Bermingrud’s phoenix

Norwegian’s Citroën will rise from the ashes.

Morten Bermingrud plans to rebuild his Citroën C4 Supercar and may, if things go well, be back in action as early as the final round of this year’s championship in the Czech Republic next month.

Bermingrud’s car was damaged when it caught fire during the first qualifying heat of last weekend’s Austrian ERC round at Greinbach. Having had a chance to assess the damage, Bermingrud says it was not as bad he first feared. “The car is not destroyed, the worst damage is the wiring loom which will have to be replaced, and that’s also an expensive job. We’re going to rebuild the car, there’s a lot of work but we want to do it. I don’t know how long it will take, perhaps we could be ready for Czech if there are no big problems,” he said.

The scale of the fire and the length of time the car burned for shocked many at the event, and Bermingrud says his team is fairly sure that it knows what started the blaze. “We found an ‘O’ ring in the fuel system that had a small crack in it and we think that was what started it. It was so hot in the car and I had some trouble getting the belts off; I had some kind of shock or stress and forgot to kill the electrics or to use the onboard fire extinguisher,” said Bermingrud who was critical of the safety team at the track. “The marshals or the firemen should have cut the electrics but they did not so the fuel pumps were running and with so much pressure in the fuel system [five bar] it made the fire worse. The firemen did not know what to do and no ambulance came to the car, the safety here was not good and it was my own mechanics, who came running from the paddock, who cut off the electrics in the car.”

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