I conquered Tsukuba !!

I can't tell you how much I'd been looking forward to driving at and when an opportunity in a form of HKS Hyper Challenge Round 3 presented itself I immediately jumped at it!



I got up at 5am in the morning and drove to Moriya SA to meet up with Ken and his friends. Most of them drove Skyline GTRs, some of them drove Hondas and I believe there was a Vitz in there somewhere. We left Moriya after 30 minutes and headed to Tsukuba Circuit. On our way there we drove through pockets of very thick fog with visibility at a mere 2-3 meters and at such an early time in the morning driving alongside 2m high grass it all seemed a bit spooky !



When we arrived at Tsukuba, we signed-in and all received our race numbers (mine was #126), GPS receivers and a booklet with the schedule for the entire day. It was nice to see your name on an official HKS brochure amongst hundreds of other drivers (don't laugh at me but in Australia being a part of an event of an HKS caliber is almost an impossible ask)!

The event was sponsored by :





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After sticking on our race numbers and taking care of some minor preparations we drove through an unbelievably narrow Tsukuba circuit entrance tunnel and parked our cars in a designated spot for our class.

Most of us ended up in CLASS A (beginners and first timers to the circuit), there were other classes ranging from B through to D with special classes for drifters and race categories (I don't know why but I always end up in those beginner classes only to realise my lap time easily warrants me to be in a faster class...Oh well, hopefully next time they will put me amongst the beasts). Oh and 2 of our guys (both Skylines) ended up in class B and seemed to have enjoyed it.



My first session started at 9am.
It was actually delayed by 10 minutes as there'd been an engine blow-out in an earlier run in a different class and so the circuit had to be cleaned. I was a bit nervous but ready ! I'd studied the circuit with some of the tips given to me by my friend Tom. I knew in my 1st session I wanted to take it easy and just learn the line and practice. When the lights went green I left the pit lane and began to conquer the circuit.

On my first impression, I felt like it was a much slower circuit than Ebisu and of course Fuji. It was however a lot of fun ! The 1st corner had to be taken in 2nd and it was as Tom had said out-in-out type of corner, followed by a shikane which was a breeze although exiting that shikane my car was not ideally positioned for an entry into the next hairpin and when I braked it tended to unsettle my car a fair bit. Later on I solved that problem by simply cutting through the ripples on the exit of the S. The hairpin was a 2nd gear approach and I quite liked it but on the exit I must have been carrying too much speed because understeer became an issue. Going into the Dunlop corner I clipped the inside but didn't quite exit as wide as I should have loosing precious speed (and time). Later on in the 2nd and 3rd sessions I went as wide as possible and was able to maintain high speed and a perfect exit.

On to the last hairpin and again down to 2nd from 3rd and well it should have been 4th to 3rd to 2nd because way before I reached the corner I had been on the limit of my revs and the engine kept cutting off...lesson learnt here and clearly that's again where I lost some time.

The last straight leading into the last corner was very enjoyable, 2nd to 3rd to 4th and just before the corner drop into 3rd with a nice, tight follow through the corner. Looking back at my footage I kept too close to the inside and should have been more in the middle and as the corner tightened I should have headed for the apex and gradually exited onto the main straight. It would be a hairy experience if you drove through there too fast and sheer centrifugal force would push you outwards towards that "fake green grass" area which if you didn't have enough grip on would have sent you straight for the wall...and believe me on the day I saw 2 such incidents in other cars ! No thanks !

So, let's cover lap times!
In my 1st session at 9am, my best lap was 1'13''130. In my 2nd session at 10:20am, my best lap was 1'11''236, which also happened to be my best lap for the day. And for the 3rd session at 1:20pm, my best lap was 1'11''349.
I was very happy because I could maintain a consistency in these lap times. There was a lot of traffic in my class and some inexperienced (and at times bloody dangerous!) drivers who prevented me from attacking more but overall comparing myself to other drivers in faster classes I was quite competitive. My best virtual lap time was 1'10''883.

Here is a photo showing all results for the entire day.
If you click on it you'll see a full resolution photo and if your vision is good you can make out the numbers and compare.



The car worked very well!
No overheating on the water front but some overheating on the oil front. This time max oil temp was at 136 so that prevented me from attacking for more than 2 consecutive laps. Tyre pressures were set at 220kPa (front) and 230kPa (rear) at race pace. Much lower than Fuji :)

Here are some photos from the day and a video of my best lap (with 2 pre-warm up laps). I have a lot more footage but it is such a time consuming effort I can't be bothered posting. If anyone wants to see it let me know and I'll see what I can do.



















So other than that, I got some good feedback and comments from other drivers some congratulating me on a very good lap time for a Tsukuba circuit beginner, I got to give an interview and share my thoughts and I managed to sneak a peek at some other DC5s' setup which gave me some interesting ideas for my car!

Overall, I really liked Tsukuba. I want to try it more and I think I will through my new Tsukuba circuit licence (in the making). I love the feeling of driving my car, I love the way my car handles and I enjoy competitive racing like this. I didn't win anything but others did and it was great to see a good bunch of guys putting it all out there and bringing home good results !

HKS came out with lots of prizes including engine and gear oils of various grades, YOKOHAMA came out with foldable chairs with their logo (very cool !!) and ENDLESS came out with brakes whose winners could decide on and were not forced to go with any particular model !

Another highlight was meeting 2 SUPER GT professional drivers who not only lead in the driver's brefing but handed out prizes and made themselves available for questions and photos !

Big thanks to Ken for offering me to join the event and others for your support !

Enjoy the photos and video !