Last weekend saw the annual running of the TITC in Bangkok Thailand. With more than 300 entries this race is always one of the biggest and most important on road races for the year.

Most of the drivers come to this race really early for extra testing and practice, which makes this race even more competitive. Official free practice started on Thursday morning and was run in heat order. I ran the car the same as my final practice setup from during the week but with a slightly softer rear diff to help on power traction, the run was ok and a safe first run for the day. The controlled practice run later in the day was used for the reseeding of groups so I needed 2 clean runs and I didn’t want to make too big setup change. As the traction had come up I chose to thicken the diff to 10k and run a slightly stiffer spring. This helped with high speed steering but still I had some on power push. I ended the controlled practice 10th.

Qualifying was the best 3 rounds from 6 to count and we had 4 sets of the controlled tyre to use. During the first 2 rounds of qualifying I used fresh tyres but was only able to pick up a 10th and 14th in round. I felt like something was not quite right and a couple more changes were needed as the track felt like it had changed quite a lot from practice.

Switching back again to our trusted HPI Silver spring and as a precaution I also put in a new servo. This clearly made a difference and really helped for Saturdays 2 qualifying runs giving me the extra steering and bite that I had been missing the first 3 quali runs and I finished up 5th and 7th in round. This left the battle between me, Hara, Naoto and Charlie P for the final 10th A main spot during the last qualifying run on Sunday.

Sitting 10th over night my position in the main was not guaranteed but the others would need something special to push me down, but those 3 drivers all had new tyres for the final run and after a solid drive and some very unusual things happening on the last few laps of the top heat Hara got the 3rd in round he needed to push me down to a disappointing 11th.

The B main finals got 2 runs and it turned out that it would be the fastest times that would count to the overall position. I had Charlie P and current WC Naoto Matsukura lining up behind me. These 2 guys tangled in the first turn of B1 and I was able to pull away and win this final comfortably. On 3rd run tyres for the 2nd final I got loose off the line allowing Naoto and another car to slip past, which is the way it would stay until the end. Based on time my first main win in the high temps was only good enough for 3rd overall in the main.

Despite the unlucky 11th qualifying position this was the first showing of the production version PRO5 in Asia at the most important Asian race and it was great to see the big interest in our show car.