The Garage Work camp has been hard at work on several of their shop cars for the 2018 season. Iwata has chosen to put his personal build aside in order to concentrate on the advancement of a few select customers; which is a somewhat noble, but necessary thing to do when you own your own tuning shop. The dedication is paying off though, as all 3 of the cars they have competing have broken personal records. One of them stands out among the rest, however, and it all started last year when he broke a very important record at Tsukuba.
Tokue has always been adamant that his car is not a Type-R. In fact, he goes as far as putting his name down as ‘Rじゃないよ’ on event time sheets (translation “Not a Type-R!”). He told me once that when he first bought his car, the Type-R was not yet available to him. Despite him wanting one so bad, he had to settle for the EK4 and since getting into the sport, he’s vowed to make it faster than the EK9 he had once coveted so badly. It’s his way of saying, he did it. However, he didn’t just make his civic faster than a Type-R, he has made a dent so large in the sport of time attack that people will no longer look at Honda Civics as the dark-horse of Time Attack.
No longer are naturally aspirated, front wheel drive cars the underdogs of this sport – they have become the Frontrunners.
With the upcoming Attack Championship next week at Tsukuba, the big narrative for me to follow will be if Tokue will be able to retain his title as fastest N/A FF around TC2000. Last year, he ran an unprecedented 56.748 and next week he’ll be driving to shatter into the 55’s, making him and his EK4 among the fastest N/A cars around the course; not just FF, but in the entirety of the paddock. It sort of puts things into perspective when you think about cars like the ASM S2000 having a goal of breaking into the 56’s (awhile back it ran a best of 57.398 naturally aspirated). Tokue is already the second fastest in the N/A class, falling second only to Hiroyuki’s Full Stage built, 20B powered FD3S. The one car that I’m even the slightest worried about would be Ton’s Aslan EG6. Seeing how the duo performed a few weeks ago at Central had me thinking that it could be a possible point of contention for Yusuke. With that being said, though, Ton is shooting for a 56 flat at TC2000, but has yet to drive out of the 57’s (57.1). The K-powered EG has stepped up for this year, and the one disadvantage is that Tsukuba isn’t a local track for the Aslan pair. It will be interesting to say the lest.
Before CTAC, when I first caught pictures online of the Garage Work boys loading up their cars onto flatbeds, I couldn’t help but get excited when I saw the changes to Tokue’s car, and even more excited when I was able to get a closer look at it during the actual event. Let’s take a look at some of the updates.
Last year Ton and his EG6 took first in the Vertex NA class with a 1:20.053, retaining his title this year with a 1:18.746; a 1.3 second improvement. Tokue, on the other hand, ran a 1:21.696 in last year’s shootout. That means he showed almost a 2 second improvement year over year – on a track that’s almost an 8 hour drive from home. That’s not bad.
