CTCC 6 th race: five out of six

After the great win scored in Ordos just two weeks ago, the team arrived Beijing to attend the first street race in the history of the CTCC. Beijing's new track is a temporary marked up one utilizing the original “street” inside the Olympic Water Park facility. Consequently, the drivers have to face the typical elements that make a street circuit unique. All four Changan Ford drivers had previous street racing experience gained in Macau so it was not really a huge concern for them at all.

Qualifying

As a result of the last minute construction work trying to finish the track and gain approval from the Federation, the teams were not allowed to practice until Friday and the qualifying session started in the afternoon of Saturday. After analyzing the track, it was determined that the track has only very little opportunity for passing. Combining with the fact that rolling start format would be used so achieving a good qualifying position is critical for good race result.

Martin Cao went out early and made full benefit of the heated up tires and scored his fastest time of 1:23.494 immediately. This time stayed until the end of the session. The main challenge came from Michael Ho of the Wah Yuan Honda Team. He made his fastest time towards the end of the session and his time was only 0.096 slower than Martin's. The other Changan Ford drivers also achieved great result of 4th, 5th and 7th.

Race

As expected, qualifying result is the key factor of the Sunday race. Basically all the cars in the top group finished the race according to the qualifying position. Combining with the fact that there is another big race coming up in two weeks in the Shanghai International F1 circuit, conservativeness and defense seem to be the norm of the weekend.

Pole sitter Martin Cao scored his third win of the season after a tough battle with Michel Ho of Hua Yang Honda Racing Team. Tengyi Jiang finished the race in fourth position, contributing five points and Changan Ford Racing Team takes home the fifth team win of the season.

A small incident happened to the Changan Ford Team when all the cars started pulling onto the starting grid. Andy Yan's steering system hydraulic hose bursted and the fluid ignited after spraying on the hot exhaust. Flame came up from under the hood for a short moment. The team mechanics pushed the car back to the pit lane area and managed to fixed the problem quickly. Andy rejoined the race but he already lost four laps.

The race used the rolling start format and Martin immediately made very fast time trying to gain some room between himself and the Honda behind him. With possible yellow flag in mind and difficult of passing, the team's instruction to Martin basically was to adjust his pace and maintain this gap and not to push for larger lead. Martin executed the instruction perfectly and keeping the one second margin until he relaxed with a few laps to go allowing the yellow Honda to pull within 0.4 second to finish the race. Lo Ka Chun of KIA 778 racing team captured 3 rd . Tengyi Jiang, Martin's teammate, was carrying 100kg weight as a result of his win in Ordos two weeks ago, finished the race in fourth position and gained important five points for the team and also fulfilled his assignment of preventing the second group from moving up to challenge the front group.

Martin Cao, Car 2

“The experience gained form both formula and the Macau street race helped me a lot today. This is my fifth street competition so actually I was very relax. So instead of focusing on dealing with the track, the most challenging mission today is to maintain a balance between keeping a comfortable gap with the cars behind me and not to take unnecessary risk in pushing too hard.”

“The perfect handling and set up of the Focus race car gives me full advantage of accurate control. Michel did a great job pushing aggressively behind me and actually I was not able to break away too much from him. I think I did a remarkable job defending my lead and resisted Michel's pressure finally.”

Andy Yan, Car 3

“ Although I lost four laps in the pit but I had to go back out there to show off my Ford logo and demonstrate to everyone the sporting spirit and team effort that we all feel so proud of.”

Paul Hui, Team Director

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