Last Sunday afternoon at Zhuhai International Circuit, China Touring Car Championship opened the action for the second meeting of the Championship. At the end of the race, Changan Ford drivers Rainey He and Tengyi Jiang took second and third contributing another 22 points for the team championship and the team maintains a healthy 11 points lead over the VW team.

The domination exhibited by the New Ford Focus during R1 resulted in the organizer applying a special clause in the regulation to make adjustment actions in order to balance the performance of the vehicles. As a result, additional 60 kg were applied to the four New Focus making 1220kg as its minimum weight. Andy Yan also received another 15kg as a result of his win in R1 while his teammates got another 5kg.

After losing the first race in an humiliating way, VW team rushed in from Europe two WTCC 1.6T engines used by the SEAT Sunred team and flew in three Spanish engineers to assemble the cars. With this new development, the VW team managed to put car number 6 on pole with a couple very fast laps during the late stage of the Q section on Saturday. The four Ford Focus occupied grid position 2,3,4,5.

On Sunday, rain came down before the race but stopped just a few minutes before the pit lane opened. This 10 minutes rain proved to be the main factor that determined the outcome of the race later. After studying the time table and the weather situation, the team made a decision to move to the grid position with racing slick tires. Quite a few cars including the Polos elected to equip with rain tires. Realizing the track is drying up, they scrambled to change back to slick but the VW missed the three minutes mark to lower the jack and as a result of this mishap, the race was delayed for 10 minutes and most of the VW were relegated to the back of the grid including pole sitter Han Han.

But the bad luck wind took a 180 degree turn and hit the Changan Ford Racing Team when the race started. Fan Gaoxiang stalled his car and only got back to 11th after restarting. Andy Yan hit a wet section of the track midway through lap 1, slide into the gravel and had to retire from the race.

Rainey He and Tengyi Jiang had smooth start and lead the race until Han Han’s Polo overtook them with raw power.

Paul Hui, Team Director indicated: “Although we finished 2nd and 3rd and continuing the momentum of defending the Team title. But it is quite disappointing that we lost this round by factors that are controllable by ourselves. Our brake was going soft after a few laps and the other issues. I take full responsibility of this. We will continue to fine tune the New Focus so its maximum potential could be realized.”

R3 of the Championship is coming up two weeks later in Chengdu.