The penultimate round of the China Touring Car Championship will be held in Shanghai Tianma Circuit (STC) on October 13th to 14th. It is anticipated that the Changan Ford Racing Team can gain the three points needed to secure the Manufacturer Championship for the year.

The driver’s title is still also undecided but with three of its drivers occupying the top three positions on the points table, the Changan Ford Racing Team also has a good chance to capture the driver’s title if they can continue to find ways to overcome the weight penalty the New Ford Focus has to carry. The New Ford Focus, again, will be running with the top weight of 1,280kg for this round and the weight gap between their closest rival will be in the range of 180kg, approximately 20% of the total car weight.

Due to the converging characteristics of T1, capturing the front grid positions will be very important. Compounding with the lack of data for this track after the turbo engine was implemented, the technical group will have its hands full this week to come up with a workable solution.

John Ling, Team Manager, “The additional weight that we are carrying race after race is causing a lot of extra wear and tear problems for us and we are working diligently to make sure we can maintain the reliability of the cars. Winning this race would be difficult since the circuit requires good acceleration to maintain position and acceleration is what I do not have now due to the weight. Not only we have to worry about the other turbo cars, I think the NA engine cars will perform exceptionally good on this circuit.”