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| The MPTCC garage shows what a diverse group of cars compete in the class. The class featured Acura RSX's, TSX's, Honda S2000's, an Infiti G20 and a Nissan Sentra, all turned lap times of less than a second apart. |
The race weekend started with some interest. Since Dai Yoshihara had missed the 2nd round of the MPTCC season due to Formula D commitments, it was possible for Martin Gonzales or Richard Ho to win the championship if Dai did not finish both races and they performed well.
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| The MotoIQ A and B teams on pregrid. |
In Saturday’s race this looked like a possibility. Dai looked strong out of the box as the MotoIQ team had been working overtime to improve the venerable NASA veteran Dog car to make it more compatible with MPTCC rules.
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| Wes Dumalski works the MotoIQ Fluke thermal imager. The high tech device was a hit at Vegas night clubs where experiments were conducted and for analyzing engine, brake, and heat exchanger effectiveness. |
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| The Dog Car undergoes in between round checks at the hands of Costa Gialamas, Chris Marion and Mike Kojima. Surprisingly Dai declared the car perfect right off the trailer and only minor changes were made to tire pressure during the weekend. |
The team had worked with Jim Wolf Technology to extract another 20 hp from the naturally aspirated SR20DE engine to get the car closer to the power to weight limit. More improvements were made to the car's aerodynamics to both reduce drag and improve front and rear downforce.
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| The APD Acura TSX driven by Brian Smith proved to be the car to beat all weekend long. Packing 50 more hp over the Cal Speedway round, the TSX suddenly became deadly competitive. |
The improvements must have worked as Dai was able to grab pole position with little practice and just a few qualifying laps. Second on the first row was Brian Smith in the HPD Motorsports Acura TSX which had just been reworked for a jump of 50 hp from the previous MPTCC round.
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| APM's Richie Ho proved that a new engine was all he needed to be a top runner. His previous engine had been run many times in several different racing series for 1.5 years and was really getting tired. |
