This weekend saw us return to Brands Hatch for the penultimate meeting of the 2021 Time Attack Championship. We knew we were in for an exciting weekend with a large crowd expected at the Go Japan show as well as nail-biting action in the final Tegiwa Type R Trophy meeting of the season too.

Not only did we have 2 cars providing plenty of action on track, we also had our trade stand setup too! Our BTCC DC5 was on display, which unsurprisingly went down a treat and drew in the crowds. We were also giving out flyers with an exclusive show discount too; this code doesn’t expire until Wednesday 30th, so if you’ve been lucky enough to pick one up then head over to our website now to use it.

FN2

With the recent unveiling of our freshly built FN2.0 earlier in the week, Luke was super excited to get back behind the wheel and have some fun in Time Attack. Equipped with 212 horsepower and a set of slicks, it was clear that he was going to have much more grip than power throughout the day.

Over the 4 sessions that took place, there wasn’t much more than a 55 second lap in the FN2, with consistent times being put in, a 55.264 was the fastest time that Luke could muster up. The car performed faultlessly and showed that you don’t need all the power in the world to be competitive!

K-Swapped Civic EK

It wasn’t all plain sailing for Mikey Birch and his pocket rocket Civic EK though. Eager to smash his PB from earlier in the season, Mike took to the track for his warmup session, but it didn’t go quite as planned. After the first lap, Mike went into Paddock Hill a little bit too quick with tyres that weren’t fully up to temperature. With the back end stepping out halfway down the corner, Mike quickly corrected the oversteer, but the car then snatched the opposite way as it gripped and unfortunately saw Mike greet the tyre wall.

Fortunately, the car wasn’t as bad as it first appeared. Equipped with several rolls of Gaffer tape and plenty of cable ties, the Tegiwa chaps set about doing a quick repair to get Mike back out for the rest of the day. Looking slightly worse for wear and with a very out of aligned car, Mike managed to put in a respectable 56.762 during the practice session.

Heading into qualifying, Mike managed to shave just over a second off his previous time as he became more accustomed to the way that the car was behaving. He absolutely pulled it out of the bag in the final session of the day, breaking into the 54’s with a 54.971 to take his first proper victory of the season! A massive congratulations to Mike for not giving up and keeping it lit for the rest of the day, it was awesome to see him stood on the top step after all his hard work.

The final rounds of Time Attack take place at Snetterton next month. Mike will be busy getting his car back to a good state of repair and hopeful to pick up some more silverware!

Having not driven the track before and unfamiliar with the track layout, it was a steep learning curve for Mikey. The clifftop location and undulating apex’s make it a challenge for even the most experienced drivers on the grid. Plus, take into account that Anglesey’s offshore weather seems to do whatever it feels like at any given moment!

Before we look at how Mikey got on, it’s worth noting the tribulations that his K20 powered Civic EK has gone through in the week leading up to this meeting. A Tegiwa track day previously in the week saw the Civic head to Donington Park for some action with the Tegiwa Team. However, Mike’s bonnet decided that it didn’t want to remain closed anymore as he headed down the Dunlop Straight at circa 90+ mph. With the most limited of visibility, Mike managed to limp the car back to the garage with a broken windscreen, bent bonnet and cracked roof. Kudos to Mike though as he spent the next few days sourcing a brand-new heated windscreen and smashing the bonnet back into place whilst he attempts to source a carbon item.

Warmup

Anyway, with the car now fit to go racing, Mike set about putting in some fast laps! Mike used the warmup session to learn the layout of the coastal track, steadily increasing in pace as the laps went by. His best time of the session was a 1:20.574 which was enough to secure second place.

Practice

Heading into the practice session it was clear to see Mike upping the ante and pushing his EK towards the limit. Knocking over a second off his initial best lap, Mike put in a 1:19.367 to snatch another second-place finish. After studying the timing boards, it was evident that it’d take something special to catch Andrew Kime in his Citroen Saxo. After some serious pedalling he’d put in a 1:17.085, nearly 3 seconds faster than Mike.

Qualifying

The weather was gradually getting better throughout the course of the day with the sun slowly starting to make an appearance. A dry track in qualifying and points up for grab was a sure-fire way of seeing the lap times take a tumble. Unfortunately, Mike ended up going 2 tenths of a second slower than the previous session.

I over drove the car in this session after trying to search for faster lines. I’m looking to get my lap in early in the final and then push on once I’ve set a decent time!

Final

With the sun now beaming down and the clouds making way, the final was upon us. Mike stuck to his game plan and his experimenting in the latter part of the session saw him set his fastest time on the 9th lap. Breaking into the 1.18’s Mike secured 2nd place ahead of Paul Waddington in the Fusion 2 and behind Andrew Kime.

We’ll be returning to the track at Donington Park on bank holiday Monday for round 6 of Time Attack. We’re looking forward to cheering on Mike again and fingers crossed he can go one better than Anglesey!

This weekend saw us return to our home circuit in the lovely Cheshire setting that is Oulton Park. After what turned out to be a less than ideal situation last time out at Brands Hatch with Tsuki, we were hoping to put those issues behind us and strive forwards with the 2021 season. However, with continued engine trouble in the test day prior to the race weekend, it was apparent that our NSX wouldn’t be making an appearance in the foreseeable future.

As disappointing as it is for us to not see Luke behind the wheel of the NSX, we still had our other half of the Tegiwa Racing team to get behind and support, in the form of Mike Birch and his K20 powered Civic EK.

With an already stellar performance in his first, full, novice season, finishing no less than 2^nd in each outing already, Mike was keen to put on a display at his local track in front of his friends and family. His Civic had recently been treated to a couple of upgrades with the installation of Skunk2 Ultra 1 Camshafts and an uprated Titanium valve train too, whilst an increase to 9,000rpm meant that Mike could now benefit from a broader power band.

Warm Up

With the day set to be blisteringly hot, round 4 of Time Attack was going to be a challenge for both machine and driver in the testing summer conditions. Mike kicked things off in the warm up though by setting the pace and topping the timing tables overall with a time of 1:39.195. This saw Mike finish half a second ahead of Paul Waddington, who was in the driving seat of the fan favourite K20 Ford Fusion which had recently been built again after its race ending crash at Brands Hatch last month.

Practice

The practice session soon came round, and the temperatures were slowly creeping up to the high 20 degrees. I can only imagine that the cars were like sweatboxes, and can’t have been a pleasant experience for the drivers to be in. Mike put in another 9 laps, the most of any driver throughout the session and managed to shave another 3 tenths off his fastest lap with a 1.38.877, placing him just behind the Saxo of Andrew Kime.

Qualifying

Heading into the points scoring session of the qualifying round, and with temperatures now well above 30 degrees, tyre performance was of paramount attention. Careful not to keep the hammer down for too many laps as the tyres would overheat, Mike put in the fastest lap of his day with a 1.38.870. Enough to secure second place in his class and picking up 4 points for his championship venture.

Final

The final session of the day was now ready to get underway. Mike was now struggling for front end grip, especially on the left-hand side of the car, which made the car feel very different compared to the previous sessions. This reflected in his time, with a 1.39.030 proving to be the best time Mike was able to conjure up in the final. Still a solid performance and enough to earn Mike a 3^rd place trophy for his efforts, as well as a decent haul of points heading into round 5 at Anglesey next month.

Before we head over to the Welsh circuit in August, Mike will be returning to a staggered tyre setup with 225 wide tyres up front to improve front end grip. He’ll also be on a mission to put the Civic on a diet with an end goal of 1,000kg. We can’t wait to get behind Mike at Anglesey and hopefully see him bring home yet another trophy for his ever-expanding collection!

Round 2

With a couple of positive laps in the opening session of the day, things seemed to be going well for our driver Luke Sedzikowski who was piloting Tsuki. However, that swiftly came to an end as the NSX came flying down the pit straight, bellowing a cloud of white smoke behind it.

Luke promptly parked the car and was recovered to the pits for the Motion Motorsport and Tegiwa team to examine the damage. Although we weren’t 100% certain of what caused the problem, the decision was made to retire the NSX from the event until further investigation can continue. Fortunately for us, we’d also loaded a back-up car in case of such an event occurring. The back-up car in question; our ex-BTCC Integra DC5.

With the DC5 being such an icon in BTCC history, there was certainly some excitement surrounding our garage that we’d get to witness the car back in action! It was a dream come true for Luke, who was eager to jump in arguably the most memorable works BTCC car from the era that he grew up in.

After only 10 minutes in the car previously, Luke wasn’t prepared to take unnecessary risks and eased the car round the track, shaving tenths off his time with each passing lap. As a fan of BTCC and motorsport in general, it was a special moment seeing the car back in a competitive motorsport environment.

It was apparent that our run of bad luck still wasn’t over though. As we attempted to start the car ready for qualifying, it simply wouldn’t fire up, no matter how hard we tried. This brought an end to Luke’s day and the team promptly set about finding the issue, which turned out to be a faulty crankshaft position sensor.

The DC5 is equipped with a very highly strung Neil Brown Engineering K20 race engine which means there’s very few OEM K-Series parts on the car. We were super fortunate though as one of the guys from Bourne HPP owned an identical engine and was kind enough to give us the part that we needed. Not the day we were expecting, but at least we had a solution to get the car fixed and ready for round 3.

It was a different story for Mikey, our other half of the Tegiwa Racing team. His K-swapped Civic EK proved to be the ever-reliable steed and saw him set some consistent times throughout the day.

Always pushing hard and exploring the capabilities that the EK chassis has to offer, Mike always finds himself at the top end of the timings. With more and more seat time under his belt, Mike is proving himself to be a formidable opponent on the Time Attack grid!

With 30 cars on the track at once, the tricky part for Mike was battling to get enough space to squeeze a fast lap in. Pedalling hard, Mike was consistently able to produce 55 second laps on the Indy circuit of Brands, finishing in 2^nd place in every session. A fantastic result that left him just behind Andrew Kime in his purpose-built Saxo race car. It was great to see Mike on the podium again after his first win last month at Cadwell Park.

Round 3

It was an early start for the team to rectify the issues with the DC5, but they worked hard to get it resolved and the sound of the car firing into life was met by an almighty cheer from the Tegiwa team.

It seemed our luck had taken a turn by now and the Integra ran faultlessly for the remainder of the day. With some steady laps under his belt, Luke piloted the car to victory and was able to bring home a decent haul of points to keep our championship hopes alive. Round 3’s victory comes by default as Luke is currently the only competitor in his class. Our main aim is to get the NSX back up and running and really give the rest of the pro classes a run for their money.

Sunday proved to be a more challenging day for Mike as a rear wheel bearing on his Civic had developed fault and pro driver Rob Boston was now behind the wheel of the awesome K20 Ford Fusion. Nevertheless, Mike got his head down and was able to continue pushing hard, not finishing outside the top 3 positions with each session that passed by.

Unfortunately, a serious accident in the final session of the day bought an early halt to proceedings. However, Mike managed to put in a time of 55.511 that was enough to secure another 2^nd place finish and add yet another trophy to his quickly growing collection.

What’s next?

Ultimately our aim is fixing the problems that have hindered our season so far. With only a month to go before the next round we’ll be going back to our roots and installing a K20A2 block. We’ll then be able to mount the C38-R with a bigger pulley and restrictor which’ll reduce the power down to around the 400 to 450 horsepower mark. It’ll still be no slouch, and we’ll still be able to take advantage of the incredible chassis that the NSX has to offer but without the issues of reliability that we’ve ran into so far.

We’d like to fine tune our ABS setup too and develop the chassis even more by getting some seat time in prior to the next event. We also want to fix a few niggling issues that have hindered our season so far. Ultimately, our aim is to have a race weekend where we can focus solely on lap times and not worry about the car breaking. Watch this space for more updates!

The first issue for Mikey to sort is his wheel bearing. Once that has been put right, he’ll be getting the car checked over and booked in for a geometry setup to make the most of his suspension setup. Hopefully, he’ll get chance to install the Skunk2 Racing Ultimate cams for a steady hike in power. We’ll be creating another cam test video for this which will follow on from our drop-in cam test, so stay tuned for that. Finally, Mike aims to strip some more weight out the car and end up below the 1,000kg mark.

The next round of Time Attack takes place at our local track, Oulton Park, on the 17^th July. We look forward to hopefully bringing you some more good news, later next month.

Luke Sedzikowski, co-director of Tegiwa, will be piloting the 600hp supercharged Tsuki NSX whilst resident Tegiwa web developer, Michael Birch, would be in the driving seat of his freshly built K20 Civic EK.

Track Day

Fortunately for our 2 drivers, they got a chance to ascertain some seat time, prior to the Time Attack event, during a track day at Cadwell. This was vital for both Luke and Mike as with their respective cars being finished close to the wire, neither driver had really managed to put their cars through their paces, so testing was of paramount importance. Check out that awesome sidewinder exhaust that Andy from ICEFAB fabricated for us to keep noise levels down for us on track days!

Tsuki, our affectionally named NSX, proved she was going to be a very capable weapon this season as we saw some incredible laps being put in throughout the day. However, such is the territory of a highly strung vehicle that issues were of course inevitable. Due to the solid mounts that keep the 600-horsepower engine bolted firmly in place, the vibrations that the car endures were always going to cause bolts and fixings to become loose, no matter how much Loctite had been used. Firstly, the vibrations had taken their toll on the Hondata K-Pro ECU, with a connection working itself loose from the circuit board. Secondly, the rear engine mount had managed to tear itself in two places whilst also becoming bowed in the process.

The ECU was a pretty simple fix. Area Motorsport were busy running a host of Civic Cup cars for the weekend, so they kindly lent us a replacement to see us through. This wasn’t the first time that this had happened over our weekend, so another thanks are in order to Jerry from PerformanceTek who bailed us out the second time round. We’d also like to shout out Racing Circuits who spent the time to help us diagnose the faults that we were finding. The engine mount however wasn’t so simple as it’s a tall order to get hold of a welder in the race paddock!

So, Johnny, who many of you might know as Johnny Tegiwa over on Facebook, put the feelers out for a local fabricator to get us out of the s**t. Again, not an easy task considering Cadwell Park is in the middle of nowhere and it was 7pm on a bank holiday weekend. However, no sooner had Johnny made a few calls than we’d jumped in the truck and was on our way to see Sam from ARC Autosport, our saving graces.

If you’re not familiar with ARC, then make sure you check them out; they’ve recently built a K20 Ford Fusion for the Time Attack series. It sounds absurd but it damn well shifts on track!

Whilst our mount was undergoing surgery; we were lucky enough to be able to have a look around the premises. We stumbled into this absolutely incredible Civic EK that had competed in Time Attack a couple of years ago and was now sat in a corner collecting dust. This really was a truly awesome piece of engineering and testament to ARC Autosport’s skill and craftsmanship! We’d love to see it up and running again soon.

Thanks to Sam and his welder, the mount was now fixed and reinforced too! He’d done us a solid and it was now better than ever before. We soon made our way back to Cadwell, ready for the Motion Motorsport and Tegiwa crew to re-install it.

Race Day

The outcome of a motorsport event is often dictated by the weather and with this being a bank holiday Monday here in the UK, we knew we’d have to follow the weather forecast with a keen eye. We expected a dry morning for the warmup and practice sessions and rain in the afternoon for qualifying and the finals.

The warmup session was another chance for Luke and Mike to learn their cars characteristics and dial them in exactly how they wanted for when it mattered in the afternoon. Mike set the initial pace in his K20 Civic EK, with a 1:45:243 enough to secure him a third-place finish in his class. Luke followed shortly after, setting a 1:34:751 to finish at the top of Pro 2WD and 2^nd overall behind the Evo of Gary Hayward.

The practice sessions saw both drivers go even faster than the warm-up but with rain now imminent we knew it was going to be touch and go for qualifying. Tsuki had managed to rattle her oil cooler loose too, so there was a bit of fettling to do before we made it to the next session.

The heavens had soon opened, and the wind speed had increased dramatically over the lunch break. The paddock were soon hard at work swapping tyres over onto wet options. Mike was the first to endure the wet rigours of the technical circuit, negotiating hall bends with standing water wasn’t quite the experience he’d been dreaming of! Needless to say, he proved he had the minerals for the task, finishing at the top of the pocket rocket class in his first wet outing and third overall in the session.

Luke soon followed, understandably nervous at the prospect of driving a car with a better power to weight than a Bugatti Veyron, in the pouring rain. Tsuki performed faultlessly with the traction control system doing an awesome job of keeping the car on the black stuff. Luke managed to keep it together and secure a 1:57:200 to put him at the top of the Pro 2WD class. Not only was this a mega lap, but it filled us with optimism heading into the finals as this was the first trouble free session we’d had with the car over the past 2 days.

We were then followed by a long afternoon waiting for the finals, until the announcement came over the tannoy that all remaining sessions would be cancelled due to the torrential rain. A welcome feeling in the Tegiwa Racing camp as we’d witnessed a number of accidents in the day due to the weather. This also meant that both Luke and Mike were crowned champions for round 1 and not only did they take their first piece of silverware home from Lincolnshire, but also a haul of 5 points apiece to put them at the top of their classes respectively.

It was also great to see the Tegiwa sponsored drivers David Lawrence piloting his eye catching Cupra 280 and Chrissy Martin in his Subaru Impreza!

A big well done to Luke Sedzikowski and Michael Birch for pedalling it this weekend and we hope to see more of the same next month! We now move forwards to June 19^th as we make our way down south for rounds 2 and 3 at Brands Hatch. We’ll be addressing some reliability issues on Tsuki in the meantime and hopefully we’ll be back stronger than ever!