Category Archives: Autokhana

Conemasters International Gymkhana Challenge Round 2 @ Sepang International Circuit 22 July 2012

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Photo by Noelle Yg

After winning the RWD category  the  first round of Conemasters International Gymkhana Challenge, I was  obviously eager to defend  my title for this second round. Word got out to Jane that I had so much fun during the first round that she decide to join this round too.

 

Upon hearing this, organiser extraordinaire, Ben Loh decided to  spice things up putting out a poster with both Jane and I on it with the caption ” Will Hubby Let Wifey Take The Win?”

Well everyone knows the answer to that, after all they don’t call me the “Boss” for nothing!

photo by Vaux RS

Jokes aside; the weather that day was wetter than an otters pocket, which was perfect as I ironically do better  in the wet than in the dry.

One thing I like about  how Conemasters operates was  ;We were given multiple timed runs within an allocated time for our category, which was unique for autocross/gymkhana events here. However despite posting the best time, I was relentless in improving my time as I was going against the best RWD competitor in Malaysia. With the likes of Mickey, Chris, Hafiz and Vijay, I knew that my time could easily be toppled at any given moment and had to continue to strive for the best time I could muster.

Jane with her drift set up competition car was struggling to get grip throughout the course. Though not being able to post a good time , her runs were spectacular to say the least.

Photo by Noelle Yg

The weather soon cleared up and it was soon scorching hot and it became more of a nail biting experience for me as my other competitors time were beginning to improve thus inching their way into the time I had set.

Photo by Noelle Yg

To my relief,  I clinched the  fastest RWD title for the 2nd consecutive time by the skin of my teeth  from  Mickey Teoh!

 

Well all I have to say Conemasters rocks!! From the swags to the pit girls to everything , it just rocks..Bring on round 3 Ben!!!

 

 RESULTS

RWD Category

1st Place ARIFF JOHANIS AHMAD Team Sync Optima

2nd Place MICKEY TEOH

3rd Place CHRIS CHONG

Most Spectacular Award

AZRINA JANE ABDULLAH Team Sync Optima

GRA round 2 @ Bukit Jalil Stadium Car Park B 17th June 2012

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Photo by Pohkinz Chu

Like   Formula 1 to racing or D1 Gran Prix  to drifting ,Ian Khong’s GRA events has been long regarded as the pinnacle of Autocross/Gymkhana event in Malaysia. Paving the way since 2005, GRA had set the standard in this  genre of motorsport with their state of the art timing devices and their real time wi-fi broadcasting time sheets to their professional crew, officials and challenging course set up.

photo by Extreme Fotowerkz

I am proud to say  that Jane and I was introduced to autocrossing/gymkhana when we joined our first GRA event in 2009 and though it was humbling experience, to me to at least, we were hooked!

Photo by Pohkinz Chu

The following years our involvement in the sport  dwindle due to clashing of dates of drift events/competitions  and only now we were able to find time to participate.

Photo by Pohkinz Chu

Round 2 of the GRA 2012 series was held at Bukit Jalil Stadium car park, known for its sandy surface we both knew that gaining  traction was essential to clock a good time for this course.

Ian had created  a fairly huge course for this round which made full use of  the whole of car park B space so it was obvious  speed  woulds also plays an important role which will amount to nothing if the rear tires does not hook up.

Our  category was scheduled to begin at mid day which was fortunate as this  gave us ample time to study the  course   and most importantly  catch up with old friends we had not seen for a while.

photo by Extreme Fotowerkz

Before we knew it , it was already time for our category to begin . As I was warming the car up and doing some shift light rev limit adjustment, disaster struck. Well  I wont get into it in detail( Click on “HERE” to read about it) .

 

Basically I had my oil filter come undone which resulted in oil engine oil spilling out of the engine onto the tarmac. This cause me to missed 2 timed runs while waiting for my mechanic to come with the engine oil and ‘correct’ filter.

With only 4 runs left, I totally screwed the first run and managed to only do a couple of decent runs which got me a 6th in my category. I doubt  I would have done any better even with any additional run given as the car did not feel as sharp after a few adjustments I had made prior to this event. The car was understeering into the corners and wheel spinning excessively out of them. Having those ahead of my standing with similar times showed that I was not the only one suffering.

Photo by Pohkinz Chu

The same goes for Jane whom, finished 8th, who was complaining the lack of traction her car had through out the course. Jane however did win the fastest female award .

Photo by Patrick Photograph

As it was my birthday a couple days before, I was pleasantly surprised to have given a birthday song treatment and the fastest birthday boy trophy for this event.

Despite our shortcomings, Jane and I both , as always had a good time and we both vow to come back for the next round !!

RESULTS

Class OD

6th Place ARIFF JOHANIS AHMAD Team Sync Optima

8th Place AZRINA JANE ABDULLAH Team Sync Optima

Fastest Female Award: AZRINA JANE ABDULLAH

 

 

Ultra Racing Super GT Gymkhana @ Sepang International Circuit 9th, 10th June 2012

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In conjunction with the Super GT held in Sepang, Ultra Racing once again played host to a Gymkhana event co organised by Jeet’s Wheelspin Motorsport and Akina’s Kuraz Events.Held at the Sepang’s Circuit Main entrance parking space, this two day event attracted over 40 participants .

A two-up format were used , where two cars were to compete on mirror courses, head to head ,then swap courses to for the second run. Both runs were timed and recorded without any elimination as drivers were allowed to continue regardless the results of their two up battles. So essentially the two up battle were for exhibition purpose as this was a timed event.

A mirror course is basically an identically opposing   course which is more confusing than it sounds.  As this was the first time I had ever competed in an event  such as this, I had totally screwed up my 2nd run as I was too distracted with what my opponent was doing rather than concentrating on my own run.

As the event started passed mid day on day one, we only had time for a  single timed run which was fortunate for Jane as she was not able to make it on the first day!

On the 2nd day, Jane was able to join us and  became my heads up partner through out the day. Anyway, I was chuffed at the fact that I was leading in the RWD category and was 2nd in the open category but on the final two runs, I was knocked out of the top position by 4 participants in the RWD category!!!

Anyway, Jane won the Fastest Female award…

while I got 2nd in the open Category

 

RESULTS

2nd place  Open Category  ARIFF JOHANIS AHMAD

Fastest Female Award : AZRINA JANE ABDULLAH

Conemasters International Gymkhana Challenge @ Sepang International Circuit 20th May 2012

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Most of you guys were wondering; what had happened to me during the Malaysian leg of the Formula Drift Asia. I didn’t compete nor did I turn up for any of the three days it was held on. My sponsorship for the event did not go through making me unable to join. I was disappointed as  this is the first time I have not competed in this prestigious drift event.As the reason for me not making my appearance to the event ;Drifting is a great spectators sport but I make a lousy spectator so instead I had spent time preparing my car and  joined  the Conemasters series held in conjunction with ZTH’s Time to Attack event.

Having done 2 other autokhana/gymkhana events prior to this, I had a rough idea what needs to be done to  the S13, Blackie, and had spent abit of time prior to the event, tweeking the car’s set up. Thanks to Kian for working  on the car  the whole day ,only to see me coming back the next day to do more adjustments.  The car is far from perfect but it handles a lot better now than before

I arrived at Sepang, bright and  a bit too early that day as the organisers  were still in the process of setting up the course . Further more I was the only competitor there as no one had arrived yet..

However ,the organiser , Ben Lo being the  kind soul he was , took the trouble  to entertain me and also brought me around the course while I waited for the rest to arrive.

Soon  the participants slowly  made their appearance and we were  then allowed to go out on our practice laps.

 

Conemasters have a  different way of running their events where participants have an unlimited amount of practice runs within the given time as compared to  single practice runs by other organisers.

Our timed runs also worked the same, where we are divided into our respective categories  and were given unlimited runs within the time to each category.This gave the participants ample  time to experiment and improve on our runs !

Being divided into different categories with its own time allocations gave us time to hang out, relax…

goof around….

and also enjoy the side activities ..:)

However, it was all business when it was time to compete. Most notably were the AWD category where we see their times going down after each successive run!

The cool thing I like about autocrosser are they are always willing to share and help other competitors, two of the participants who help me the most were also my competitors fighting in the same category, Hafiz and Mickey which ended up sharing the podium with me!!

It goes without saying that  I really did enjoy myself and was pleasantly  surprised when I clocked the fastest time in the Rear Wheel Drive Category and 2nd fastest overall.

And the icing on the cake was the swag I had gotten for being champion; A car stereo player from Clarion, Shoes from DC, Motor Oil from Martini racing and vouchers and coupons from other sponsors!!

Many thanks to  Ben lo and the crew of Conemasters!!

RESULTS

RWD category

1st   Ariff Johanis Ahmad Sync Optima

2nd  Abdul Hafiz Salleh

3rd  Mickey Teoh

Overall

1st Mitch Chong Strawberry Fields

2nd Ariff Johanis Ahmad Sync Optima

3rd Mike Ng

Cyberkhana Grand Final 2011 – 17 September

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Ariff and myself just got back from 1 Sabah Drift Challenger 2011 event in Kota Kinabalu Sabah on the morning itself, I realized that I could squeeze in my time to participate this event. From the last Saturday Night Drift Missile party, I have my last pair of Blue Streak Stilettos that was already fitted on my black Missile 180sx. I would like to give it a try to understand the tire more in this event.

For some you may wonder how come I am not using Goodyear tires and instead Blue Streak. Blue Streak is still part of Goodyear but it is an imported line of private brand tires distributed through Goodyear.  

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce this tire since many of you are not aware of its existence.

Blue Streak Stilettos’ design has extra-large centre rib for better grip and the specially designed grooves are excellent for water evacuation.

They come from size 16” to 18”. And trust me, the price, you will be happy to hear it is a product that is value for money.

Size LSI
205/45R16 83V
205/50R16 87V
205/55R16 91V
225/50R16 92V
225/55R16 95V
205/40R17 80V
205/40R17 84V
215/40R17 83V
215/45R17 87V
225/45R17 91V
225/55R17 97V
235/45R17 94V
245/45R17 95V
225/40R18 88V
235/40R18 95V
245/40R18 93V

So I managed to get hold of our trusty tow truck drive to pick up my car and send it over to event venue in Cyberjaya. We got there in time before the official practice starts. The layout consists of tied-U-turn, donuts, figure eights and slalom. Pretty simple right? But going against some of the veteran driver like Mickey Teoh, Ee Yoong Chern, Johnson Tan and also the regular competitors, it is not easy to gain good time with my “testing” car.

The qualifying starts at about 6pm which gives me some time to take a rest in the truck (woke up 5am in the morning to catch the flight back from KK). I managed to get 7th placed which I will have to go against Dexter who drives a Nissan Skyline R32 RB 26DETT RWD!

Twin battles were the fun part as it is basically 2 cars going out together on their respective layout and whoever finishes the course layout first wins. This round was much easier compared to the previous Cyberkhana I joined as it was a mirrored layout. What it means is if you are on the right side of the course layout with a clockwise donut, after the switchover you will have to do the donuts anti-clockwise. This gets a bit confusing if you do not rehearse enough.

I managed to advance to Best 8 which I had to go against with Kevin Kong who drives a 260Z with RB engine too!

Anyway, here’s the twin battle chart. Kevin beat me just slightly ahead of me which I think I will have to learn to control my throttle when it comes to time trial. This means more practice and learning to do.

All in all, I had a great time and it is a relax environment, catching up with a group of friends and having a drive session together in a safe and controlled environment. And I took home 5th place !

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cyberjaya International Gymkhana Challenge Round 3, 26th June 2011

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A fun filled event participated by the who’s who of autocross/gymkhana in Malaysia like Mickey Teoh, Alvin, Johnson , Mitch and Adam was held in the Cyberjaya Sport arena parking space.

Unlike the traditional gymkhana event, drivers are required to go through qualifying where the top 8 fastest time  of the two catagories FF and FR/AWD are to go against each other in a heads up match. Both tackling mirror courses , side by side and switching over to decide the winner.

Jane , who qualified 5th fastest of the day had to go against veteren autocrosser , Johnson Tan which led to four re runs(!!) before Jane finally admitting defeat  due to an error on her figure 8 in the course!

Truly impressive considering the car she was driving was still in drift set up and she will definately be back for more!!

RESULT

5th Place AZRINA JANE ABDULLAH