Round 5 of the China Touring Car Championship finished last Sunday at Ordos International Circuit. Changan Ford Racing Team driver Rainey He, after suffering from a bad start, fought back from eighth and all the way to third. Together with Fan Gaoxiang, they gain another 13 valuable points for team’s march towards the Manufacturer Championship.

After R4, the team has been working hard to squeeze out additional performance to counter the 100 kg the cars have to carry against their closest competitions. But misfortune hit the team immediately at the start line including Rainey He, the pole sitter. All the cars failed to get off the grid properly and Andy Yan’s right front tire was punctured on lap 1. 

After dropped back to eighth as a result of the bad start, Rainey fought hard and was able to move from 8th to 4th and achieved the fastest lap time in the process. Rainey overtook Wang Rui’s Polo in lap 7 and started to pressure another Polo driven by Gao Huayang. With 3 laps to go and under intense pressure from Rainey, Gao missed the braking point on T1 and slide out and hit Rainey on the side dropping Rainey back to 4th. After the race, Gao was disqualified due to “unsafe driving”.

Team manager John Ling indicated after the race: “This result is not what we would like to see. We encountered a “technical” issue that hurt our starting and that proves that one never stop learning new things in Motor racing. I want to apologize to the four drivers for causing them the bad start. The impact of the car weight is showing up more. I am happy we did good work to keep the car running fast and our competition has to hit us to stop us.”