Suzuka, Japan – The fourth round of the GRC touring car championship saw the series compete on the East layout of Sukuza. The short twisty track with only one clear passing place into turn 1 and 2 would be a challenge for all the drivers. Torrent Motorsports fielded only three cars for this round with Borna Spoljaric, Martin Palm and Dave Carr-Smith flying the TMo flag. The three heaviest cars for this round were TMo cars with Spoljaric running the maximum ballast weight of 60kg, Palm was second heaviest with 47kg and Carr-Smith had 36kg.
Qualifying: Spoljaric put in one of his best laps of the season with 60kg to put his BMW in 3rd on the grid with a time of 0:54.768 that was .154 off pole. Carr-Smith and Palm struggled setting the 11th and 13th fastest times.
Race One: Spoljaric managed to hold his position off the start but with tyre wear problems and the front wheel drive car getting a unfair performance boost for this round he could only manage to finish in 4th. Palm did well to climb up to 7th from his starting position of 13th and Carr-Smith had a coming together with another car after a promising start that caused him to finish in 14th.
Race Two: Spoljaric had a solid second race by having a race long battle for a podium spot and went on to finish 2nd. Palm again climbed up more positions to finish in 4th and Carr-Smith had another disaster of a race after going off early due to a technical glitch finishing in 13th.
Race Three: The top five got reversed which gave Palm a front row start and he didn’t pass on the opportunity taking the lead off the line and went on to win the race. Spoljaric had a race long battle for 2nd place but on the final lap had a coming together and dropped down to 6th. Carr-Smith again had a shock of a race, he got spun out on lap 2 and struggled to get through heavy traffic finishing 13th for the second time.
Broadcast on demand replay can be viewed here: Broadcast Replay
Round 4 of the Championship sees the series head to Putnam Park in America. Tune into SimRace.tv on Monday November 21st at 20:00 UK time to see all the action live.
