16th October 6 hour Ebusu Endurance Race - Miguel Varella-Cid (3rd of 4 drivers).

As I’d need to get home quickly after the race on Saturday, I’d opted to ride up on my bike, letting Alex carry my small backpack in the Prelude. Although the weather had been nice, leaving Shizuoka, I had taken the decision not to wear my leathers, but an armoured waterproof over suit. Alex & I travelled up in convoy except when I had to peel off to fill up, whilst he carried on. Then as I got back on the bike to catch him the heavens opened up about 50km from Koriyama, where we’d be stopping for the night. We couldn’t resist a Chinese meal and plenty of ice cold Asahi beer. Then the first surprise of the evening – I got a call from Mike. He was less than 20 minutes away and had managed to make the race, having abandoned his pressing work engagements and just driven down in his Lotus. More beers ensued, whilst Mike helped finish off the rest of the Chinese food. Sumi, on the other hand wasn’t going to make it… He’d tried putting on his helmet with stinking flu and felt so nauseated he’d e-mailed and called to say he wasn’t going to make it, poor chap.
Simon & Steve arrived shortly afterwards and more beers were drunk, much laughter and a narrow escape from a Phillipino infested hostess bar..

As Alex had volunteered to drive the Prelude up and spent so much time helping us prepare the car for the race, we’d intended to let him qualify, but since Sumi was now not going to race, Alex would drive his stint and I’d do the qualifying.

This race was had a surprisingly large number of entrants, so we were in for a fight… That’s how we like it! I went out and tried to set fast lap times, but this required timing it so I wouldn’t be held up by any other cars. In frustration of being held up and trying to see how the car would handle if I really chucked it into corners or braked too late, I was making mistakes. The car felt wrong too, lots of under steer. The plan had been for me to do say 6 laps, and then let Mike have a go, but the car wasn’t right. I came in; we checked the tyre pressures and took out some air. Mike noted the front damping setting was at something like 11, when it should be around 6. That would explain the under steer due to the dampers working sluggishly. I asked him to set it to 8, went out and the car felt immediately better, although the back still felt a tad under damped..
I did a mid 1.10 lap which I felt a little disappointed with, as I’d felt there was more to come and had hoped for a 1.09, but as we were now 3rd in class, behind the red Westfield and yellow Impreza Sti 5 wagon & lots of cars behind us that should have been faster, being lighter and on S tyres, etc. I realised everybody else had found the track as challenging as me, so we hadn’t done too badly I guess..

Simon started the race. Blue Leaf’s black Primera had one of their fastest drivers on for the first stint who took Simon in the first lap and began to pull a gap on us. The Westfield – in the meantime was going well (For a change!) and maintaining 1st position. 2nd Positioned Impreza Sti 5 was the same car that had been so slow in the last race, but was now a lot quicker. After 90 minutes we were down two positions to 5th, but the Yellow Impreza had more driver changes and we knew some of their drivers were slow – so there was no threat from them. Our targets were the stripped out black (Blue Leaf Team) Primera and the Red Westfield, both run by very competitive teams (The matt black DC5 we were challenged by in the last race is run by the same team).
The B class cars that had qualified fastest were still quicker – but not our targets. One notably fast little car was that 1.3 litre full tune Datsun. It sounded Awesome and went like stink! What a cool machine!




As Simon came in, we were all ready. Our new Fuel cans were much faster for refueling – and Alex helped get Simon out, whilst I helped Alex get his belts on as the fueling was about to begin. Alex went out and began fighting.
I could see he was enjoying himself as lap times got less and less. Not a bad way to be, after not having raced at all or driven on Ebisu since the first race our car had done.

Simon, Steve & I went to eat some food at the canteen, whilst we watched Alex do the middle bottom hairpin. He was doing well and we were up one position. We reasoned that with Mike and I being the faster drivers, with our stints still to go, there was a chance we’d catch Blue Leaf’s black Primera and were in with a strong chance of 2nd place. Remembering how the car had handled in qualifying & I watching the Prelude, I could see it was handling well, but I still felt the back was still a tad lively, being under damped. I began to form a list of things in my mind we had to do when Alex pitted and I took his place after 3 hours racing:

Correct the Interior Clock, reset the Traqmate, Dump a litre of oil into the engine, set the rear damping to 3 clicks from minimum, refuel & go!

As Alex came into the pit when we called him in, the team did their best to finish the pit stop FAST, and then I was out.

The last race, I’d felt encouraged by having a target (of sorts, because I wasn’t sure which car I needed to catch, so I caught everything I could & took it!) so now – knowing I had to get Blue Leaf, I was on a mission. The extra damping at the back had helped the car’s handling. It felt sweet now, and I got into the groove and just concentrated on doing fast laps. I had some good tussles with the Westfield, which I overtook and left behind for a while, more due to nerve than difference in speed.

Their car was only marginally quicker on the uphill straight, if anything – which is commendable for our Prelude, I thought. The best fun I had were a string of 4-5 laps, staying with the B class full race spec DC5 ORC Integra Type R on S-tyres. He’d gain 4-6 car lengths on me at the uphill straight with his close ratio gearbox, lighter weight and more power but I’d catch him up each lap on the Chicane and long sweeper. I felt chuffed knowing our road spec Prelude was quicker than the ORC full race spec car on the corners. Our handling felt spot on.
Then as the end of my stint was about due, I caught Blue leaf...

They knew their position in front of us was only 1 lap, so their driver immediately blocked me. For the first few corners where I tried to overtake, being faster – I thought perhaps he wasn’t doing it intentionally, but by the end of the second lap where he’d deliberately cut in front of me twice on the uphill straight and necessitated braking, I knew he was playing dirty. His driving was good, aside from the blocking – but this wasn’t racing, this was cheating! My head lights were on full beam and I was calling him a fucker in my helmet.
I’d stand on the horn entering corners, but he wasn’t paying any heed to the marshal’s blue flags, so I’d be inches from his rear bumper on the hairpins and once on the Chicane. Was kinda fun to see his car squirm all over the place as he desperately dived into gaps, where other cars were getting out of the way as we approached – but I stuck behind him headlights still blazing. One time as I tried to take him on the outside as he hugged the inside berm on the bottom left hairpin, he pushed me off the track. With each lap I got more determined.
I'd enter the bottom left hairpin inches from his back bumper, almost on the verge of hitting him Eventually, on about the 4th lap of this fight I tricked him, got alongside as got to the top of the hill and dived into the top hairpin. He couldn’t have blocked – all he could do was take a wider corner & make way for TGR which had the racing line. Our team had been watching Blue Leaf’s antics from the pit wall and Alex had commented, “Oh, I bet Miguel’s pissed…!!” the lap before I took him. Once I was past, I made up a lot of space on the chicane and lost the Primera. That was probably about the time I did a 1:09.5 - our car's fastest lap yet. We'll see when the Traqmate footage is uploaded.


I'd had to avoid not only the Primera's rump but a couple of spinning cars in front of me and one virtually standstill green Civic crawling up the hill as I overtook the Westfield earlier. No mishaps with our car.

But now my time was up and the reserve fuel light was coming on. I felt a bit of fuel starvation. Time for Mike!
As we changed drivers and did another super quick pit stop – I warned him of Blue Leaf’s dirty tactics...

There will be video footage…(soon). Should be good to watch, especially the fights with Blue leaf. Perhaps this is what touring car racing can be like.. So aggressive!

I had (amicable but firm) words with the entire Blue Leaf team after the race. I don’t think they’ll try those tactics again as next time they know we’ll bash their car or make a complaint!
They’re an excitable, dedicated younger team that’s done well – who were just too attached to keeping their position – and we all know what it’s like to get over excited. That’s cool.
I congratulated them on their driving, but told them what they did wasn’t racing – but was dangerous and politely asked them not to do it again next time.
Within a few minutes they conceded to realise what they'd done wasn't really fair racing. We didn’t lodge a complaint, or anything.
Our car only got a couple of scraped rims and easily removed dents on the front passenger side wing in the last stint... No cost to repair at all, which is a relief, considering we'd just had the rear quarter panel repaired. Their last driver who’d hit our car came over after the race to make sure our car was OK and apologised again. Good lad.

We started 17th on the grid, with 14 B class cars in front of us and ended 7th overall and 3rd in class, 2 laps behind the Blue Leaf Primera… After colliding with them, our car’s steering was misaligned from the impact & brakes wore to the metal soon afterwards - Had they played fair, we’d probably have caught them… or got much closer to getting 2nd place. But it didn’t matter – we got a Podium finish and had the biggest smiles on our faces.

Team Gaijin Racing’s been causing waves and people have begun to pay attention as we’ve had two podiums in the last 3 races (4th in the 12 hour, we missed 3rd by 23 seconds!!) When we started in this race series a little over a year ago we had an ill-handling Prelude and were about 5 seconds a lap slower, so the car’s really improved a lot.
We've got plans to improve the car further over winter & if we're successful I think next year TGR will be capable of 1.08's, which is very, very fast for a street registered class N/A car, but will pretty much be the end of development of the Prelude - within the rules. We intend for our car to become the quickest in the road registered N class. It’s not all about car performance - it’s also about pit strategy, refueling speed, reliability & of course driver skill.

The team will race again at the end of November, but I'll sit this one out.
Hopefully we can all meet before the race and have a session to coach the rest of the drivers and get each to the level where they're capable of doing consistent 1.10 laps. That would make TGR very hard to beat. Go for it lads!