After a whole year absent, we were finally back in the OTGP 2016 Time Attack at Pen Bay International Circuit it Taiwan. We entered our Subaru Impreza GD WRX street car in the 4WD class for the opening race of the season.

The timing couldn't have been much worse, as the tail end of a typhoon had just passed over Taiwan the morning leading up to the race and threatened to call it off due to dangerous weather. Luckily it began to clear up by mid-morning, and we had a green light to race! The first of the two sessions was wet, but nothing a 4WD Impreza couldn't handle...

The regulations only allow street legal tyres for the time attack series, so we tried out the Nankang NS2R semi-slicks with 120 tread wear this time. People say they are more grippy than the Federal 595 RSR's, but I have my doubts to be honest. Our first session in damp conditions with lots of traffic produced a rather disappointing fastest lap time of 2:11.71.

Thankfully the track dried out significantly after lunch and was almost completely dry for our second and final session of the round. We went out again and improved by over 3 seconds to finish in third place with a 2:08.61. This was bitter sweet as although we went home with a trophy, this was still 2 seconds off our fastest ever lap. This could be down to swapping to NS2R's, a greasy track after the rain, or perhaps sub-standard driving from a driver out of practice. Who knows? We will go again in November for round 2 with a 1.5 way LSD upgrade and back to the RSR's to see if we can't improve on that!