Watching a legend at work
Atty. Jerome G. Neri
The Scrutineer
IN the early 1990s, there was this car, a 1972 Toyota Corolla, that was named “Showtime.” Every car guy at that time knows this car as it was the baddest and quickest drag racing car of its time. This car was the work of Pam Tolentino and Mio Bolanos. Even before Showtime, I already have seen and heard of these two gentlemen. I first saw Mio driving a very quick white Toyota Liftback in 1987 at a race held in Meralco Ave. in Ortigas Center organized by the Camwreckers Association. This was the first organized drag race that I saw. In 1990 I met Pam Tolentino in a drag race in Bago City, Negros Occidental. Pam built a Mitsubishi Lancer L-Type with a four link suspension and coil springs. Originally, the L-Type came with leaf springs. This was some piece of engineering. These were people I looked up to: they build fast cars with attention to detail.
For over a year now, I have been working with a group in Bacolod on a Subaru STI GC8. We have achieved so much with this car. It was the first Subaru in the country to hit the 11-second bracket and it is the quickest Subaru in the country up to today. However, we knew that having an 11-second car would not be enough to be competetive this year or in the coming years, so this car had to be improved. A better engine and drivetrain was on the list of improvements, and more imprtantly the car had to shed of a lot of weight. My expertise is on tuning. Shedding weight while keeping the balance and handling of the car is a challenge.
The Bacolod group got Pam Tolentino to work on the Subaru. A lot of weight was shed while keeping the structure and everything else mechanically sound. Around 200 kilos was removed from a car that weighed at 1,200 previously. Now that is a lot. The car was brought to Cebu for some dyno-tuning and I was able to bring it to over 700 horsepower.
Previously, we were running at 570 horsepower. The tuning session in Cebu was the first time I worked with Pam. I was actually tuning a car with one of the persons I looked up to in my younger days. It was a nerve wracking experience.
A couple of weeks later we tested the car and it did a 10.6-second pass. This became the first Subaru to get into the 10s in the Philippines. During this test you could see that Pam has never lost his touch. I observed him carefully, looking at every movement of the car during the test, adjusting the tire pressures and doing a lot of checks before each pass of the car. I was star-struck watching a legend in his element.
Last weekend was the Masskarera race. I was pleasantly surprised to see Mio in Bacolod, too. The Bacolod group brought him there. So here I was, tuning a car with the Showtime crew. To top it all, they were calling the team Showtime Racing Rewind. The pressure was immense. This car had to perform on its debut run on its current configuration, as it has tranformed to a totally different car from last year. This car had two main rivals, a Mitsubishi Evolution 3, a car that I also tuned and had similar performance, and a 900+ horsepower Honda Integra built by the country’s best honda guys, Powerhouse Racing.
In the end, the STI finished runner-up, having a best elapsed time of 10.9 seconds, to the EVO that did an elapsed time of 10.8 seconds. The STI struggled more than the EVO as the track was slipperry due to intermitent rains during the event that it just had so much wheelspin that was difficult to control. Just a few more adjustments is needed and I’m confident this will be a consistent low 10-second car. However, next year’s target is to bring it to the 9s. Unleashing the horsepower, which is my job, is the easy part. The difficult part is putting this power to the ground. With Pam Tolentino, I am confident that this car will be better, stronger and faster next year. The Showtime legacy will continue……
