No. 55 Corrado shows well at annual American Road Race of Champions.

BRASELTON, GA. (November 14, 2006) -- When asked by KW Competition race director Colin Branch what he thought of the team's new KW Suspension, #55 VW Corrado driver Bill Sulouff said, "I wish I had this suspension all year!" Running as high as 3rd place in the hotly contested ITS class, Bildon Motorsport was pleased with it's showing in this year's American Road Race of Champions (ARRC). The ARRC is the end of season annual event held at Road Atlanta which brings SCCA regional drivers from all over the country to claim bragging rights as ARRC Champions.

Having not raced at Road Atlanta for years, "it took all of Thursday's test day to get used to this very technical track again", said Sulouff. A race winner here in the past Sulouff explained that "I know most of the tricks but like golf, it's easy to say what you are going to do but much harder to execute". We worked on our line through most of the morning sessions and then turned our attentions to fine tuning the suspension setup.

Running the new KW double adjustable suspension has been a great advantage for us this year continued owner/driver Bill Sulouff. In particular we have been very pleased with the compression damping settings. Compared to our old setup from another well respected German race shock maker, the KW suspension has proven to be a more modern and effective solution. Due to KW's high speed compression "blow off" feature, the KW Competition 2-way race suspension allowed us to square off the corners and attack the apex in ways that were never before possible. This approach is critical to fast lap times in a front wheel drive touring car. Sulouff went on to say "with our old solution, we could rarely touch the inside curbing without the car immediately going up on two wheels!" "With the KW's we can now mow down the curbs like they were not even there." Nowhere is this more evident than here at the ARRC where Road Atlanta's turn 3 really requires using all of the curbing in order maintain speed while heading on towards the "esses".

Friday's ARRC Qualifying sessions were spent trying out small changes but most of the effort was put into improving the grip by adjusting the shock valving. Due to the smoothness of the Road Atlanta circuit we were able to increase the bump damping from what was normally used which helped transient stability all around. After getting the basic bump damping dialed in and being happy with the attitude over the curbs, the next objective was to work on rebound damping. While observing others around us on certain sections of the track, it was obvious that the Bildon Motorsport Corrado could be improved in the area of corner entry or "turn in". It was felt that we were not getting enough rotation (oversteer) from the rear end on "turn in". With a generally fixed (non-adjustable) VW rear suspension we would normally have been stuck with the weekend's setup. However due to the adjustability of our KW 2-way suspension we had another tuning option available to us. Additional rebound damping was therefore "dialed in" to the rear shock's rebound adjustment screw until the rear of the car was rotating nicely on turn-in. This change allowed us to get the car pointed in the right direction sooner which therefore results in the driver being able to apply the throttle sooner resulting in faster lap times.

Saturday, Race Day, started off well with the Bildon Motorsport Corrado making a charge from 8th to 3rd place in just 5 laps. Thoughts of running down the 2 leaders were soon dashed however when the brakes began to get softer and softer with each passing lap. This problem had plagued the team off and on all year due to a suspected leak in the ABS pump which was still plumbed into the brake circuit even though the ABS was disabled due to the SCCA rules. With slowly fading brakes, the final laps were spent battling with a pair of fast RX7s for 3rd place until the position was finally relinquished for good.

However even though victory eluded the team, the event proved once again that the Corrado is a formidable opponent in the ITS class. Bildon Motorsport is looking forward to 2007 and with the support of companies like KW Competition and the excellent suspension products they produce.