While I was always toying around to make my bikes go faster and faster, somewhere it struck me that I had to do something with cars. I was quick enough to realise the potential of the Honda machines and the scene was quite hot by 2008 with lots of drag racing, super saloon circuit racing and street tuning. A lot of tuners had already built a few fast-looking or fast-sounding Honda City Vtecs, but the times were never that impressive. 15 sec quartermile runs were the league of thorough-bred, fully souped cars - Turbo/NA with meticulous weight reduction. It was somewhere at that point when I was suggested by a friend to get into the Honda game. Hence I picked my first Honda City Vtec in 2010 and that was the biggest turning point of my life. It changed the way I looked at cars and the way others looked at me.
I had the car stock for barely a few days as expected.
I attended my first Honda-night meet and a lot of cars showed up. I had just then developed my first ever 4x1 race exhaust system for my Honda and I managed to cut an impressive 1.2 secs to 100kph with everything else bone stock. It dint go down too well among the older Honda crowd and I was challenged if I could go any faster.
A few weeks later I showed up with a car which could clock a 0-100 time of 7.45 secs which clearly nuked some infamous builds and then the rest was history.
Somewhere down the line I had turned into an absolute Honda nutter. It then turned into a personal target to achieve the best results in every form with a Honda City - Circuit racing, drag racing and street tuning.
Fast forward one year, into 2011 and I was closely watching the Super saloon racing category which was dominated by veteran tuners/racers and mostly by the Esteems.
The Super saloon (ITC) is the most fiercely fought category in Indian motorsports with unlimited funds and technology. It then became my target to build a Honda for this category to race in the Nationals. I started Race Concepts, my own tuning entity by 2011 and we were in the full business of building race bikes and cars. We built the first ITC Honda City Vtec for the 2011 season, along side 2 other Honda citys from another coimbatore based team called "Tiger Sports India". The 2011 season was a wild card entry and the only emphasis was to improve the dynamics and powertrain.
The 2012 season started on a good note with a few top podium finishes by the team driver with 2 more Honda city Vtecs joining the party. The car was the quickest off the line and clearly made its statement during the first round. The category got stiffer with the introduction of MRF champion driver Arjun Balu into the series along side Multiple champion Mr N.Leela Krishnan. The fierce battle of the drivers continued all along the season and Arjun Balu clinched the championship title in his Honda city Vtec, with our Honda finishing in the third spot. It seemed like the Hondas were back in the game and talks were that more and more Hondas would join the league by 2013.
So after nearly 2 years of building and setting up a Honda city for the circuit, it was time to touch base with the good old fashion of showing who is the boss - Drag racing.
The Valley run 2013 was announced and it was the best thing to happen for me and my Hondas. We entered the Pro-stock 1600cc category and set a new national record for an NA car. 13.5 secs, which was unheard for its time and its still the fastest time to beat. In a car which was 945 kilos in full circuit trim - with roll cage and circuit tyres and minimum traction.
The run -
The car was the fastest Indian car for the day and my first personal goal was set.
In 2013 I built a really fast version of my street car. The read -
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/modifi...ing-story.html. This car was inspired a lot from my learnings from racing, street tuning and it was the ultimate NA street car package. With a 0-100 time of under 6 secs, in full street trim and a 13 sec quartermile time.
And then went onto building another Turbo Honda City package, to become the ultimate Turbo sleeper -
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/modifi...pts-build.html.
Fast forward into 2014 and I decided to build my own personal circuit race car. I was always building fast bikes and cars for the top teams and drivers, which I always tuned and only watched the story from outside. Drag racing is what I was best at and I decided to try circuit racing. Picked up a Honda City Vtec and it was soon given the full race treatment to compete in the newly introduced Super Stock category. We unplugged ourselves from the ITC (Super Saloon) category since the team we were supporting, called it off for the season. So 2014 was full focus on my personal race car and for 2 other friends that I was supporting for the same series. Along my car racing scene I built a few fast IJTC and Super Stock Esteems as well. I was on pole in my maiden qualifying for the season, qualifying ahead of an ex-National champion in a class which was introduced for rookies. The race pace was a different thing and it took sometime for me stay ahead although I did manage to finish bumper to bumper with the fastest laptime for the weekend. Enough to know where I stood.
The rest of the season was a similar affair with a few more pole positions, fastest laptimes, a lot of bad luck, random crashes into my car due to mixed grid pile-ups and so on. During the 3rd round of the championship I had a pretty bad crash due to a massive oversteer on a wet patch which dropped me from the points table and I had to eventually settle 2nd in the championship. The last round at BIC was my best experience ever. With a lot of setup issues due to the wheel size change and after rebuilding my Honda from a bad crash with barely enough time between rounds, I could never do a single timed lap during the free practise sessions. I have never raced in this track and I had never understood the limits of pushing my car since I had teething issues all along the sessions. Somehow by the end of the last timed practice session, I sorted most of the glitches with the car and I had straight qualifying.
I qualified on pole again for the Super stock category, right behind the ITC class and ahead of nearly 20+ cars including IJTC and super stock. That made my day, rather the weekend! I set the fastest lap time of 2:34 (The fastest laptime for a stock car around BIC) during race 1 with a close fight with the category leader and race 2 & 3 was similar with my rear acting up with heavy oversteer, few spins, racing incidents and eventually still setting the faster laptimes for the weekend in my class. I drove my last lap into the chequered flag with a heavy heart that I would not be driving the next season since I had to focus more on my tuning aspects and other commitments.
2014 was also a great start to my drag racing season. I won the Pro-stock 1600cc during The Valley run 2014, and then we built the new spec engine for the JK Tyre National drag racing championship 2014 which was held in august. I won all the categories I entered, won Indian open and Unrestricted. Eventually beating an Aston Martin Vantage V10, Nissan 370Z, Evo X and barely loosing to an Audi R8 V10 with my NA 1500cc Honda city Vtec drag car. We got great applause from the crowd and it was a new bench mark for the way people looked at an NA build. I am currently leading the championship and looking forward for the next round expected to happen in the next 2 weeks.
Along the way, I built numerous street Honda City Vtecs in different forms and tune. From ITB setup for street to all out street builds. My Honda craze took me to another level and I finally got myself a Honda civic eg 1994 4 door sedan. A dream Honda for every boy racer around the world and has the history for being the most tuned car in every form with the most wicked engine swaps. The car came with a very mint B16A 160hp motor with Type R LSD transmission, rust free chassis, all wheel disc setup, full coilover suspension package and a 9000rpm limiter courtesy a remap from the ex-owner. The car literally blew me away the first time I drove and its still waiting bone-stock for my orders to take its next tuned form!
The 2015 season has started and I decided to take a different approach with my drag projects. While I had already clocked a 12.9 secs with an NA motor (un-officially) which is the fastest anyone has clocked till date globally with a D15 SOHC motor in the Honda city chassis, I felt it wasnt fast enough.
Somewhere up in my posts I have posted a link to the Turbo Sleeper Honda project that I did for a friend, so the deal was to plonk that engine in my drag chassis. The street car was already mental enough to clock late 12's in street tune with street tyres, but we wanted to push for a better time.
Made a few quick changes to the plumbing and setup and we found ourselves maxing out the injectors overnight, a day before leaving for the event. We had nearly 50-60hp waiting to come out only if we had the injectors in place. Toned down the boost to a very mild 14 psi for the Gt28R high end spec turbo and did the engine swap. Tried as much to juice every possible psi from the FPR to work best to get a few horses more. And we showed up at "The Valley Run 2015". The car looked very different to most as it sported an "Intercooler" from nowhere. The event went very slow and my runs finally happened on sunday late into the night. With cold track temperature, zero setup and basic circuit tyres, I did the best I could do with my beloved drag Honda. Sent it into pure darkness into a blinding finish line which I could barely see, hence out of sheer fear lifted a few meters before the line. A car accelerating to 100kph from a cold ground with 190 section skinny MRF slicks in under 4.5 secs and experiencing wheel spin till end of 3rd gear, a chirp into 4th gear and then finally being able to hold the wheel steady only in 5th to clock an exit speed of 190kph true on the vbox is hard to explain or even imagine. Without LSD, without fancy tyres its a nightmare. Thankfully I had turned down the boost to limit the madness. I set a new FWD car record of 12.3 secs in my Honda. I was not happy with what I saw, but thats the best the event had to offer for a fully prep'd race car without lights while the entire day was spent in admiring fancy super cars and super bikes.
The run -
I took the top spot and my friend Jagadish took the second place (12.8 secs) in the Indian open. Was the fastest Indian car for the day.
We had to then hurry back home to prepare ourselves for the MRF circuit racing championship and we were starting our new racing team - Race Concepts Motorsports, with 4 drivers in the stable. The first round in January saw us enter in the Super Stock and IJTC category.
Race 1 and Race 2 was a clean sweep for both the Honda city Vtecs built by me piloted by Varun Anekar and Abhinay Bikkani. IJTC was a good effort by Sridhar Nagaraj who posted respectable results to match his experience. The real deal that was pending was to introduce ourselves back into the bigger league - ITC (Super saloon) from where we had left in 2013.
It was time again for new standards to be set and hence I had to build the car from a whole new approach.
The category was and is being dominated by RRP and boys. Arjun Narendran was the 2014 ITC champion and his lead continued into the first round of the season. He and his car are very tough to beat and knowing its coming from Mr Leela Krishnan's powerful stable, its a real gamble to even attempt entering the category if you looking at the top spot. The challenge was very hard to even digest and since we had skipped nearly 2 seasons with the Honda, it was hard to know where to catch up. My super stock Honda city Vtec which I raced in the 2014 National championship was under the axe to become the ITC build for the 2015 season.
The work started slow and went very slow. The car was put together in bits slowly and steadily and after countless hours of work, sleepless nights, rigorous testing (without a dyno) and lengthy fabrication, it was finally ready. Ready just 2 days before the official qualifying. The car has never been tested, the mad man behind the wheel - Deepak Paul Chinnappa, had never even tested a Honda city vtec in his entire career, blind suspension setup, fresh spec engine, new spec gearbox and chassis modifications and most importantly my own aero simulation and body work which was an unknown package. I could say it would work, but I wasnt sure. How is anyone to take such a gamble for a category that was at its peak and winning was not even in our wildest thoughts. Somewhere I had my logic and math in perspective and I felt it should work! The engine power would have to be the strongest point since the horsepower demand had gone up since 2013 to a whole new level. The Honda city Vtec driven by Arjun Balu in early 2013 retired since it could no longer keep up with the sheer pace from the perfectly built esteems. The VW Vento which was later introduced by them as a VW tie-up could also not stand up with Arjuns on-the-wall driving. Since the category is cc-to-weight, meaning a car with a higher cubic capacity will have to run more weight, the esteems were making enough power to carry its mass much smarter than the heavier cars which were about the horsepower but heavier. So the powertrain development with race level reliability was the key to my Honda build.
The weekend started rather peacefully with our Super stock Hondas doing well in practice and our maiden ITC went out for its first outing. Deepak posted an impressive and fastest laptime for the day in the very first session of just 4 laps. That literally blew us away. The car had more power than we wanted, suspension had lot of work to be done, but we couldnt do much in a 30 mins session. The next day was qualifying and then the races. With a lot of setup corrections, the car improved further but the tyres supplied by MRF for the races were inferior to the ones we initially tested with. The tyres had poor life and grip levels too. So with just 2 laps down qualifying we had to call the car in to no longer abuse the tyres.
Race 1 was annouced and it was a mixed grid. I had 3 cars running in total in the same grid. 3 Honda city Vtecs. The first ever team in the National Series with all Hondas and a dream come true for a nutter like me. It was my moment of truth and to testify all the months of hardwork. I had my pressure shooting up and mixed emotions to see all my cars at the grid at once, and then to see whats gonna happen in the end.
Long story short, we won the first ever ITC race. Yes, dont ask how, just watch this video -
And the super stock Hondas also won in their own ways. Race 2 for ITC was on a similar note untill the driveshaft decided to not handle the torque we packed into the engine. By lap 7 the car had lost the front wheels almost and barely crossed the chequered line after 10 grueling laps. Still finishing 4th in the race. That itself was an achievement.
Eventually after the testing session, we set the fastest laptime for a Honda city Vtec ever to grace the MMSC circuit and also beating the laptime of Narain Karthikeyan driving a Nissan GTR R35!
My dream of building an ITC, a dream that I kept seeding for nearly half a decade was finally the truth in front of me. In the car that I wanted to win with, the epic Honda city Vtec.
The season is going to resume in June and we are making minor changes to improve the car further. So the rest of the season is to be seen, if we can hold on to the competition. The drag race is coming up in a few days and the drag car is also being updated.
In the end when I look back at what I have been able to achieve with this lovely car, I'm truly honoured. Nothing in my life has changed me as much as being associated with this wonderful machinery. These are surely going to be the longest and the most cherished memories of my life.
This car truly deserves a lot of respect and thanks to Honda for having changed our lives. Little do they know what a decade old car has done to the lives of many.
I was surprised to see Overdrive felicitate the Honda city with a Hall of fame award, but to most of us enthusiasts its a given even otherwise.
28th March 2015, 05:50
(38)
Thanks
Have been silently going through your modification jobs whenever the opportunity presented [got something to read]
