From the Kyoto Animation Pits
Coming off the demoralizing first race weekend at Midfield, where the #42 team was disqualified for a technical violation, the crew was really looking forward to getting their act together at Suzuka, a favorite track of both driver and team.
Unfortunately the comedy of errors continued when the Clio Cup car was shipping mistakenly to the Suzuki headquarters in Japan instead of the Suzuka racetrack, and it took a few days to
take the GSX-R/4 out for a test drive sort out the misunderstanding.
By the time the car arrived at the track the team had only two days to prepare the car, of which one was wasted on standardized testing of the not-racing kind.
Luckily CCY was right at home at Suzuka, a track which he frequently raced in more powerul cars for fun, and so he was able to adapt to the combination quite quickly.
"There's definitely a lot of time left out on the track, especially compared to the times of some of the more competitive drivers, but it was still an intense and entertaining drive," he was quoted as saying. "The tires were going away near the end of the feature race, but a pit stop wasn't necessary at all. Definitely something that worked in my favor, considering the quick pace of some of the other cars."
"All in all, it's a fun track to drive at 9/10ths, but really hard to get the full 10/10ths out of."
His fastest qualifying split in the second sector was in the mid-1'47s, and he averaged a mid-2'14 lap in the races.