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Conemasters International Gymkhana Series Round 4@ Sepang International Circuit 16th Dec 2012

After clinching 3 consecutive first place finishes at the Conemasters International Gymkhana Series, it would appear that the odds of me winning the final round of this series would be appear pretty slim; not only were the level of  competitors  getting higher but also the fact that Jane and I were across the ocean ,in east Malaysia doing the Petronas X track tour .

We  were only scheduled back on the day after the competition but  by some means or rather , we were able to get a flight back on the day of the competition.The earliest flight out was at 10am and that would give us an estimated time of arrival of  approximately 12pm , factor in the luggage retrieval , custom clearance and transport from the airport to Sepang Circuit, would mean that we could make it to the competition at 1pm. I called Ben Loh, the organiser, and was given the assurance that though the event starts at 9am, timed runs were only done after lunch which was about 2.00pm. This would mean that I wouldn’t have the luxury of having practice and have to dive straight into the competition. With an average of 6 runs,based on the previous rounds, where only a single best run is taken,not being able to practice did not bother me much.

So Jane and I drove our cars and had it parked at Sepang International Circuit before flying off to East Malaysia for the Petronas tour . This will enable us to have the cars there  when were arrive back from the Tour and not waste precious time getting our cars and driving it to Sepang.

photo by Konmei Motorsport

Thankfully everything went on as  planned on the event day ; the flight  arrived in LCCT airport on  time and we got to the track by 12.45pm. To our relief , there were still competitors practicing and we both managed to get enough runs to get the course down.

photo by Hei Snap

The course was fairly easy to remember and basically made full use of the whole paddock parking  5 and 6. So there were alot of straights in between each cone formation which made traction  coming out of them essential to get the best possible time.

 

photo by Ridehunters

This appeared to be fairly easy as  the car seems to hook up rather effortlessly , which was attributed to the 245/40/17  GT Radial Champiro HPY tyres I was using on all four corners! The thing about the HPYs are they tend to work just as well on low tyre temperature which a lot of the Gymkhana drivers where struggling with when using semi’s or other UHP tyres as the wait for their runs usually causes the tyres to cool down below its optimum temperature. Our experience with the HPY tyres were only in drift application and that was  only in the wet which they work exceptionally well  but I was  amazed with its performance during grip events and strongly recommend them  to those shopping for a tyre that does it all!

 

We also managed to test the tyres out in the wet as it started to rain towards the end of the event and as expected the HPY asymmetric tyre design with its superior wet performance had me running 2 secs faster than the other competitors and only towards the end my wet time was beaten merely by 0.4 sec by a competitor running on a 4WD drive train

 

Photo by Hei Snap

Jane was running on fairly similar set up but with a narrower 235/45/17  GT Radial HPY tyres  in front and held 4th position strongly till the end of the event.

 

Photo by Ridehunters

Once again, I had won the another Conemasters International Gymkhana series , which makes it 4 in a row ,a feat I’m fairly proud of as I am considered fairly new in this genre of motorsport and  had the opportunity to go against my peers and ‘sifus’ who I believe are the creme of the crop in the Auto cross/Gymkhana scene.The credit should go to all the those who had guided me and fed me with tips and information to raise my game. Not to forget to Heap Joo and GT Radial for making those kick ass tyres that gave me the upper hand against the other competitors .

Photo by PhotoMeisterCHEAKAJANE :p

RESULTS

RWD Category

1st ARIFF JOHANIS AHMAD Team Sync Optima GT Radial

2nd Abdul Hafiz Team WHITELINE

3rd Mickey Teoh

4th Azrina Jane Team Sync Optima GT Radial

 

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.

 

Photo by Kurazevents

 

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.

 

Photo by Kurazevents

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

Photo by Peter Low

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 .

Photo by Peter Low

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.

Photo by Speed Sniper

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.

Photo by Speed Sniper

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.

Photo by Speed Sniper

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

 

 

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 !!

 

Petronas Xtrack Nationwide Roadshow in Malaysia 2012