New cars & parts at the Asia Touring Car Championship

With the Asia Touring Car Championship unofficially the warm-up race for next April’s IFMAR ISTC World Championships in China, a lot of manufacturers are using this weekend’s race to test new parts and in some cases completely new cars.  As previously mentioned in our opening report from the Hongyy GDC track on Friday, Schumacher has a brand new platform with three examples running in the hands of Michal Orlowski, Mattia Collina, and Pekko Iivonen, all of the team well briefed to give away nothing about the British manufacturers latest project.  We also already know that Tamiya has new parts it is testing with the iconic Japanese manufacturer and it TRF designer Kiyo Suzuki not wanting to officially disclose any more details on what they are testing.  HPI, who excited the touring car world when they showed off a competition spec car they are working on back in October, are here with the car which now features a new chassis design.  While our usual Chassis Focus feature will be thin on the ground from this race, two manufacturers that have cars they can show us are Awesomatix and Xray.  Awesomatix said they take a slightly different approach to other manufacturers with their new car releases and they are running a standard latest spec A800RR as their development is always ongoing but Max Machler did say they might have one or two new parts come the World Championship.

Having only released their X4’26, Xray is running the car as standard however its designer Martin Hudy pointed out they are trying a steel chassis ahead of the release of this option for the car.  Asked what they were testing, Hudy explained, ‘because the car is new basically we are just testing everything that is standard in the kit, the only difference that we are testing the steel chassis that is coming as an option soon.  We are offering also the short arms as an option so we are now testing it in combination with the steel chassis which works pretty good for Jin (Sawada) so this is the main thing and there is no prototype parts.’  Another manufacturer who has only come to market with a new car relatively recently, Infinity has come to Foshan with a number of test part for its IF14 Speciale.  With designer Francesco Martini in attendance as mechanic for Bruno Coelho, the Italian said they are using the event to evaluate a number of different parts for this track and to see what work for the various track conditions they have experienced.

ARC is another here with a whole new platform, team driver Enrico Jung explaining it is 95% new parts.  The Taiwanese manufacturer ran the first version of what will be the new A11 in October and the team is now here with the second iteration after a number of parts have been adapted.  Close to the final version, the car is expected to be released before the Worlds with March set as the target date.   Over in the Axon camp, Akio Sobue explained their car has new World Championship parts specifically designed for the characteristics of the large and high speed Hongyu GDC track and the race’s GDC branded Sweep controlled tyres.  Winner of the opening race at the track in September, he said they are running new things in the rear section of the car such as a new bulkhead which is more stiff for greater stability on a track he described as ‘high speed’ and for a tyre that has ‘more high bit’.  They have also adjusted the weight balance of the car.

While not racing at the Asia Touring Car Championship, Serpent will join most of the teams as they stay on for a week of post race testing.  Arriving in China yesterday, speaking to Dominic Greiner at breakfast in the hotel this morning, the 2024 World Finalist said they have a new car and having only just got those parts he still has to build the car for testing.  With no sign of Ronald Volker just yet, the former World Champion another arriving for testing rather than doing the race, we don’t have any info on what Mugen Seiki have in the works for the World Championship.