Coelho top seed at stacked Asia Championship

Infinity’s Bruno Coelho is the Top Seed at a stacked Asia Touring Car Championship at the impressive new Hongyu GDC track in Foshan, China.   The defending champion of the race formerly known as the FEMCA Championship, the World Champion set the pace over the 4-rounds of seeding from team-mate & former World Champion Naoto Matsukura with the Xray of Jin Sawada completing the Top 3.  With the venue set to host the ISTC World Championships next April, this weekend’s racing while not an official Warm Up race has attracted all the major drivers and manufacturers with the exception of Mugen Seiki although winner of the last World Championship to be hosted in China in 2016, Ronald Volker will arrive over the weekend for testing with many of the racers staying for up to a week of further testing after the race.    In terms of cars, manufacturers are here with plenty of new updates/prototype parts and even completely new cars.  While Awesomatix is here with its standard car, Lucas Urbain 6th for them in seeding, at the other end of the scale Schumacher have a completely brand new car with Michal Orlowski ending up 7th in second.  Once the dominant force at ISTC Worlds, winning titles with Marc Rheinard who is not racing but is due to arrive for testing, and Jilles Groskamp, the Dutch legend racing in China for the first time in 10-year, iconic brand Tamiya are here with a number of updates to their car which is being driven by Souta Goto.  Unfortunately with a treat of rain for Saturday and light rain arriving at the end of seeding, it looks like the event may see some rescheduling.  The first two rounds of qualifying having already been brought forward to Friday afternoon.

While sounding like he spent the night at a karaoke bar, his voice sounding like it is about to go, Coehlo was happy with his on track performance so far saying, ‘The car is working pretty good’.  He continued, ‘we are trying many different things but for the moment it looks pretty good.  The car is not super different to what I have been running in the past at other races.’  While he took part in the track’s opening Offroad race, this is his first experience of the asphalt, he said, ‘I like the track, the surface is fantastic like very good grip, flat, so it is very good to work on the set-up and understand the car.  Also the conditions stay pretty much the same all day because there is no sun.  So it stays pretty the same and it’s good to understand the car.’  While the IF14 Speciale is still very new to the market asked about new parts for the race and the Worlds he replied, ‘for sure we have always prototype stuff that we test for the future and for upcoming upgrade on the car so we are working on that for the Worlds of course, but I can’t tell you which ones.’

Runner-up to Coelho at last year’s FEMCA race, Matsakura was very upbeat about being back in China.  He said, ‘I happy to come here for the FEMCA race and now my focus is on Touring Car and next year’s World Championship.’  One of a number of drivers that came to the track 3-weeks ago as part of electrics brand ORCA testing, he said in terms of the track layout he was already in good shape and this has allowed him to get straight down to work in trying car set-ups.  He added that his speedo is much improved too following the test with ORCA.  Making a change in the rear of his Speciale for CP4 he said it wasn’t good but he will revert back to what he had before and go with a different change for the opening qualifier.’  He added, ‘the beginning it is so good but after it drops down a lot so the 5-minutes is a bit slow but we have been improving that and hope to have it better for Q1 with the latest change.’

Only joining his younger brother Sin at Xray last month after a stint at Infinity, Jin Sawada summed up his Top 3 seeding by saying , ‘It’s going OK.’  His first time to the track which officially opened in September, the Japanese driver described the track as ‘big and high speed with good traction’ admitting it was easy to traction roll.  He said however for the fourth & final seeding that the set-up was good that this was now less of an issue.  Making changes every run, he said over 5-minutes it is very easy to make mistakes and with that in mind he will make a few adjustments for Q1 to make his car more easy to drive.

‘Not easy’, that was hoe Akio Sobue summed up setting the fifth fastest time 0.019 ahead of fellow countryman Ryosuke Yamamoto.  Winner of the track’s opening race, the Japanese Champion explained, ‘my car is not so fast in the beginning but I think 5-minutes is not so bad because I have more consistent lap times, not so much drop.  I see some drivers at the beginning are super fast and after 3-minutes the drop is huge’.  Another driver who took part in the ORCA test, asked what he is working on in particular he explained, ‘today every round is different with changes in the conditions.’  Asked about new parts on his car he replied, ‘we have a few new things, same like everyone.’

‘Doing alright especially in the last one, it is finally getting good again’, that was Urbain’s reaction after the final seeding run.  The French driver continued, ‘It was good early on but I struggled the whole day yesterday.  I had a big crash this morning but I think that big crash was revealing on the wrong direction I was doing so I undid a lot I did especially for seeding 3 when I had the crash and my car improved massively the last one, so it is actually promising.  I feel like I have a car I can fight with, I have some minor things I need to improve but it feels very good to drive.  It is all about the 5-minutes now because the drop is massive, the tyres are soft.’  Here for the ORCA test, asked his impression of the Hongyu GDC facility he replied, ‘It’s fantastic.  It’s a wow feeling when you get here. `Everything is fresh infrastructure not only here but in general. Everything is brand new, it works, technology is everywhere.’  On the track layout he said, ‘I would say the layout is too big.  I like the centre section, the centre chicane feels amazing there.  It is just the right section is a bit long and boring and even the modified cars feel actually slow on this track.  It’s a bit too wide and big, the cars even look small on the track but the surface is fantastic, it’s not like super high grip, it’s grippy but the corner speeds are really great and feedback on driving is really really fun.’

Winner of the 1:12 Asia Championship last weekend on the Hongyu GDC track’s indoor carpet track, asked how seeding had went for him Orlowski said, ‘We are slowly learning the conditions and trying something every run.  We are trying not rush things to make sure we understand what we are testing so one change each run.  The focus is the Worlds not particularly this race plus we are here for a whole week afterwards.’  He continued, ‘Small steps, a few steps forward, a few steps backward but we are learning every run.  It is tough here with the track and fast drivers who have been here before but we are slowly moving up.’