EZY Racing’s Mike Young prepares for Rally Hokkaido

Friday, 18 September 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

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The containers arrived from Malaysia on Tuesday and immediately the able team from Cusco Japan started to work on the Cusco EZY Racing Subaru.

The first order of business was to replace the car’s engine and gearbox as a precautionary measure to ensure that there would be no failure from parts fatigue. Next on the cards was repairing the damage the car sustained in Malaysia. Both of the above were done quickly enough for the car to be sent out for testing on Wednesday.

“The car essentially has brand new internals and quite a few changes have been made to the setup to suit Japanese conditions,” said EZY Racer Mike Young.

The route this year will see the introduction of a tarmac stage of about 10 km. this stage comes early on during the day and hence the competitors would need to plan their tyre wear accordingly. Young visited some of the stages from last year to get a feel for the terrain he could expect this year during the rally and found that many of the ruts had gotten deeper and some precautions would need to be taken in his driving if those stages were repeated again.

With this being Cusco Japan’s home race and with Young having crashed during the last race, the pressure to perform rests heavy on Young’s shoulders.