as well.
I will also say a big Thank You to our sponsors
who has helped us a lot the last 2 years.
Thank You all!
For next year we hope to be back with a new bike. It’s all in my mind right now, and hopefully we will be ready for next year’s Main Event.