Nippon Challenge Final Round – Brands Hatch

24th October 2009

Since the last race from Snetterton back in September, we have done a few upgrades on the car to prepare the car for the final round. First we manufactured a custom made Carbon Fibre splitter as the original wood splitter kept braking every race due to the high down force. Brands hatch is quite a bumpy circuit so we decided to make a Carbon Fibre Splitter and see if it lasts longer due to the increased strength also giving us more stable down force. We have changed the wheels from 16s back to 15s as we believe this is more suitable for Brands Hatch from our data from previous races.

We arrived on track on Thursday morning for testing, we knew the track was going to be wet over th race weekend so we set the geometry to a wet suspension setup for testing on track, even though the track was perfectly dry and sunny on Thursday .We were still lapping mid 53 secs a lap with the wet setup so we are very happy with the results and feeling positive for the race.

Race day

The weather report was correct, as expected we arrived the track at 6:30am and the track was already very wet. Our mechanics gave the car a quick check over and we were ready for qualifying.

Qualify

We were the only ones running Semi slick tyres in the wet, all the others were running Wet cut slick’s. More and more rain started to fall, which started to worry us a little. We tried to go out early for a clear flying lap but unfortunately the track was unbelievably wet. We were the first group to go out in the morning, but by the time I had completed my outlap, I had unfortunately caught onto the back of the pack of car’s on their outlaps, who were obviously testing the grip levels of the track slowly. I spent my next 13-14 laps overtaking other slower cars and just before the session finished I only managed to pull a 59.5 secs putting me on pole in my GT250 class and 6th Overall, Kris Dunlop was only 0.1 secs behind.
1st – Dixon Cheng 59.5

2st – Kris Dunlop – 59.6

3rd – Michael Clark – 1 mins 2 secs

1st Race

We decided not to switch to Wet cut slicks looking at the qualifying results we thought we would be able keep up as long as we didn’t make any mistakes, again we were the only one’s running Semi slick for the race.

I had a pretty good start and managed to keep myself in front of the Buddyclub DC5 for a lap until we hit the straight we could clearly see the power difference, The Buddyclub DC5 were in GT300 so were not racing with us so I didn’t take any risk’s as I didn’t want the same problem which happened last year. (engine blow up in the last lap in 2008 Brands hatch final) We let them pass us on the straight. After seeing Kris’s car disappearing from my mirror then the whole race was pretty straightforward without any problems. We finished 5th overall and 1st in our GT250 Class

1st – Dixon Cheng

2nd – Michael Clark

3rd Lee Bennett – Neal

DNF – Kris Dunlop due to an incident with the Subaru on the last lap.

First race Video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBApf84Es3Q

Race 2

Had a pretty good start again and over took the Js Racing DC2 in the Super GT class. We lead all the way until we hit the main straight, the Js Racing DC2 were running in the Super GT class, meaning they were allowed to run Dunlop Wet slick’s so they overtook us easily on the straight due to the extra traction they got from the last corner. They were in different class anyway so we didn’t try to keep up with them. Again we were leading all the way from the start to finish 1st in class and 5th overall without any problems.

1st – Dixon Cheng

2nd – Michael Clark

3rd Lee Bennett – Neal

Race 2 Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBQVhJr5tn4

We also set the fastest lap in both Race 1 and 2 in our class.

It was a great weekend for us, and was a perfect ending to the season with 2 class wins. Our K20 DC2 will now be retire and we have already started building a new car for next season. We yet to decide if we will be racing in Nippon Challenge again or Brit car next season. We will announce next year’s plans in January.

Special thanks to Buddyclub this round as they provided us with the new 15inch alloy and the ST1 touring car cams for our car.

Thanks again to our Sponsors –

DMF Performance – For Forged Engine supply

Buddyclub – Wheels, Buddyclub ST1 touring car spec Cams

Artech Tuning – for supply K pro ECU and mapping

Carbonetic – carbon 1.5 way clutch diff, twin plate clutch

Camskill – tyre support

Opie oils – engine oil, gearoil, brake oil

Hybrid racing – full K swap conversion kit&

HEL – Brake hose
Team support

Japanese performance

Wincy Horological