AVO's newest office is a warehouse and distribution center in America. Based in the city of Seattle, located in Washington State, this will enhance our customer support and distributor support. Office hours are 9am to 5pm Pacific Time, Monday through Friday. We can be reached at 425-835-0475.
It's hard to pass up invitations from a Japanese magazine to participate in a time attack event, especially when you have a race-prepped widebody STI sitting in the shop that's ready to go. So after receiving just such an invite from the biggest tuner magazines in Japan, Option/RevSpeed, it felt kind of mandatory to go. That's was our story, at least.
The downside of such events, however, is getting there. Traffic is never good, and usually is heavily on the Worst side of the railroad tracks. There are ways to handle this, one that is especially popular with our shop manager Esumi. It's a simple, effective plan. It's called getting up at 3am in the morning and driving to the circuit. This reduces traffic on the roads to merely heavily crowded, as opposed to "Stop, stop and sometimes go for next 20 miles".
We set up the booth on the Short Circuit, which is a quite quick little course with some good elevation changes and nice technical corners. There was not many details that we knew about this event, other than the organizers mentioning some race on Saturday called the "Inspire Race". Given the frequent and rampant abuse of the english language by the Japanese, that basically told us absolutely nothing about the event. Well, we soon found out that the name was actually spot on - it was a race of Honda Inspire's. Which is basically an "eco" car sold by Honda in Japan, which is about as "inspiring" to watch racing as a bunch of wheeled turtles.
So we packed up the booth and moved it to the upper area, where the D1 race was being held. This allowed us to BBQ while we watched the much less ecologically correct drifters blow through 10 tyres a minute. This was naturally far more interesting to watch. Funnily enough, 99.5% of the crowd was watching the D1 instead as well. The .5% that stayed for the Inspire race must have been severely confused eco-groupies that didn't quite get the hypocrisy of a eco-themed race event.
Once we made the move, the day progressed quickly despite the lack of sales to the Inspire crowd. Strangely enough, they were not that interested in Subaru performance parts. Though quite a few of them looked like they wished they could be looking at said parts. So we packed up at the end of the day and went off to a Japanese Onsen (hot spring) to relax and get ready for the time attack on Sunday.
The track was only 86km from home, a mere hour's travel in most countries. However, a quick peek at the traffic board showed a 30km long stop n' stop some more, which was going to turn it into a 5 hour journey. So after a bit of choice language in regards to the situation, we simply went back to the pits and set up camp. As we did have a couple of kegs of beer and some other combustible liquid consumables, it didn't turn out too badly after all. Of course, after all that alcohol, even the cold pavement of the pits felt comfortable… Well, for all except Ross, as he had to drive on Sunday. The weather was fantastic and the stars were out.
Sunday dawned bright and early (very, very bright and far too early for all the hungover members of our crew…). Over 80 cars showed up for the time trial, ranging from fast MX5's to high-hp Skyline GT-R's. We were all given four 15-minute sessions on the track, with 20 cars per session spread out over a track 1km in length. This made things *very* busy on track. Not only that, but we had just upgrade the front brake rotors, from 324mm to 355mm. This was to give us some more braking performance coming into the corners, as the car was getting seriously fast and needed a bit more end-of-straight slowing action.
But because of this change, Ross had to spend the first session bedding in the brakes, which led to some interesting Duke's of Hazzard moments at the end of the straight. All was good, though, and the brakes were fully bedded in by the second session. The second session was used to set up the suspension - we were having some problems with the rear shocks, and the Hancook tyres were not getting up to optimal temperature. Despite this, we had the FTD so far (fast time of day) with a 33.92 second lap.
Other people were using the 1st two sessions to get set up as well, and despite setting a very fast 33.72 second lap time, we got pipped by another competitor. They pulled off a 33.65 second lap time in a race prepped Nissan Silvia (turbocharged version of the 240sx). Our suspension setup was still not quite where we wanted it, being more effective on a high speed track like the big Fuji Speedway course, not this smaller, bumpier track. Because of this Ross just could not get traction out of two of the corners.
The 4th session saw everybody pulling out all the stops, and the best lap of the day was set by a very fast R32 Skyline GT-R. It pulled out a 33.58 second lap, relegating us to 3rd place overall. Not a bad place to be in an open contest of raw power, especially given Ross's lack of experience with this particular track in comparison to the competitors, who have literally grown up on it. We've now gone as far as we can on the Hancook's, so for the next race we will be back to Yokohama ADVAN's or Bridgestone tyres in our quest for victory. The suspension will also get a working over as well.
So it was time to call it a day, packing up the stand and the trailer, and heading home - straight into a 40km traffic jam. Some things you just can't avoid.
