Malaysian Vacation: Day 3.1: Conemasters

Saturday, October 15, 2011. Juru Auto City, Penang, Malaysia.

I awoke much too early at 7:02 AM. That’s not an early hour. But when you went to sleep only four hours before, it’s pretty f@#$ing early.

I splashed some water on my face and read a little to try and stay awake. Ben eventually called me and we went downstairs to breakfast. It was part of our hook-up, and the buffet was great. Except for one small thing.

And I do mean small, both literally and figuratively.

I’m huge in Malaysia. Coffee Cups are not.

I had to drink about 12 of the bloody things, and I still ended up buying three cans of coffee at the gas station we went to on the way to Auto City. I shotgunned them standing next to the car because Ben doesn’t want people spilling drinks on his interior, and I don’t blame him.

Saturday was a practice day for Conemasters. As early as we were to the event (9:30), Victor had gotten there even earlier and managed to clear all but one of the cars. We managed to get rid of that one ourselves. There are photos and video of it that will emerge, and I am in them.

Because I was helping to push and literally pick up the damn thing to get it out of our way.

Ben laid out the gymkhana course for the event. We had a fairly long area that was, as I mentioned, split between two types of road surface, and there were trees planted at even intervals along the ‘seam’ between surfaces. There was also a large sign for the KIA dealership whose parking lot this normally is.

From where I took this picture, if you turn right you can see the ‘pit area,’ where people worked on their cars:

Hee hee hee… look at this:

The place where I was standing for those photos is the center of this photo:

Here you can see the two types of surface (and the trees) on the track. Later photos show it more clearly:

Ben explained to me the logic behind his course designs.  He wanted to make the course as even-handed as possible for ALL the cars involved.

There were several classes of car, defined by age, place of manufacture, and front- or rear-wheel drive. These differences mean that some cars are faster than others, while some cars corner better than others.

Ben needed a course that would help equalize the differences so that there was some kind of parity between times. The classes didn’t compete against one another, but logically speaking a good course would ensure that every class was as interesting to watch as the others and that it would take roughly the same amount of time for all the cars to complete the course. This highlights the strengths of each class as well as making them work had to get the best time.

Once the course was laid out, it was open practice for the drivers. Ben wanted to make extra sure of the course, so he went first:

This was before we moved that last car, visible in the center of the above photo.

Soon it would be gone, as would the tree in front of it.

But that’s another story.

Even though it was early, and only a practice day, people showed up with their cars. In Malaysia, motorsports are a labor of love, and people work hard at it.

Justin and David’s Toyota. Green is the same color as trees…

Justin’s Toyota, Victor’s Mazda, Ben’s Subaru, Jackson’s Toyota.

Self-portrait with bank.

The day got louder and louder as cars, most with, uh, liberalizedexhausts, practiced going through the course, which, when done correctly, involved lots of skidding and screeching of tires. The entrance to the track had a line of cars all day waiting to drive:

The young men in the red shirts were Victor’s students from Tan Chong Education Services. He teaches automotive studies there, and his students all volunteered their time (okay, there may be extra credit involved) to be track stewards. They did a good job and they were all very nice kids. And considering how hot it was, they worked really, really hard!

Here’s a few pictures of the practice runs.

Melvin borrowed his Dad’s car for the event. He was registered in the Classic division. This is the starting line, next to the KIA sign. Without that tent, the Tan Chong kids would have been hospitalized!

Justin has bought his Toyota especially for this event. In talking to him, I could tell he was really excited about the event and was looking forward to the competition, if for no other reason than to learn more about driving. He was very humble, friendly, and earnest, and just wanted to learn and improve. Not that he was doing badly, mind you:

I watched some of the practice from the announcer’s booth. Ben got his friend Yuvin to announce, and between the two of them, they did a really good job informing and entertaining the audience.

Yuvin tried to get me to do color commentary, but I am so ignorant of motorsports that I resorted to wild fabrications like “Our next driver has also translated all the Harry Potter novels into Malay” or “In his spare time, he designs canine fashions.”

But at least I got some interesting photographs:

That’s a Toyota AE86, the “Initial D” car. It’s considered the iconic drifting car, probably because of its use by Keiichi Tsuchiya, the King of Drifting. This car is so great it deserves more photos:

Everybody loved this car!

The other thing you could really notice was the wear and tear on tires. The announcer desk was made of white melamine, but as the day wore on it became more and more gray…

Rubber. Not just good… good for you!