Time Attack 2008 Round 5 - Brands Hatch

Back to probably my favourite circuit of 2007 - Brands Hatch in Kent for Round 5 of Time Attack. Perfect weather made for perfect conditions

Club Class
Its that man again! Kev Horsley in the Scoobyclinic supported Impreza secured the forced induction championship with his 5th sucessive win out of 5 rounds, an impressive acheivement! His 52.24 lap was good considering the car was on borrowed time, expecting his engine to blow

Jeff Mileham in the quiet but quick TVR Tuscan took the normally aspirated class with a 54.06 lap 54.061

Gordon Wright trued his 'weekend driver' C5 Corvette instead of the GTS Skyline he normally uses, it looked sweet ontrack

Barrie Rycroft in the DCY Evo 7 took 2nd in club forced induction with 52.53

You will never keep the GTR's away from Time Attack!

Sam Kerr and the Performance Subaru Impreza took 3rd place in club forced induction with a time of 53.03

Pro Class

Taking its first win of the 2008 season was the Impreza of Zen Performance, driven by Phil Glew, running on biofuel, beating its 2007 time and also the BTCC lap record with a 48.90 lap

Second place was the Elise 'Batmobile' of Gugliemi Motorsport, driven by Steve Gugliemi with a 49.25 second lap

All the way down in third place was Olly Clark in the Roger Clark Motorsport Subaru Impreza with a 49.81 lap. Olly more or less has the 2008 championship in the bag

The RSE Motorsport Evo 7 driven by Chris Ward was the second fastest in the morning warmup but sadly retired after it, a shame as the car was quick until its retirement

Bob Parker in the GBH Motorsport Nissan S14.5 has been improving the entire season with a true 'never say die' approach to Time Attack

Crazy Jamie Stanley brought more red mist behind the wheel of the orange RC Developments Evo who got 5th with a 52.008...
but for once was outclassed by Clive Seddon in the yellow RC car who got 4th with 51.76, here seen overtaking Ron Kiddel in the RK Tuning R32 GTR, who got 6th with 53.34

The final will be at Snetterton as part of the Modified Live! show on October 12th

Time Attack 2008 Round 2 - Knockhill

I have a love/hate realtionship with Scotland, its a nice place, nice people, but it always rains, but at Time Attack Round 2 at Knockhill it didnt, glorious weather all day with glorious performance to match!

Pro Class

There had to be a winner and finally after over a year of trying it was Olly Clark in the Roger Clark Motorsport Impreza with an amazing 52.186, which is faster than a BTCC time around the track..

2nd place was Rory Butcher in the Autosportif / TEIN Impreza with a time of 52.254

3rd was Chris Ward in the RSE Motorsport Evo 7 with 52.565, the top 6 all got into the 52's

A bad day for Guy Harrington in the Auto Ergonomics Evo 8, despite a very commited drive, with terminal engine failure

'Crazy' Jamie Stanley put in another red mist fuelled drive in the RC Developments Evo 6, eventually finishing 5th overall, maybe if the rear wing struts had not collasped, resulting in the loss of a lot of downforce, he would have been faster again

Lee Broadhurst in the Edgehill / NR Autosport Evo 9 leads Andy Harvey in the Scoobyclinic Impreza

Earlier Harvey attacking Duffus Dip

A more sucessful run for the ZEN Impreza with Tom Ferrier driving to 5th place overall with 52.879

Club Class
Kev Horsley again took the F/I win with a 54.073 lap in his Scoobyclinic supported Impreza

And Craig Winstanley took the N/A win in his Chevy V8 powered RX-7 witth a 56.418 lap
Kev Atkins in the MA Developments Evo 6 attacking Duffus Dip

Barrie Rycroft in the DCY Evo 7, a flaming good car


And finally Tim Chandler in the best sounding car on track, Porsche 911 GT3 RS

The next round is at Silverstone, as part of the Japanese Tuning Show, featuring a visitor or two from Japan....

Tsukuba Circuit

After missing out in December I finally got the chance to see the home of Time Attack, Tsukuba Circuit, in Ibaraki, Japan. There was an Option Time Attack on today, but there was not any serious Time Attack cars there, moreso just people driving their (fast) road cars with a transponder attached, not much commentary needed on these photos, was like watching the intro movie from Gran Turismo, and yes the Nissan Marches (Micras) were quick! Gave the Porsche and Ferrari some competition

UK Time Attack visits Tsukuba

Recently 4 of the leading cars from the Time Attack series were shipped to Tsukuba circuit in Japan for the RevSpeed Tsukuba Super Lap event, probably the best known and highest level Time Attack event in the world

The cars were:

Zen Performance Subaru Impreza (2007 Champion)

RC Developments Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 6 (winner of Round 2 2007)

Fensport Toyota Celica

Sumo Power Nissan 350Z

As part of the build up,some of my photos were used in RevSpeed mag (bottom left corner) - a great honour for me!

In October the cars were shipped to Japan where they were stored in the Do-Luck warehouse,Mr Ito doing a lot of the behind the scenes work on the Japan side.

Unfortunatley - as much as I wanted to I just could not go, and I knew this so for once it was not so bad being sat 12,000 miles away watching it all unfurl!



Onto December and all the cars arrived safely, but during some dyno tuning for the Japanese fuel the Zen car sheared a cam sprocket - not good. After a miraculous overnight rebuild completed at 5am it was off to the track, where a misssed gearchange caused the Fensport cars engine let go in a big way and with a few custom parts installed that are not available in Japan (strangely!!) a standard 3S-GTE was installed, which although greatly down on power at least made the car mobile again, with a best time of 1.04




More bad luck, with the Zen car throwing a rod though the block,caused by oil surge,a common fault with tuned Impreza engines - but before this,driver Phil Glew managed a 58.5 second lap, good enough for 11th overall!!

Current Tsukuba record holder Nob Taniguchi tested the RC car and after testing different setups recorded a 59.1 second lap, which placed them 14th overall, another fantastic result.
A very trouble free trip for the RC lads a testiment to their work

NOB prepares to go out,also in the photo is Abe san of Blitz



The Sumo Car with Andy Barnes at the wheel set a best time of 1.03.5, later Tarzan Yamada improved on this slightly with a 1.03. With a track the size of Tsukuba (1.29miles) half a second is a big difference!

Overall winner was the M-Speed Nissan R34 Skyline GTR with a time of 54.202,which sets a new GTR record. The overall record is still held by Taniguchi in the HKS Carbon Evo 8 with 53.999

Tarzan gives his opinion on the cars for the cameras

2008 should be good!!