All Nippon Challenge Race 1 and 2 report –
After a depressing year with engine reliability problems with the B20 engine, Hybrid racing and DMF Performance who were willing to Sponsor us a K20 engine with the full conversion kit approached us. During this winter break we understand as a private team we needed a fully equipped workshop to take our car to the next level, so in January 2009 I finally decided to setup my own race team. Found a new workshop within 3 weeks, so after 6 years of racing and trading with high performance car parts, Dixon Motorsports was finally officially up and running in February 2009.
Now we have a fully equipped professional running race team, racing is now an official part of our business. In the winter break we managed to find few more sponsors to support our racing in 2009.
We built our car from scratch again from new paint work, engine, roll cage, chassis upgrade with full K20 conversion, we started our new project in mid February our car was completed within 2 weeks. With our new engine from DMF performance fitted and mapped by Artech tuning. The engine was pushing 242bhp and after a testing session at Brands hatch we were happy with the new car.
So the first race event is up, we got to the track on Friday afternoon with everything setup on the track and we settle down for the night ready for the battle on Saturday.
Saturday –
Qualify –
With the new regulations we are only allowed to run either Toyo R888 or Silverstone tyres for this season, unfortunately only Toyo have an available size for our needs so we had no option but to go for Toyo’s this season. We have never raced with R888’s in the past 5 years of racing, this is our first race with these new tyres and the grip level was completely different to what we have used before so I had learn how to drive the car all over again.
We only managed 1 mins 24 secs in qualifying which was about 3 second slower than what we achieved with our old engine, pretty disspointed but we still qualified 7th in the overall class and 2nd in our GT250 class.
Race 1 –
Had a pretty good start and a good fight with the ex-touring car Honda Accord, after 5 laps of good battle I was finally able to outbrake him under the bridge at the back straight and got up to 2nd position in my class and 4th overall and I finally managed to feel the grip levels from the. The Best lap we had in the first race – 1 mins 22 secs so we gained 2 secs from the morning qualify session.
Race 2 –
Had a good start again, pulled away from the Accord and managed to stay in 2nd for the rest of the race, seeing Kris was only 4-5 secs in front of me but my car was suffering understeer from the R888 tyres so at the end we finished in 2nd and overall 4th in the class.
Not a bad start this season with no mechanical problems at all during the whole race weekend. After the first race, we now understand how competitive our car could be and we will continue to develop our car better for the next race at Pembrey.
Special thanks to the following, without their help we would never have been able to make it to the first race with a competitive car –
Camskill – tyre support
Opie oils – engine oil, gearoil, brake oil
Dixcel brake, for our full carbon disk and pad
DMF performance – K20 engine
Hybrid racing – full K swap conversion kit
HEL – Brake hose
Carbonetic – carbon 1.5 way clutch diff, twin plate clutch
DM Carbon – custom carbon diffuser, panel
Dyno Tech – Dyno tunning
Artech Tuning – for supply K pro ECU and mapping
Buddyclub – Wheels
Dixon Motorsports for the whole build and race car setup
Team support -
Japanese performance
Wincy Horological
Thanks
Team Dixon Motorsports.
www.dmsracingltd.com