Honda Malaysia hosts SUPER GT 2007 Party

No. 18 TAKATA NSX

The first team my group had a chance to interview was the No 18 TAKATA NSX team. Both the team drivers and the team manager was in attendance. As this was the first session, it was rather slow and I could only thought of 1 obvious question which was what happened in Fuji, the previous race before Sepang. In that race, No 18 TAKATA actually qualified on pole but finished the race way at the back of the grid. It was revealed that the car developed mechanical troubles in that race. The safety car came out late in the race, and when the race was restarted, the No 18 TAKATA NSX car developed gearbox problems. This was what destroyed an otherwise good race.

No 8 ARTA NSX

The next team that we had a chance to interview was the No 8 ARTA team. In the past two years, No 8 ARTA has been supremely competitive here in Sepang, qualifying at or near the front for both 2005 and 2006 and winning the 2006 race. So the obvious question would have been whether they had expected to win again this year. Of course the answer would have been rather obvious. However, a rather more important question was to ask them about the effect of the weight 'penalty' they will be carrying into the Sepang race. Because they qualified P2 and won that race, they went into the following race, Round 3 at the Fuji circuit with a 65kg weight 'handicap'. With the cars so closely matched, this amount of weight handicap would have a significant impact on the car's speed.

Ralph Firman fielded my question. He pointed out what I missed out which was that while they did carry 65kg into the Fuji race, they did not race well in that race and finished in P9 (Ralph Firman mentioned P8 at the interview but it was actually P9). This will 'earn' them a 20kg reduction in the weight handicap so they will not be carrying 65kg but 45kg instead. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that this will still have an impact on the car's pace in the Sepang race.

This of course ties in to who they are expecting to be their main competitor this year. In the past two years, it was Richard Lyons in the Nismo Nissan who was their strongest competitor, grabbing the win and delegating them into P2 in 2005 though failing to repeat that feat in 2006 and finishing just behind in P2, after a closely fought race.

Ralph Firman pointed out that in terms of closest competitor, they actually see it in two different angles. For the overall championship, i.e. for this season, they actually view the No 22 and 23 Nismo Nissan 350Zs (No 23 is driven by Richard Lyons) as their main contender but for the Sepang race itself, they do not see the No 22 as their main contender. This is because Lyons in his No 23 Nismo 350Z actually won the last race at Fuji and consequently will be carrying a weight penalty of 50kg - 5kg more than No 8 ARTA into the race. Instead, they think their main contenders will be their 'team-mate', the No 18 TAKATA NSX. This is because the No18 will not be carrying little or no weight handicap into the race and so is expected to be very fast at Sepang.

No 100 Raybrig Kunimitsu NSX

The No 100 Kunimitsu team is founded by the most respected person in motorsports in Japan, the great Takahashi Kunimitsu. Because of his great influence in motorsports in Japan, the fact that he chose to field a Honda NSX is quite significant to Honda. In the interview session, I asked him what was the reason for his choice. His answer was a rather interesting 'people connection'. When Takahashi Kunimitsu formed his team, it was in the early 1990s. Kunimitsu himself have more or less been a 'Honda man' for some years and consequently he had good relationships and 'connections' with Honda. As Honda had launched the NSX recently then, Kunimitsu decided it would be a very competitive car for his campaign in the then JGTC (Japan GT Championship). His faith in the car has been unwavering over the years and the No 100 Raybrig Kunimitsu car has always been the Honda NSX. Kunimitsu of course also campaigned very successful with the NSX in the French 24 hours of Le-Mans race, in the mid-1990s, using the Kunimitsu NSX in the GT2 class. This actually culminated with a class win in 1996. For this year, Kunimitsu's team is actually the leading NSX team in Super-GT just outside of the two factory cars.

No 17 Rolling Stones Real

Of the five teams, the No 17 Real team is this year's newcomers to the Super-GT to field a Honda NSX. Of the teams, they were also unique in being the only team to answer their questions in english, as their team manager Hitoshi Iyoki is quite good in it. The team was formed and owned by their main driver Katsutomo Kaneishi who used to co-drive the No 8 ARTA car.

The obvious question for the team was of course their rationale for choosing the Honda NSX for their Super-GT campaign. The response was that the NSX was actually the car of choice of their team owner, obviously a preference he developed from his days at the No 8 ARTA team.

I asked the team how was Honda's support to them given that they are a customer team and more importantly, they are new. Their answer was summarized with an emphatic 'very good !'. Besides delivering a package (car, engine, gearbox, suspension) already well integrated and well tuned, Honda also frequently contributed ideas and important technical support during testing. In fact, Honda's R&D engineers from Tochigi were often on-site during testing days to give immediate support. This is great testament to the level of commitment Honda provides to their customer racing team (and indicative of the level of support they are giving to Aguri Suzuki's SAF1 team in Formula-1).

A rather interesting part of the interview session was the enthusiasm shown by the team's chief engineer Kazuyoshi Miura whom obviously is a great rock-and-roll music fan and especially a fan of the most commercially successful pop group in the history, the Rolling Stones (the mighty Beatles comes in second in terms of overall commercial success). Kazuyoshi asked if any of us in the media group are rock-and-roll or Rolling Stones fan. This prompted me to asked the team for the reason why they chose 'Rolling Stones Real' as their team name and Kazuyoshi was quick to answer that they hope to reach out to the huge amount of Rolling Stone fans in Japan with their team.

32 EPSON

The primary question to the No 32 EPSON team was whether they are aware that the Sepang track was re-surfaced just prior to the race. Official practise for Super-GT is Friday so at the time of the interview, no-one have had a chance to take their car on the track yet so they couldn't really answer the question.