2014.12.12

Thailand Super Series Round 7 & 8 Qualifying

　Round 7 and 8 of “Thailand Super Series” underwent qualifying on December 11th, and #36 arto-MC86 built on a GT300 mother chassis, competing in the Super Car Class 1 fielded by TOYOTA TEAM THAILAND, finished fourth with Kazuya Oshima at the wheel.

Thailand Supercar Series Round 7 & 8 is held as a street race (1 lap = 3700m) at Bangsaen Beach in Chonburi, about one hour drive from the capital Bangkok. It is the biggest event in Thailand Supercar Series with races of 13 different classes. arto-MC86 with GT300 mother chassis is once again entered in the Class1 as was in the previous race and categorized in the same class as the FIA-GT3 cars. 10 cars are entered in the Class1.

Practice sessions have been held from Tuesday, but, with massive number of classes, each class can only run two sessions of 30 – 40 minutes per day, making the ground more difficult for Oshima and the team to take on their first street race. The team struggled adopting to the unique characteristics of a street circuit, such as bumps, cants, and dusty road surface, and lagged from the top group by a few seconds despite gradually improving the lap times. At the end, it even dismounted its third damper, a vital item for an aerodynamic machine, in order to just find a suspension setting that suits the track surface, but the time ran out, leaving some concerns going towards the qualifying.

The qualifying session was scheduled for 30 minutes, and cars entered the track in the order of lap times recorded until the day before. Oshima started off driving by paying a close attention on how the tires warmed up, but on his second lap he stepped on the dust and span the car around at the last corner. Oshima was able to avoid crushing, but significantly lost time there. At Bangsaen with a long pit road, it would be a loss of time to come back to the pit to change setting of the car, therefore, Oshima continued on and eagerly ran on the track to keep on attacking. He soon marked his best time in the lower half of 1 min 44 sec mark, but the top TOMAS ENGE (CHEVROLET CAMARO GT3) was in the 1 min 38 sec range. It gave an impression that at this track, which is just repeating of acceleration, deceleration, and tight turns without a high-speed corner, the power of engine is more effective than the weight or aerodynamics. Oshima kept on attacking till the end and reduced the time down to 1 min 43.108 sec, however, he had to settle with a fourth place in qualifying before taking on the race.

arto-MC86 featured on the cover page of event pamphlet. It is receiving high attention from the locals.