Petronas Xtrack Round 1: Pekan Pahang 27th Oct 2012
Gymkhana Fest
We have been so busy coming towards the end of the year that we had to miss out on a lot of events. However we did managed to squeeze in a few in between our tight schedule and we were glad that we did
STAR Motoring Gymkhana Competition@ Bukit Jalil 19th Sept 2012
This three day event was in conjunction with the STAR newspapers Auto carnival. The organisers had included a Gymkhana competition in its list of activities which includes a car show, ICE showoffs and race queen search etc. With the first 2 days reserved for beginners and newbies, the open competition was only held on the final day of the event. It was unfortunate that Jane was not able to make it to the event as she had prior arrangements she had to attend to.
The format of the competition was based on an accumulative time of two runs on mirrored courses. To make it visually exciting, they had the cars go head to head though the outcome of whom crosses the line first does not matter as it was a timed event.
I was fortunate to be paired together with Yoong as he is super fast in this discipline.And knew if I could keep pace with him I definitly post a fast time. Throughout the event I was able to match his speed but when it came to the slalom section, Yoong would leave me in his wake. Another fast driver ,Mickey Teoh, who is a veteran of this sport, managed to edge me out of the 2nd spot at the very last minute. Though disappointed with the third place finish I was glad I was able to take all this in as experience and would learn and work on my weaknesses.
RESULT
RWD Turbo category
3rd place ARIFF JOHANIS AHMAD Team Sync Optima
GRA Round 3 @ Sepang International Circuit Parking A 8th Oct 2012
Round 3 of the GRA series brought us to the Sepang course which is the fastest and the longest course in the GRA series. With more skillful drivers behind higher horsepower cars this year, I expected the competition to be fiecre .
The course had a mixture of slow corners with the high speed ones, which takes abit of analysing to connect them to be able to gain the quickest time. I had initial thought I had the gist of how how I should tackle the course but upon discussion with the rest of the more experienced autocrosses, I found out that I didnt even managed to scrape the surface of it. That with a set of not so grippy tires did not do me any favours when it came to my general classification standings but I did however placed 2nd in the RWD turbo category .
RESULTS
TURBO RWD Category
2nd place ARIFF JOHANIS AHMAD Team Sync Optima
ConeMasters International Gymkhana Round 3 @ SpeedCity KL 4th Nov 2012
Photo by Dennis Leong Photography
We had just completed a grueling Malaccan Petronas Xtrack event the day and had second thoughts about joining this event which was held on the next day. With the cars coming back late in the night and having to be unloaded from the trailers along with the tyres and equipment, this had meant that we would only get a handful of hours of sleep before having to head off to SpeedCity for the competition.However with the thought of me winning both of the previous rounds of the ConeMasters International Gymkhana series, I just could not resist to see if I could continue this winning streak in this event.
So with bleary eyes and aching muscles Jane and I made our way to SpeedCity for this 3rd round.
The thing I really like about the ConeMasters event is that everything is so relaxed and casual that you can’t help but have fun in them. So much so that our tiredness was soon forgotten as soon as we got there.
This round proved to be different as the course was designed more like an autocross event rather than a gymkhana event as there weren’t any donuts and slalom . A two up format was also adopted with both competitiors running on mirrored courses and then switching places and with that the accumulative runs were added. Hence making the result of the whom crosses the line first didn’t matter as it was still a timed event.
The only gripe everyone had was the course on paper did not look anything like what we had to compete on.It was totally confusing . So much so, that almost everyone had gotten the course wrong and was not able to post a time. One such victim of this was Jane whom unfortunately had a strings of wrong courses and then decided to stop when she experienced engine misfiring when it started to rain mid way into our first session
I ,too fell victim to the dredded misfiring when I drove into one of the huge puddle that scattered the place and had to limit my revs to only 5000rpm before having to upshift to keep the engine running smoothly.
Hoping to run again on the second session and get a timed run proved to be futile for Jane as the heavens open and poured what appeared to be the heaviest rain storm I had seen in years.
To my suprise ,it turned out that my 5000rpm rev limit runs on the first session was good enough to win in the RWD category and also clocking the fastest time of the day!
I’m totally stoked to be able to make it three times Champion in a row in this series. Cant wait for Round 4!!
RESULTS
RWD Category
1st place ARIFF JOHANIS AHMAD Team Sync Optima
DNF Azrina Jane Abdullah Team Sync Optima
SODA Advance Drift Session @ Mardi 13/10/2012
A cool video by ZakuMalaya on our little Advance Drift Session with the members of Drift Garage Singapore held earlier this month.
Petronas Xtrack Road Show Malaysian Tour 2012
We are proud to present to you :Team Petronas Primax GT Radial Sync Optima with the collaboration for logistic support and crew from Ignition.my
We will be doing drift demos and taxi rides in 10 different locations all around Malaysia . We had just completed the first round last Saturday in Pekan Pahang. Keep a look out for a video blog on it soon !!
Updates: August and Sept!!
Wow.. time surely flies when you’re having fun. So much so that I have totally lost track of the updates done on the blog. My sincere apologies.
The following are quick updates of what we have been up to these past two months!
Pirelli Cinturato Dealers Launch 4th and 5th August 2012
Sync Optima was commissioned by the Kit Loong , the distributors of Pirreli , to do a launch for their new line of Cinturato tires to their dealers. We had a fleet of cars which ranges from Myvis up to BMW 5 series being supervised by trained instructors for this event.
We had a dry and wet course set up done for the dealers to have a better understanding of the tires handling characteristics.
TGIF’s Fathers Day Competition sponsored by Castrol and YHI Yokohama 26th August 2012
In conjunction with Fathers Day, TGIF ran a competition that gave out free drift lesson to fathers . We were fortunate to be given the opportunity to introduce and teach two lucky winners the sport of Drifting.
This would not be made possible without the generous sponsors from YHI Yokohama and Castrol lubricants.
The day ended with an free open drift session to all the drifters present.
FederationD RacePOD Drift Series round 5 2nd September 2012
We were roped in judge for round 5 held at MIMC circuit in Malacca. The RacePod series is currently the most regular drift series here in Malaysia .
Participated by the finest drifters from Malaysia and also participants from Singapore and Indonesia, we are glad to be part of this series and will be taking a more active role in the future.
New lesson car: Skyline GTR 32 15th Sept 2012
Besides our trust worthy AE86 ,we have purchased a new platform for rental to be used during our Sync Optima Drift Academy lessons. And no, it is not a typo, but it is really a GTR 32. A rear wheel drive GTR running on SR20!! To add to the queerness , is this car is running on 15 inch wheels. I would have to say that this is the world’s first !
I’ve been testing it during SpeedCity’s saturday night sessions and I am glad to say that this car is ready to be rented! Please contact Jane at jane@syncoptima.com for rental rates!!