YOKOHAMA World Time Attack Challenge 2019 – Sydney

For the uninitiated, the World Time Attack Challenge has been running here in Australia since 2010, after Ian Baker travelled to an event in Japan and competing with the Hi Octane Racing Team at the famous Tsukuba Circuit.

Ian Baker was so impressed with the event, racing and teams, he decided to supersize the concept and create a truly international event here in Australia, where teams weren’t just racing for themselves, they were racing for their country. This inaugural event saw Australia for the first time put themselves up against the world’s best superpowers of Japan and America. Needless to say, Australian competitors have more than embraced this event with each year, both spectators and competitors swelling in numbers. Let’s be honest, where else can you have the opportunity to race your own build against international superstars? With Yokohama being the naming rights sponsor, we caught up with Tatsuya.

Kano, the Group Manager of Operations at Yokohama Tyre Australia, who shared: “We’ve been the main naming rights sponsor of this event since the start, so for ten years now, and it’s been amazing to watch the year-on-year growth over that time. With the focus on high-performance cars here, our Yokohama Advan Neova AD08 tyre is the control tyre for the club sprint, and for the open and pro classes we are the control tyre with the Advan A050. The Advan AO50 can be used as a street tyre but mostly has a lot of motorsports compound in it, which is why it is used for a lot of events race events like Targa, Hill Climb, circuit racing and of course Time Attack.” Both of these ranges have been on sale at this event and had been going like hotcakes.

The World Time Attack Challange event isn’t just about the on-track racing and competition either with no shortage of activities and stories unfolding in the pit zone. The Trader alley was a feast of exhibitors showing off their latest products and expert advice. Garrett – Advancing Motion was there, of course, with their full range of turbos, as well as Yokohama and Link ECU, to name a few.

Link Engine Management is always on the scene at key events around Australia, and we caught up with Avalon and Codey from Link ECU who were raising awareness on both their wire and plug-in range of ECUs, as well as some dashes and other accessories that were getting a lot of interest. Avalon shared: “This is our fourth year at Time Attack and it’s great to see the regulars as well as a lot of new faces every year”.

When asking Cody about what has been the most popular product from those at the event he said: “We have just done a partnership with AM Technologies for a new dash, which has been selling extremely well. We’ve got a demo set up here, plugged in so everyone can see the different modes and it has been a huge success so far. We do a street dash as well as a race dash, and a lot of customers are actually buying both. Today we even had a customer buy one of our ECUs to reduce the emissions in his car, which was great to hear as a lot of our customers are mostly looking for more power and speed from our product”.

The Skid Pan was the home for Australia’s largest outdoor car show, where the music was pumping, the guys were interested in the cars on display. From stunning Vintage classics to truly over the top, jaw-dropping custom builds, you would give your left arm to be able to drive home into modern performance cars.

This event, honestly, had everything. If you missed out, make sure to put it into your calendar for next year.