Narita Dogfight | Kunihiko Bando's The B-A-R Joyo RSC300 Toyota Soarer Rebuild 2: Testing at Motegi and Tsukuba Circuit.

On Sunday, February 11th, I accompanied Bando and the B-A-R RSC300 team to Mobility Resort Motegi (formerly Twin Ring Motegi), as they continued the shakedown of the new Soarer build. The week prior, at Hero Sinoi Circuit, they were successful in their first running of the car without any major issues; including the ABS trouble they were having in Part 1. Motegi would give them a chance to test the engine setting at full boost, at much larger venue. This was the first time seeing the car fully assembled and seeing the fit and finish of all the panels was impressive. The RSC300 is truly a world class build. During the first session, Bando came in without completing a lap due to engine issues. The problem ended up being a fault cam angle sensor. Although Sakai was able to replace the sensor, the session ended up being cut short with only a few full laps being completed. The data was downloaded and used to set the car up for the next session. Bando reported that the car was very twitchy in the rear during braking and corner exit, so they realigned the car with added rear toe. On the first lap of the second session, Bando was able to full throttle the car at the higher speed straights, only to discover that at speed, the front aero began to interfere with the track surface; something they couldn’t see at the smaller Hero Sinoi circuit. The temporary remedy was to pull the front dampers and add bump stop shims, as they didn’t have heavier front springs yet. The shims weren’t enough, unfortunately, and even with the splitter end plates uninstalled, the front splitter made enough downforce to scrape on the straights. The next morning at Tsukuba, the team had swapped front springs for 50k rates and had the car aligned and ready to for TC2000. Several 55 and 54 second laps later, they had gathered even more data. The settings for Attack Tsukuba Championships this past weekend, his 3rd drive at Tsukuba in the new car, allowed Bando to clock a 53.7 – a range that he was more comfortable with given his previous 52 second lap times. With only 1 week of testing complete, the car is already showing very positive signs of improvement. Without a doubt we’ll be seeing Bando get closer to 51 second lap times soon.