The Prima Racing & TunerPlayground team embarked on new territory competing for the first time in Round 1 of Global Time Attack as well as the season opener of the MotoIQ Pacific Tuner Car Championships. Both series took place this past weekend at Buttonwillow Raceway Park in conjunction with NASA. The team fielded “Irene,” their Honda S2000 in the Global Time Attack Street RWD class and their championship-winning Acura TSX in Moto IQ’s Tuner Under class, both piloted by Andrie Hartanto. For “Irene”, it was the first time the S2000 had driven on Buttonwillow’s CW13 configuration in over 7 months, and for the TSX it was the first time back to Buttonwillow in nearly a year. Given the level of competition, the new environment, back to back scheduling and the exceptionally high temperatures, Day 1 would prove to be a significant challenge for the entire team that arrived late Friday evening to move into Garage #1.

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The TunerPlayground & Prima Racing Team finished Round 3 of the Chrono Series Time Attack at Thunderhill Raceway (running bypass configuration) with yet another double win by Andrie Hartanto (1st Place Overall) in our S2000 “Irene” and Michael Ostby (1st Place GT2 Class) in our DC5. Andrie recorded a 1:58.271 on Hankook Ventus RS3…more than one and a half seconds faster than the next runner up, and coincidentally he was the only Unlimited Class S2000 in Chrono on street tires!

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The TunerPlayground & Prima Racing Team closes out Round 2 of the Chrono Series Time Attack at Buttonwillow (running CCW1 configuration) with two 1st Place finishes and another Overall Fastest Time of Day. Our DC5, driven by Michael Ostby took the win in the GT2 class while our S2000 “Irene,” driven by Andrie Hartanto took the overall win in Chrono with a blistering 2:05.485…more than 2 seconds faster than the next runner up.

The weekend began on Friday afternoon with Andrie and team manager Tom Tang loading up our rig with tools and provisions from Costco before heading down to Buttonwillow. This marked the first time that Tom had ever driven our truck and trailer, so it was quite a fun learning experience. Crew chief Chris Le and Tammy Woo left from San Jose later in the evening, followed by Mike and Lee-Anne Ostby. Everyone met at the hotel just before midnight and after goofing around for a short while, we turned in for what would be a busy day ahead.

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Hard work on weekends have been a routine lately for the Prima Racing crew.  This weekend was no different, especially because we’d just received a number of new parts from our partners.  The team had a long list of tasks to complete with the goal of making our TunerPlayground Time Attack S2000 faster. The agenda for the day consisted of the following:

-Install all of the new components that had arrived recently (Berk Technology 3-inch headerback exhaust, APR Performance carbon canards, Challenge USA 7075 duralumin front tow hook, Hondata K-Pro engine management system, lightweight racing battery, J’s Racing suspension components, and Blacktrax Performance baffle oil pan).
-Corner Weight
-Alignment

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