Teamwork Motorsport worked tirelessly night and day to make its debut in the 2014 Sinopek Lubricants China Touring Car Championship (CTCC) at the Guangdong International Circuit (GIC) after the cars were sidelined by supply and technical problems following an encouraging practice and qualifying.
Hong Kong-based driver Alex Hui and his all-new for 2014 Citroen C Elysee was forced to miss out on practice and qualifying due to a key component for the car being delayed in Customs, leaving the opening days running to compatriot Sunny Wong, who gave the Citroen its first competitive laps of the CTCC season at the GIC.
Two practice sessions, one in dry conditions and the other in wet, gave the team valuable data and an indication as to the cars potential ahead of the season opening 30-minute qualifying session, which took place a day later than scheduled due to heavy rain. Wong, making his CTCC debut, was quick to impress after positioning his car fifth, less than a second separating him from pole position.
With qualifying concluded and the illusive part for Hui’s car arriving, the team worked valiantly through the night in order to have the second C Elysee ready for season’s opening race on Sunday (27 April).
However, the team’s efforts were soon found to be in vain when during the pre-race warm up, Wong’s Citroen developed a mechanical fault that effected the car’s gearbox.
With hours before the race and without a spare component suitable at such short notice, and in a manner that typifies the spirit of the Teamwork Motorsport ethos, the decision was taken to replace the engine and gearbox with the unit from Hui’s newly assembled challenger to allow Wong to benefit from his hard earned grid position.
After frantic hours working on the engine change, the car fired up faultlessly in the team’s garage moments after the pit-lane opened and with the rest of the field assembled on the dummy grid. It seemed that the huge efforts of the Teamwork Motorsport mechanics and engineers had paid off, but was later proved as a false hope when, despite the team’s best efforts, it was decided that the car was not worth risking in race conditions and was withdrawn from the race, much to the disappointment of the team and fans alike.
“I am clearly disappointed not to race, but I think we have gained a lot of valuable experience from our first CTCC weekend,” said Wong. “The spirit the team showed and the generosity of my teammates sacrifices to allow me a chance to race, demonstrates much about why we race for this team.
“I am looking forward to a really good outing for both cars in Zuhai.”
Focus now turns to preparing and testing both cars ahead of round 2 in Zuhai in two weeks time (11th May) where the team hopes to deliver on the promising signs from the opening weekend.
You can follow Teamwork Motorsport’s progress outside of China via a live stream or at http://leader.pptv.com/ctcc/live which goes out at 13:00 local time (BST +7 hours).