Yokohama ADVAN World Time Attack Challenge: Cyber Evo development continues

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Well the development of the Cyber Evo has certainly resumed in earnest over the past few months as they prepare to come down under to defend their World Time Attack crown. The car has been fitted with a fresh race engine with a new cylinder head design by Tomei and was testing in March at Mt Fuji “trialling” some new ideas and managed a time of 1.41.65 which is within one second of the GT300 lap record time of 1.40.68 the NSX driven by Kurosawa-san in 2005 and of course the GT 300 was on slick tyres where the Cyber uses Yokohama Advan Ao50 tyres.

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ABOVE: The GT300 lap record holding NSX is less than one second faster than the Cyber Evo around the Mt Fuji Speedway

The team seemed happy with this time despite being slightly slower than the 1.41.43 lap time they had run previously. We suspect that last time they ran that time the car was at full noise and that was as good as it would go, but this time they may have a fair bit more up their sleeve and may have been just a shakedown and this time may well be “just the starting point” this time round.

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As well as the fresh engine the team has been on a weight reduction campaign the heavy steel roof now being replaced with a lightweight aluminium version. But it would appear the big changes to this car for 2011 will be in the aero. Whilst many considered last year that the Cyber Evo victory was largely due to superior aero it is obvious this team believe there is much more refinement left in this area.

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With the competition appearing a bit tougher for 2011 WTAC they have recently spent countless hours in the wind tunnel facility at Mie University with Nakajima-san from Voltex Racing fine tuning what was already a formidable package and whilst they were coy about what they were actually doing they did give the thumbs up with their results.

Tarzan is also really looking forward to returning to the Creek as he maintains he could have gone faster last year as the car cut out for a split second on the last corner on his 1.30.5 lap meaning he didn’t really get a clean run despite claiming the win by almost a full second.

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The Cyber Evo team are scheduled for another test day at Mt Fuji on June 13 just a couple of weeks before the car is loaded up and bound for Sydney and with Garage Revolution firing a big warning shot at Tsukuba in December and Sierra Sierra also claiming to be “much faster now” one can only wonder how tough the competition will be in 2011. And there are many other teams that could also pose a big threat this year so it is unlikely Tarzan and the Cyber Evo guys will have it as easy as they did in 2010 that is for sure. The other thing that is worth mentioning is that speaking to Garth at Radical Australia is that the track has been resurfaced and is quite a bit faster than it was in 2010!!! One twenty eight?? Who knows for sure but bring it on I say!!

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