Tsukuba Super Battle 2011 - Revolving

One Revolution of TC2000 elapsed in '54.713. Too Slow!

As the Revolution TA-2 left the pit for it's first attempt, almost every eye was on the car.

I quickly headed up on the pit tower to get a few shots as I knew 3 laps wasn't enough time to get over to the other side of the track. Such is time attack photography.

This shot shows a bit more exhaust gas out the back on a hot lap. The car sits very low for positive ground effect.

You can't even tell the car is under FULL braking here. Spring compression is negligible.

The line here is setting up for the hairpin. The damp track resulted in less than impressive times (as far as the team were concerned) but still rewarded them with fastest open class car of the day. With 2 seconds in the track can we expect a 52 second lap from the car?

Again under full braking, the car is flat as is cornering, the car hardly rolls on it's suspension.

On a hot lap here, using ALL the road and ALL the ripple strips for maximum return.

I'm really looking forward to more times as the season progresses.

I'll finish my TSB 2012 posts with this inspirational shot. Brake lights a glow as the car heads around the inner hairpin at Tsukuba Circuit 2000.

Catch me if you can!

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Tsukuba Super Battle 2011 - 360 Degrees

Is a Revolution.  Since it's trip to Australia, this is the first chance I had to see the changes to the car up close .

Lets check some new details.

So I'll run around the car to show the changes. Aero has changed a lot. one of the first things you notice are the stacked canards at the front of the car. The lower one extends past the splitter quite far and a square end plate has been added.

A small clear plastic trim tab has been placed along the fender line so that it matches the super gt style of the RE-Amemiya car.

It should create a vortex past the mirror and along the side of the car to reduce drag in this area.

Craft Square mirrors are a well tested design.

The front ducting is also quite crazy.

The intricate bonnet has be setup to extract as much air as possible from the inter-cooler and the central duct feeds directly to the air filter.

Right beside that airbox is the huge GCG turbo. There are two tubes into this box. however.

Some more ducting. on the right you'll see the BOV hiding under the intercooler piping.

The engine really is very far back in this car.

More ducting.and a very rigid tube chassis up front.

Wastegate exits in this location in front of the door and there's some heat shielding here.

On the topic of heat, look at the exhaust.

Is this a semi blown diffuser or just a shielded exhaust.

An extra panel under the diffuser and small vanes extend from underneath in an attempt to tidy airflow.

  The wing is still the same super aggressive curve with gurney. I think we shall see some fast times in the dry.

 Inside remains the same awesome setup with hewland sequential.

Project Mu Calipers and brakes do the work and the new RAYS Re-30 Club Sport provide a foundation for the 295 hankooks to grip from.

bolted on and ready for action..

In the next post I'll show this beast in action.

the new livery is growing on me, but the raw carbon is missed.
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Tsukuba Super Battle 2011 - The Result.

 Tsukuba TC2000 played host to the Rev Speed Super Battle 2011. This event always brings the big guns out to fight for Tsukuba supremacy.

This day however, the weather would play a big part in the final outcome. Snow! Yes SNOW! at the start of the day meant temps were around zero. But the sun came out in the middle of the day to give an idea of what might be possible. But in the end a true time attack was not possible.

The early sessions were basically reserved for radial tyres and some sessions were all about creating a dry line with some entrants asked to circulate and create a dry line. There was a lot of drifting as cars struggled for traction.

I have some beautiful shots from this event. I was playing around with the DSLR, so you might see something different as I feature each of the main FD3s and some other competitors.

But for now here are the times. Remember these are on a wet track with only a semi-dry line. Revolution says there was 2 seconds in the track. So these times represent huge potential for smashing records within the year. Tyres again have raised the bar with many using two sets of super sticky compound in their main session. 1~2 laps of best performance.

Revolution TA2 - '54.713  (Best time ever 53.9)
Pan Speed T/A 2010 - '56.197
Pro Shop Screen D2 GT35 - '56.413
RE-Wing Street '57.651
Fujita Engineering Feed Advan FD3s 58.051
Pan Speed Street King '59.219
Pan Speed RX8 '59.741
Leg Motorsport RX8 1'03.847
R-Magic RX8 1'04.886
I's Factory RX8 1'05.367
Real Tech RX8 1'06.648

As the time attack season in Japan is only just getting started, you can expect some great times over the season.

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7's Day 2011 - Revolution Noir

Revo-tune's rx8 3 rotor NA monster.

This left hand drive Rx8 is an awesome machine. The sound is amazing! The revised Rx8 is a much better looking machine also. It's amazing how small changes can really effect a cars overall appearance.

Subtle bodywork at play here. Splitter , Craft Square mirrors, Carbon rear doors and other small enhacements get the car lower and meaner.

Aoki-san hardly gets time to rest at these days. modifying engine maps and extracting that extra performance. After each run, he can usually be seen checking digi-spice data for where the car can be quicker on the circuit.

Don't worry about the smoke. It's a rotary.

Silver roof is a mystery. I only noticed it in my pictures... Usually hard to check sooo many details on one day.

Screaming past the pit.

Into the hairpin. The car was running arount 1.01 on the day on S-tyres.

Sitting on the grid for the Hot Version Race, it was looking fast. New Rays RE-30 Club Sport look awesome.

You can see the Pan Speed Rx8 just behind, actually, just infront on the reverse grid. These cars run about the same speed.

 And finished in about the same place on the track.

A very well executed fast NA machine.

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