It was great to be back at the Honda Racing Fest, in my new car for the 2010 season and straight away I felt comfortable in the car. It was the first time for me on the track at Kraeng Kracharn, so it was a steep learning curve, as we only have 5 test sessions on Friday before the qualifying would happen on Saturday.

First session was just to get the feel for the track and we managed to do a 1.34 in the first session and got the car dialed in to the track.

Second session was a bit faster and I started to push a little and we got down to a 1.32 in that session.

Third session a few more changed were made to the car to try and get rid of the understeer and we got further down to a 1.31.5.

Fourth session was the best of the day with a time of 1.30.8, but the car was still having a lot of understeer.

In 5^th session I broke my engine, and then we were screwed as I did not have any spare engine with me. We managed to get hold of a spare engine from one of the other drivers, and put it in the car during the night.

In the morning there was 1 warm-up session before the qualifying and we had to drive with the engine as is, because our engine tuner Khun Ball was in China, and nobody there were able to do any adjustments to the MOtec because they did not have his password to it.

I went out in the session and with the engine running very rough I did not expect much, but I got a shock as even in the condition it was in, it was so much faster than my old engine, and I clicked a 1.31.5 without even trying.

We decided to try and do 1 fast lap in the qualifying session, but the car was running more and more rough and under 6.500 RPM it was nearly un-drivable. I kept doing laps of 1.32, as I was struggling in the slower low RPM sections, but in the engine I put everything into it and did a lap of 1.30.012 which was my fastest so far at the track.

This was good enough for 3^rd on the grid I was told and 2^nd in my class, so I came in to the pits and stopped, but on his last lap Khun Ekprawat did a 1.29.5 and that dropped me to 4^th on the grid and 2^nd in class.

Not bad considering the car was un-drivable in the slow sectors and it was not yet tuned.

The engine was opened to inspect it and we found 3 broken pistons in it, but somehow the parts that had broken of did not seem to have hit anything on their way out……???

We re-seated the valves and put new pistons in, and rented a motec from another driver and had it re-tuned over night and the mechanics did a fantastic job with the car getting it ready for the race.

In the morning warm-up we tested the car and the engine tuner put his final touch on it, and I was so impressed by the power in the engine compared to the old engine.

As we were parked on the grid I started to feel dizzy from the extreme heat at the track and from being parked there in the sun for so long so Khun Mit was fast with water and towel and a little smelling alcohol from the medics and that helped a lot.

When the lights went out I almost stalled the engine, as I am used to the engine that has V-tec installed, but the new engine was using the TODA V-TEC Killer cams, and it needed a lot more revs, so I dropped down into 6^th place at the start, but quickly came back up to 5^th behind Khun Sanchai in his new DC-5.

I tried in almost every corner to get past him, but his traction out of the corners were so much better than mine that he always managed to open up a big gap, and it was too big to try anything real under braking, so for 9 laps I was stuck behind him, and lap times was showing that I was over 1 second faster than him, but I was just not able to find a way past without trying something stupid, which I was not going to do.

On lap 10 the engine dropped a valve and it ran on 3 cylinders, and had no power, but there was no smoke, and no drop in oil pressure or fuel pressure and no overheating problem, so I decided to keep going and to try and get as many points as possible if somebody else went out, but unfortunately they did not, so I ended up with only 1 point from the race.

That was it and we did not have any way of getting back on the grid for the 2^nd race which was on a wet track, so I was with a big disappointment that I stood along the track and watched everybody compete in the wet which is my favorite surface to drive on.

Now we need to get the car ready for the 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th and 6^th round at Bira on the end of August, and see if we can make up some of the points we lost there the past weekend.