Rain threaten to spoil the night as more than 70 drag racers made their way to the first Sepang Drag Battle for this year.

Fortunately it drizzled just enough to cool the ambient temperature down at the Sepang International Circuit boosting the power output for the drag cars that night.

But it was not cool enough for the defending champion, 2009 class A winner, Ahmad Firdaus Azman as he struggles with an overheating Mitsubishi Evo 9 as the car’s cooling fans failed to work that night.

To make matters worst, the winning car was down 50hp from the 900hp it used to make last year due to a late preparation by the team.

“We decided to swap the cams last minute but due to the Chinese New Year celebrations everything went to a halt after that so we didn’t have time to calibrate the software for the ECU to adapt to the new cams,” explained Firdaus.

But luck was on his side as he manages to beat all the other competitors in his class to be the champion on the first round of the 2010 Sepang Drag Battle.

“Every time the marshals told me it was my turn I was lucky that it was all single runs meaning that I didn’t have to do more than one run for every outing lessening the risk of severely overheating the engine.”

Firdaus added that apart from sorting out the fan problem, he and his team will have ample time to re-tune the car to make more out of the new cams, confident of gaining back the 50hp that he lost and making at least another 50hp possibly putting out an excess of 950hp when they are done with it.

“You have to make sure that you are always ahead and don’t let your competitors catch up with you be in while racing or in preparing for the next race.

I’m confident we will be ready for the next round which is in May and hopefully not to just win that round but the next round after that as we are aiming to retain our title as champion in this year’s championship.”

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