S1K: Team AMC-CBT Ignition.My Suzuki Swift Race Report

Given the excitement and last-minute build-up of the Team AMC-CBT Ignition.My Suzuki Swift Sport that I raced, you would be expecting a whole lot of drama during the event itself but surprisingly, the little Swift Sport is a well-built car as standard, and any trouble that we had in the race was self-induced! Read on..

Regulations dictate that the quickest driver in Qualifying would start the race, so it was with certain trepidition that the honour would fall to me. After the usual preliminaries and National Anthem, we headed off for the rolling-start. The Green Flag was waving, and off we went!

The team qualified 48th out of 54 cars, which is a Long Way Back, as final starting position is based on a system whereby they calculate the mean-average qualifying time of all drivers. But I made a killer of a first lap and by the end of it, I was 37th! Woohooo!!

Those years of MSS racing in the underdog Old Bill MatSpeed-Satria Super1600 paid off: down the front straight for the first time, I was on the left-hand side, and looking ahead I saw that everyone else was forming 2 – 3 car lanes heading into Turn 1. But there was a lot of space still empty on the far right down the inside, so what the heck I dived across the track over to the far right, over the pitlane exit’s white line (hahah!!) and braked late and hard and squeezed myself in!
It’s an old trick… basis is that once I put my nose into that space ahead of the other guy, like it or not they’re going to have to slow down and let me in or risk an accident!

I stayed on the outside of T2, and on acceleration up to T4 there’s no way I was going to overtake anyone (admittedly we only had 134hp @ the wheels which is piss-all next to 160hp @ the wheels that the VTECs do!) but being on the outside of T2 meant I was on the inside of T3 and for T4 too. So once again, I saw 2 lanes forming for T4, I just went right down the inside, put my nose in, and everyone backed off!

Exiting T4 I stayed far right, was on the outside of some EK9 for T5 but held on, which lead me to be inside on T6 and there I stayed, protecting my line into T7-8 and making it stick. Into T9, again I simply went far inside, and stuck my nose where the other’s didnt like it to be, and it was at this point that I overtook Aaron Lim in the Satria Neo.

Aaron and I actually stayed together for the whole first stint. We fought hard during Lap2 and Lap3, where I noticed he was fighting bad understeer, and he was taking some very defensive lines which allowed me to latch on behind him down the long straights. At this point we were doing 2m48 and 2m49 laps.

The Swift Sport kept on ticking like a Swiss-watch!

At the end of Lap3 he locked up and smoked it up braking for T15. I was already sniffing down the inside so what the hell, took the opportunity to dive in. But alas!! He closed the door as we reached the apex, and “bamm!!” my right front rolled into his left door, and my side-mirror turned inwards, leaving me with no RHS rear vision throughout the rest of the drive.

It was actually a lot worse, I just didn’t know it: the long wheel nuts that we were using on the fronts ended up getting bent, all 5 of them! Khaidi and I actually knew from experience that this was a possiblility and informed the crew to use short OEM nuts, but they preferred the long ones on the front as it made wheel changes quicker, as it would be easier to pop the airgun onto the long nuts. So we only ran short OEM nuts on the rear wheels. Well pfffttt so much for that!

After that incident, I slowed down slightly on the front straight to give Aaron about 2-seconds of space, so that we wouldn’t end up “dogfighting” and could focus on chasing those ahead.

As you can see from the lapchart (here!), on Lap 8 I caught up and overtook him, diving down on the brakes into T1. And that’s a little story I have about the Swift: the saga of the brakes!!

We bought RM 10,000 worth of shit from Singapore the week before (thanks Henry and RCA!!) including a set of slotted Project Mu front rotors, and 2 sets of Project Mu HD 550C pads.

The first set of pads lasted 27 laps of testing on the Tuesday night before the race.

The 2nd set of pads lasted 11 laps: free practice on Thursday morning, and then my Qualifying lap on Thursday afternoon! There’s a pic I took of em, put em up on Facebook. Ridiculous. Right down to the metal! I nearly went straight off at the end of the front straight after my 2nd flying lap during qualifying!

Right down to the metal!

Luckily we had also bought 2 sets of Endless CCR pads, which had to be cut down to size. We fitted these for the race and they were excellent, didn’t need to be changed at all!

And the Endless CCR were phenomenal!!! I could brake down at 60m for T1, which I put to good use when I was dogfighting with the other cars. Brake hard-hard-hard in a straightline but head towards the apex early, then swap to my left foot and maintain the braking with right foot on the accelerator slightly, to keep the fronts from locking up and the rear pivoting. Nice, real nice. And that’s how I took Aaron!

But next up was Zoggee, who slowly but surely caught up in his AE101. Finally he was upon me but hey.. it’s racing right? I didnt make it easy for him, and it took 1 lap smelling my fumes and then I decided ‘what the heck just let him through it’s a long race’ and so I left the door open into T5 and he went past.

Short lived, Aaron was on my ass again and we circulated nose-to-tail for many laps… until Hiroko came into the picture. Darn.. the Team Axle Satria Neo she was driving was just so much quicker down the straights!!! She went past at the start of Lap9 but I outbraked her into T1 and kept her in my wake for another lap. All good things come to an end though and there was no way I was going to keep it up and sure enough, the next time we headed down the front straight she just flew right on by and I had to let her go.

To Faisal’s hilarious surprise at some point when he came by to unlap himself into T15, the brakes came up again: I gave him ample space, knew it was him driving, and then I was thinking to myself “Whoaa when the fuck is the fella gonna brake laa??”. Funny, coz I literally saw him turn his helmet and smile at me… and then he out-braked himself and went smoking past hahaha!! But after that he caught up and I let him by, no point holding up my Partner!

Back to the wheel nuts: when we decided to change the fronts after the 2nd stint, 50 laps and 2hr 28min into the race… all the studs were bent! This was of course thanks to me little bing-bang-boom with Aaron on Lap3. So our third driver Bakry went out for the 3rd stint with only 4 wheel studs, and we wasted about 15s in the pits trying to sort it out. Yes, yes… it was all my fault!

And 2 laps later he came back in, complaining of wobble. The boys quickly torqued the nuts down again and off he went, lapping in the 2m55s. Buck was lapping 6-7 seconds behind times that Khaidi and I were doing, but he was consistent and stayed out of trouble, which was a great effort with 54 cars circulating on-track.

My 2nd stint in the car was around 4pm – 5pm. Dark clouds had amassed and within 5 laps there was some splatter on the windshield at T1 – T4, and at T10 – T14. Typically Sepang, other parts of the circuit were completely dry!

It was at this point that you would see the less experienced drivers slow down, but I found out that by and large the pace could be maintained with no worries. It was great though, as the drizzle and clouds kept the temperatures down and it was less tiring on the driver! During my first stint I was coming down the back straight on the far left hand side, staying within the shadow of the Grandstand, just to keep everything cool! It was so hot, the soles of my OMP racing shoes melted off, and the boys had to glue it back together with Dunlap CA haha!!

I had made it up to 12th overall during my 2nd stint, and when I handed it over to Khaidi at 5pm, they did another front tyre change and whoopss.. this time more time wasted and Khaidi went out with only 3 wheel nuts on!!! Man, he was pretty unhappy and threw a t-shirt at me when he got back exclaiming, “Screw you Adian, I told you to take it easy at the start!” hahaha..

As evening fell it was Bucky in the hot seat again, but he was slower now, doing 2m58s and 2m59s. So Darul (our Head Timekeeper) did some calculations, and with exactly 25 laps left in the race the team called him in, and I would max out my driving time and bring the car all the way to the flag! No tyre change: just fuelled up and off I went!

I stuck to 2m48s – 2m50s in the dark, at first having a great dice with the Team Axle car again.. dunno who was driving.. Pippa? Or that Hongkie, Frank Yee? Whoever it was, we were trading places several times over a lap: He/She would get by on the long straights, and I would take him/her back in the braking. T1, T4, T9, T15.. But finally I made it past and made a huge effort to pull a small gap, and then left them behind. Admittedly I broke Team Orders and was forced to use 2nd gear at T1-T2 and T15 in order to pull that initial gap!

We were right in the heat of the action!

From then on it was all about keeping it together right till the end. There was some drama though: coming up to overtake car No 5 (an EK9) the guy was quick down the straights but slow in the corners.. not so slow that I could get past, but just slow enough that it’d bug me as I’d catch up and then he’d pull away down the straights, and I’d have to adjust my braking and cornering lines so that I wouldn’t knock into him.

Anyway, after 2 laps behind I was determined to get past as we caught up to another slow-cornerer-fast-on-the-straight EG6. I thought I’d try do it on the outside of T6, so got a good exit from T4, kept it tight at T5, then swung out at the transition for T6. Of course I ended up on the marbles, and the car was sliding everywhere and couldn’t make it. Exiting T6 I crossed over to the inside for T7, but as I did so EK9 also pulled out to try a move on EG6. So heck I was carrying to much speed there was no way I was gonna let it go, and moved further down the inside to maintain position. Again the brakes came into play, as EG6 braked first, EK9 tried to outbrake me but couldn’t, and slammed into EG6′s rear and both started to spin around on trajectory to eclipse the apex of T7, which I was heading for! Damn.. braked harder, turned early, massaged the handbrake, and juuust managed to get past with all 4 tyres on the grass and kerb of T7. So close to the end, so much drama!!

After that it was pretty straight forward. Faisal went by again on the inside to T12.. I saw a fast-approaching car dipping it’s nose on the inside for T12 and thought “what the heck cant block at T12 haha”. Cornering speed between the Celica and my Swift was the same, but on the long-straights the difference in power was very apparent!

As the the pitboard counted down the laps, I just made sure I kept it together to bring it home. The last 7 laps or so I was running out of brakes, I think the rears this time, as the discs and pads were the same ones from the Suzie’s previous outting at the MME in 2008!!! hahaha.. brake too hard and too late and the back would lock.

As I drove past the chequered flag I thought “Phew!! Made it to the end!!”
It might not seem like a big deal, but when I think back… only 2 weeks prep time and all… it’s quite an achievement for the whole Team and crew involved!

The boss for Aiman Motor, Che Azizudin, was esctatic, even insisting to hold out the pit board himself during the last 10 laps!!! As I parked the car at the end, he was the first to open a can of 100-Plus over the pit barrier and spray me with it!

“Next year,” he said, “we’ll start earlier and have a proper budget!”.

I guess I better start making friends with Monster Tajima!