Matsukura gives masterclass in China to win Asian Nitro Party

Infinity’s Naoto Matsukura gave his rivals a masterclass on how to execute a perfect 45-minutes of driving, the Japanese driver turning around a difficult qualifying to win the inaugural Asia Nitro Party at Hongyu GDC track in China.  After qualifying 14th, he gave the first hint of what was to come in the Semi Finals coming from 7th on the grid ahead of the Mugen Seiki of JJ Wang who started on pole.  Lining up second for the Main event behind the Mugen Seiki of Top Qualifier Sinnosuke Yokoyama, Matsukura would get jump on his countryman off the line and once in front never looked back.  Unfortunately Yokoyama’s impressive qualifying performance wouldn’t be rewarded in the final, the OS. Speed factory driver having a difficult race and suffering a flame out and also needing to do a body change during the race.  He would finish 8th 15-laps down on the winner.  While Matsukura controlled the race, Xray’s Filippo Domanin would keep him honest, the former Nitro Touring Car World Champion’s 7-second advantage over the Italian teenager never enough to allow him to completely relax.  Having made a good start from 5th on the grid after winning his Semi Final, Domanin also had to watch his back with Serpent’s Andrea Catanzani only 3-second behind at the finish.  Competing the podium, Catanzani set the fastest lap of the final but having to tune his engine in the early part of the race prevented the World Championship Top Qualifier from challenging for the win.  Fourth place would be decided in the final stages of the race between Wang, who impressed in qualifying with two TQ runs, and Hotrace tyres owner Nicola Marrone.  With both drivers having limited race mileage in recent years, Marrone would get by in the final 2-minutes of the race as Wang ran out of tyres.  Afterwards both drivers looked very stiff following their first 45-minute final in a number of years.

With his reaction on the driver stand showing how much the win meant, going through his race Matsukura explained, ‘At the beginning my car was pretty good.  I was trying to save my tyres but I was surprised, that even though I wasn’t pushing, the tyres wore down more than I expected.’  He continued, ‘Before the race we had decided we would only stop and change tyres on the right side.  But the tyres on the left side where too small and then after changing the tyres (1-side) the car was very very difficult to drive.  It worked in the end but to change all four would have been much better for this track.’  Having run 3-minute fuel stops in his Semi Final, adding this was to be extra safe because a flame out would have meant an early end to the event, for the final he switched to 3:30 stops.  Complimenting his stand in mechanic for this weekend, team-mate Kouki Kato covering in for his legendary pitman Masayuki Muira who was unable to attend, he said Kato was always checking each stop to ensure they were still safe at 3:30.  He added, ‘at the beginning of the final the engine was OK but after it went a little rich, I don’t know why, but I kept going and didn’t push so much.’  Joking with Matsukura whether Muira could now retire after Kouki flawless performance, he was quick to say ‘no’ but he did say Kato was ‘very cool’ under pressure adding ‘even though he is much younger than me he was coming on the radio and saying to me ‘keep going’ or ‘calm down, calm down’, it was good.’

One of Italy’s emerging Nitro Onroad racer, summing up his final Domanin said, ‘The car was good and the pace was good, all was perfect.’  Another to find pace from changing his set-up after the Semi final, the 17-year-old said ‘in the Semi the car was not super good but the final it was very good.’  Asked about the changes they made, he explained that they went to a heavier shock oil in the front of his RX8 giving him a good car for the longer race.  One of a number of drivers for whom the Asia Nitro Party was there first time to China, the son of former European Champion Fabio Domanin was happy to open his international race season with a podium finish alongside Matsukura and Catanzani.

Cantanzani responded to his podium finish by saying, ‘I am happy about the performance of the car because we changed something after the Semi and I think it worked really well.’  He continued, ‘the car was not like I wanted in the Semi so we made a change and it was much better but we made an error to start the final with the engine too rich.  We were too safe and we had to stop and lean it a bit and we lost time there.  Wth all these fast guys you can’t make back that kind of time.’  The 20-year-old added, ‘In the end it was good for the podium but we can do better and we just have to learn from the experience for the next race.’  On his tyre and fuel strategy he said, ‘my dad called me when he had 3:30 on the watch so maybe 3:40 I pit.  For the tyres we made only 1-stop for all four.  I think we were the last to change tyres, we did it around 30-minutes (into the race).’

Getting passed late in the race by Marrone, on his race Wang said, ‘We finished.  The pace wasn’t there the whole race.  I was trying to save some tyre in the beginning as I went with a no tyre change strategy and it just didn’t work out at the end.’  Asked if he lacked the speed or if it was a result of trying to make his tyres go the full distance, he replied, ‘I think both.  Pure speed wasn’t really there even though the car felt good actually, but I went in trying to safe tyres a little bit in the beginning but the guys at the front were just too fast.  So even with a tyre change it would have been tough.  It was actually a clean race for me, no mistakes, pit stops were good, but the strategy didn’t work.’  Making a return to the 1:8 Onroad class to support the Asia Nitro Party, the Chinese American driver said, ‘It felt good to finish a long race, I’m a bit sore, but it’s good to run with everybody again.’

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