Everything looked good for an excellent result in China, it wason the cards to be the best result this year for the StormGT but it was not to be – they say that bad luck runs inthree’s and so it turned out!

Justin made an excellent start to the race – by lap three hehad moved up from the back of the grid to 10th, by lap 4he was 8th! Lap 10 and he was up to 6th and setting laptimes in the 1.33’s – the 6th fastest car on track in the firsthour. The Storm was also 4th fastest through the speedtrap.

On lap 35, in 5th position, he came to the pits to hand over toLiz for her stint in the car. As she was nearing the endof her time in the car the engine lost power; she came toa stop with smoke pouring out of the engine bay. TheChinese marshalls then, somewhat over-enthusiastically,covered the exterior and interior of the car with fireextinguisher powder.

There was no time to physically check out the problem inChina – the schedule meant that the car had to beloaded into a container immediately after the race – thepriority was to clean the corrosive powder from the car.However, the data has been examined and it appearsthat the oil pump failed – we believe this was caused bya stone getting caught in the belt, causing it to break.Several cars had been into the gravel traps during therace and come back on track spitting stones everywhere.

Next stop Dubai – Friday 18th November