It has been refreshing to see Kiyo return to Tsukuba circuit this season with new developments to his RX7. It’s pretty cool to see how far this build has come since he first started the project in 2006. After processing the photos from this recent DKM Challenge event, I took a look back on site to see that we’ve been following his campaign since 2013. Needless to say, the car looked a whole lot different back then. You can browse the photos and articles relating to the TFR FD here. We also featured Kiyotaka in Volume 2 of 80R which was published in 2019.
Kiyo and the bright yellow FD didn’t necessarily fly under the radar back then, especially considering he was lapping TC2000 in the 56 second range in the early 2010’s. But when the new Panspeed widebody was unveiled during the 2018 season, it certainly garnered much more attention. It probably helped that in 2018 Japanese time attack had a rush of new enthusiasts and the popularity of the motor sport was hitting all time highs. After Attack Tsukuba 2019 trailing into the end of the season early 2020, we didn’t see too much of the car again until the 2023/24 season. Last year I was invited by Hashimoto to come along with the team as they tested some new aero updates on the car – you can view that video here:
This season Kiyo is back to campaigning the build once again with the help of TFR’s own Toru Kumaki, who was put in charge of building and maintaining the cross-ported 13B. Kiyo set his personal best of a 54.585 right before taking some time off, on January 18th of 2020. Back then the car was equipped with a Garret GT4088 turbo and purportedly making around 700ps, although the true power levels were kept hidden. The car now has a Garrett G40 turbo, which has a much higher flow rating compared to his old setup (32% by Garrett’s claim). This season he also introduced a paddle shift setup, tuned by TFR using Motec ECUs, which they have been fine tuning this year. Last we spoke in depth, Kiyo told me that this build will be ‘always be evolving’, and that the paddle shift setup was something he wanted to do in the future, with the addition of a sequential transmission. It’s great to see his continued resolve and follow through. This type of dedication has become really important as of late, as it both pushes the sport forward and provides me with a more personal form of motivation in my craft and even my own builds.
At the DKM Challenge event on December 12th, I was able to take a closer look at the car once again and take enough shots to put together this gallery. Quite a few things remained the same from last season, as the change to sequential paddle shift took up most of the resources. Once the transmission setup is tuned properly, I’m sure we’ll see Kiyo able to begin cutting time again. At this event he was only able to clock a 56.11 showing that he has a lot more time in the car comparatively. Looking forward to seeing the development progress.
We’ll have gallery coverage from this particular DKM Challenge event tomorrow morning – in the meantime you can view the video on our YouTube channel. Enjoy ~
Incredible how one can make a cool car even cooler!