Video showing Alex's first ever race

Our new French driver Alex joined the team recently and with no prior race experience hopped behind the wheel of our BB6 and did a great job. He cut this video of himself. His driving is quite smooth and quick. He was easy on the car and did a great job. Nice job on the video too Alex.

First Blood! Victory at Ebisu!

Fantastic news! We won our first Endurance race since we set up the team hardly one year ago. We ran in the normal class at Ebisu East Circuit in the 6 hour endurance race over the weekend.



Here is a shot of us on the podium celebrating the victory. We should have some more photos etc coming as well as some in-car footage so please hang in there.

We ran a 3 driver strategy for this race - each driver doing a 2 hour stint. I qualified on a drying track, Simon started the race and ran our first 2 hours. I followed this up with another 2 hour stint and then Mike brought us home 6 hours later, first in class and seventh overall. 18 cars ran altogether and we gridded in 13 place so we did well to move up 6 spots by the end of the race.

Personally speaking it was a relatively straight forward race this time round. In every race so far we've destroyed the tires each time in little over an hour. This race, we made some key changes which helped us run the full 6 hours and more on the 1 set of tires. We went from 205/50R16s to 235/40R17s up front and 215/45R17s on the rear. We also added negative camber on the front and the three of us made a pact that'd we'd drive fast and furious but we would be kind to our tires!

The toughest part of the 2 hour stint was when my tube stopped dripping water after my 500ml had run out and my mouth started to go dry. I was sweating alot and not putting anything back in and I could literally feel myself dehydrating. I drove pretty much without error though for the whole stint and kept really good concentration throughout. I was really proud when I finally climbed out of the car and saw there was lots of thread left and only 2 hours remaining.

We couldn't have done it without the help of a great pit crew. Sumi-san gave up his weekend to be with us and did a fantastic job organizing the pit and making sure the work got done. Thanks to both John and Alex for being the extra pit talent needed to make it really work. Thanks also to everyone who has been a part of the team so far. All of you have helped us learn what it took to win this race. I hope there will be many more!

Ebisu Practice Video

As Saturday was cancelled due to snow, I thought I'd put up a couple of practice laps of the 3 drivers. The car as you can see was quite easy to drive. The back was perhaps a little hard though as it did tend to hop along in places. Braking and turn in where excellent. The car has come a long way! I think we would have been pretty competitive.

Ebisu 1'10.569 Qualify Lap

This post is over due. This is our qualification lap from the last Ebisu Endurance race of the year last year. We got a 1'10.569 which is pretty decent. We were on brand new tires, so I took it easy on the first lap after nearly ending up off the track through the first chicane when I forgot the tires were not worn in yet and they just went from under the car like it was on ice. Luckily, I collected the car up, got around a lap and then set our qualify lap before coming in for a pressure adjustment. That turned out to be our best lap!

Fuji Speedway Video

Simon took the Prelude out for its debut run around Fuji Speedway late December. He discovered much to his amusement that the car was still limited to just over 180kmph. Still he strung together some fine laps and managed a best time of 2'13.654. I was pretty impressed with the way the car handled and the way Simon took the 100R. Nice driving Simon!

Extra Ebisu 6Hr - the Video! (aka James' Perspective)

For those of you waiting for the video version, here it is!

Many thanks again to James G. for his fantastic video skills!

Ebisu Extra 6 Hour - Mike's perspective

Joined TGR team again as a driver in their Honda for the 6hr endurance race. The weather was great albeit very cold. The rain that was forcast never came. In practice I managed my best lap time at Ebisu so far (1:11.9) thanks to an improved car (stiffer springs) plus me finally finding a solution to the S bend downhill hairpin and the kink/uphill hairpin. Tom also got his best time during qualifying with a 1:10.56, putting us 2nd in class and 8th on the grid.

The 6 drivers were :

Myself plus-

H.Sumi
T O`Dowd
R. Rolirad
J. Gibbons
D. Silva
team manager, pit boss and all round sweetheart: M. Varella-Cid

Tom also got his best time during qualifying with a 1:10.56, seated 2nd in class and 8th on the grid. Overall the car felt like a different car than before - much more stable - a good 2 secs faster. On race day after qualifying 10 mins before race start I noticed a 3 inch long crack going through one of the brake rotors!! The spares being in Tokyo.

I was a tad surprised to get agreement when I suggested we drill out the crack :) a technique thats often used to stop crack propogation. We quickly drilled a small hole at the end of the crack in the hope that would stop, or slow it growing. I checked at each pit stop to see if the crack was growing or if it was eating up the pads. As it happens the rotor and pads lasted the 6hr race without falling apart! These rotors had just been skimmed and fitted the day before. this crack therefore must have grown very quickly!

Unforunately were still seeing rapid outside edge tyre wear although not quite as bad as before. The car currently doesnt have much camber so its been suggested we could look at adjusting that and seeing if we can reduce the edge wear.

We qualified 8th and finished 9th overall. In class, we qualified 2nd and finished 5th. 13 cars ran, 6 in our class. We out-qualified a Westfield seven which Tom almost drove over under braking in qualification

It was a fun race!!

Mike.

Ed. Mike's full picture Gallery is here. (Miguels also here.)

Finished!

Photos and videos to come later - Miguel reports the team finished 9th overall (in field of 14) and 5th in class!

Qualifed with a time of 1'10" - so the car is getting faster!

Nicely done guys!

Ebisu 6Hr- Hiroshi's Perspective

Our other guest driver Hiroshi (above) sent me a message earlier today, with his thoughts.

"A big thank you to the Team Gaijin Racing team for inviting me to drive in this event. As it was my first real car race, I didn't know what to expect, but my teammates (and new friends) welcomed me and gave me suggestions and advice, which was nice to have. The Prelude is certainly a much different driving experience than my 993, but in other ways, they are the same. Obviously, the Prelude has more understeering, but both cars require smooth driver input to get the most out of the car.

I have been told that the guys are working on improving the car's suspension and tractive abilities, which should really make for a fast car. Although I have other commitments so I can't make the next race, I am hoping the guys will be kind enought to invite me back to race with them next year - I certainly would love another go at the wheel!

Thanks guys -

Hiroshi"

Hiroshi also arrived with his own very attractive photographer friend who took many pictures for us, including the following:

The car in action, Miguel driving (click on this photo for a great wallpaper):

Some in the pit action:

Alex doing some calculating.


Juan making sure the car has enough gas! (while the others were, ehem, discussing strategy I'm sure...)


Tom letting some air out.


Having a meeting.


Hiroshi and Sumi-san, ready to refuel!!


The Safety Car - the view from the front (at the race start)


Half the team... I think we were watching Tom drive...

Ebisu 6Hr - Miguel's Perspective.

Miguel's Perspective.

"Great memories racing again – both on and off the track and good to meet some new people too, notably Juan – who gave up his weekend to help us with counting laps, refueling, etc and Mike who proved to be very smooth and proficient - putting in consistent 1.14 laps even with tyres well past their prime. Bearing in mind this was only our second race – we’ve been doing well. Our driver changes and pit stops were a lot quicker, although there’s always room to improve, I guess.

Our focus for the next race will be to improve the car further – not just getting our original Aragosta suspension repaired, but also getting it re-sprung and re-valved for best possible control. With less roll and suspension travel and quicker suspension response, plus a lighter car - we should not only be able to improve our lap times by 2-3 seconds for the same conditions but also reduce our tyre wear considerably, meaning less pit stops and less lost laps! I’d like to see a brake bias valve fitted to the car for the next race as well.

So Aki & I are off to get thie shocks delivered to Nishiki tonight. Will update more on this later.

Looking forward to November 23rd!"

Miguel.

Image comments by Russ.

Rear inside wheel lifting.

Sometimes lonely in qualifying and practice.

The team under pit direction.

Race day pit for the oversubscribed Ebisu.

The office. It's pretty comfy actually.

Start to what?

Sumi-san is off.

Attack and Under Attack.

Just under attack here.

Bit of a nosedive under braking.

Sometimes lonely during the race too. But it doesn't last long...

"Here is a nice sequence of images"

Shows the tight racing that ebisu circuit can probide as well as safe overtaking places. Unlike Tsukuba.

Lights on and bring it home.

Another finish for TG-Racing.

Prelude Data Log 12 +6 Race Hours.

but the team is thinking about this.

Ebisu 6Hr - Mike's Perspective

Joined TG Racing team as a guest driver in their honda.

Really great bunch of guys and had a blast (as you can see from the pics).

Surprised how easy the honda was to drive after the lotus. Very forgiving car that gives far more warning of loss of traction than the lotus - making it an easy car to step into and race for the first time.

We came in a respectable 8th place in our class and 24th place overall.

First set of tyres only lasted 2 hours then were totally shreaded so by the time I went out I was driving on last set of used rubber and we had changed our race strategy to `survive and finish` agreeing on a tyre saving conservative lap time we should all keep to.

Unfortunately when I went out the trackmate failed and I was unable to tell what lap times I was doing so I had to try to guess and just drive as smoothly as I could.

In the end we did a total 254 laps just 3 laps shy of 5th place!

Mike.

Ed. All of Mike's pictures are here or watch a slide show here.