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After 48 hours of non-stop work, the AVO widebody STI made it's debut at the Evo vs. STI Hypermeet! It was a serious week of Murphys Law cropping up at every point - if anything can go wrong, it did. From fuel pumps that were pumping backwards to finding out our tyre sponsor wanted us to run street tyres despite it being an open class contest, we saw it all happen. By Sunday morning our shop foreman was hallucinating and talking to little pink fairies, but we dragged him out to the track, stuffed 45 liters of java in him, and got the car going.

The street radials presented another problem entirely. Even by turning the boost down on the Cosworth 2.5-liter/AVO550 bolt-in turbocharger to 1.2 bar from the 1.8 bar that we were planning to run, the car was still laying down rubber for a good 50 feet exiting every corner. So despite being setup for 600+hp, it had to be run at only 420whp. Admittedly that was still in excess of most teams at the event, but still not not what was planned for.

The brand-new WRXlink standalone ECU management had made the task of tuning much easier than other systems, which helped at lot during all the other crazyness. This event proved to be an ideal shakedown for their new ECU. The entire setup was incredibly reliable despite being an entirely bolt-in project.

AVO did have some help in the driving department, from Maejima Shuji, a Super Taikyu (Super Endurance touring car series) driver that wanted to drive. With his enormously capable hands at the wheel, the car ended up 5th out of 10 in the 10 lap battle. His expertise in the crowded touring car series proved to be particularly useful at the beginning of the 10 lap battle, as two Evo's wrote themselves off immediately in front of him at the Dunlop corner. 

The DBA brakes, IDI brake pads, and his incredible reflexes pulled the car out of that mash-up and went on to finish the race, no mean feat given the nature of this contest. His comment at the end of the race was that the power was fantastic, suspension setup was quite good, and there was absolutely no traction from the tyres.