Teamwork Motorsport heads to China’s Shanghai International Circuit this weekend (6-7 June) for a SINOPEC LUBRICANTS China Touring Car Championship (CTCC) and Hong Kong Touring Car Championship (HTCC) double-header, where it hopes it will challenge for silverware.
Located in Jiading, the Shanghai International Circuit is one of the world’s most recognisable racetracks among motorsport fans, having hosted the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix since 2004.
The 3.39mile circuit, which boasts a heady mixture of fast-flowing and sharp turns, cost a total of ¥2.6billion to build and its architect was none other than Hermann Tilke, who has designed the majority of modern-day motor racing facilities, such as the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia and Beijing International Street Circuit.
A trying season debut at the Guangdong International Circuit (GIC) saw both Teamwork Motorsport drivers, Sunny Wong and Samuel Hsieh, record DNFs, despite showing a strong turn of pace that rivalled several of the manufacturer-backed teams.
The Teamwork Motorsport operation went away and thoroughly checked over both Citroën C-Elysées, making the necessary modifications to ensure the cooling and reliability problems that prevented it from claiming a podium at Guangdong won’t reoccur this weekend in Shanghai.
“We raced at the Shanghai International Circuit twice last year with the same car, so I think we have some good data and setup to begin with,” said Wong. “This year our Citroëns are more capable than last year’s cars and I am confident we can do better than we did in 2014. After the first race, we had a rough idea of how our competitors are running and, if we do our jobs right, we should be facing some intense battles out on track this weekend.”
Having missed the opening round of the 2015 HTCC due to ongoing preparations to its trio of Suncity-liveried Peugeot RCZs, Teamwork Motorsport opened its account with silverware at Guangdong in April, prior to securing its first race victory of 2015 last month during a weekend of mixed weather conditions.
A month has passed since the last HTCC race meeting and, having stripped its three Peugeots for drivers Andrew Lo, Paul Poon and Samson Fung, Teamwork Motorsport discovered the driveshafts to be the cars’ weakest link and immediately set about strengthening them to increase reliability and hopefully yield yet more podium results.
“This will be my first time racing at the Shanghai F1 circuit, which I know is very technical in a few corners,” said Lo. “We have very limited practice time prior to qualifying, but, fortunately, all my teammates have experience of the track, so I have been asking them about it and setting myself a lot of homework, so I am not going into the weekend blind.
“All of the remaining races are very important to us because we will need to score some points in order to secure seats in the season’s concluding Macau GP event, and hopefully we can add to that tally this weekend.”
Qualifying for the SINOPEC LUBRICANTS China Touring Car Championship (CTCC) is scheduled to get underway at 14.20 CST on Saturday (6 June), with the headlining race the following day (7 June) at 13.15 CST.
Hong Kong Touring Car Championship’s (HTCC) qualifying will get underway at 17.05 CST on Friday (5 June), with Race 1 at 17.20 CST on Saturday (6 June) and Race 2 on Sunday (7 June) at 10.15 CST.
For more information on Teamwork Motorsport, please visit the www.teamworkms.com website, or ‘like’ the team’s Facebook page.