The American nightmare

RallycrossWorld spoke this afternoon with a very disappointed Frode Holte. The Norwegian Rallycross driver was waiting in an Atlanta hotel for a taxi to take him to the airport for a late night flight back home to Norway. “I’m very, very, disappointed about the whole situation and with all the things that have happened in the past few days,” he said.

Holte was to have been paired in the 2012 Global Rallycross Championship with Texan P.J. Abbott, whose career covers NASCAR races and Indy Lights drives for Michael Crawford Motorsport (MCM). Holte and Abbott were set to race in the GRC under the flag of MCM, the cars serviced and maintained by the US-based Swedes Niclas Jancic and Johan Ragnarsson of JRD Tuning who have a partnership agreement with Ingvar Gunnarsson Motorsport from Sweden, the original builder of Holte’s Volvo. Sponsorship for the team, according to Holte, was to come from Volvo and energy drink Venom. Holte further explained that the original plan was for Abbott to race the ‘Holte’ C30 Supercar in the GRC and that a complete new Volvo would been built by JRD Tuning and that he [Holte] would use this to bid for the GRC title. That is not going to happen. “The car and the driver are coming home,” said Holte. “The details in the delayed and final contract, left me no other option than to close the American book.”

“My car is in a container again and will be shipped back to Norway, I think that the people at MCM are as disappointed about this as I am,” said Holte who refused to give specific details of the contract he was offered. “I can say this. There were suddenly several issues written in the contract which did not match the details we had spoken about earlier in our negotiations. For me there was only one option left;  go to the United States, pick up the car and bring it back home,” said Holte.

The American dream and his ambitions towards the 2012 GRC have come suddenly to a halt for the Norwegian. The question is now: Is he going to race for the European Rallycross title this year? “That is going to be a very hard struggle,” said Holte who finished fourth in the 2011 championship. “My decision to go racing in the USA in 2012, means that at the moment I have no sponsorship whatsoever. None! I hope that I find some funding in the coming weeks or months and that I can start in the ERC in the middle of the season.”

In the mean time another Norwegian, Sverre Isachsen, is still looking for ways and opportunities to start in the GRC. The European champion of 2011, Isachsen says that he had no contact with his compatriot Holte so far. “I heard about the news that he is coming back to Norway. That is all I know at the moment. I will have contact with Frode as soon as he is in Norway, I feel sorry for him that his plans did not come out the way he wanted it,” said Isachsen who spent time in America recently trying to secure backing for a GRC campaign. “Everything has to be 100% in order, contracts, agreements, you name it. Everything must be 100% in order before I put ‘Stina’ [his triple championship winning Focus Supercar] on a boat to the USA. I have not made my final decision on what I’m going to do, ERC or GRC. I’ll make that public at the end of February or the beginning of March.”

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