Inside the Honda Media Challenge

Another year, another HMC completed, and this year, Team Philippine STAR’s ragtag band of dashing do-or-die drivers made it to the top step of the series podium. For our esteemed Motoring Editor, who goes by the name of Jean Dong (or Dong Briattore) in pit lane, this must be cause enough to buy yet another pair of fab shoes. He actually came last Saturday in a pair of Dada basketball sneakers with bling-bling spinners on the ankles, a perfect match to his borrowed, bling-blinged Lexus courtesy of Concept One. For us, well, it’s nice that we get the biggest trophy and get to talk good-natured smack with our rivals because, #1 It’s fun, and #2, it’s the winners’ privilege to strut for a while before having to face the pressure as defending champion next year.

But what does this mean to all you readers out there who’ve heard it on radio, read it in print, and seen it on TV courtesy of all the media teams that participated? Why should you care if Chief Account Manager (or was that "Senior"? I forget…) Jeff Reyes took the overall Individual category, or that one of us made the embarrassing mistake of heading back into pit lane (which you do when you’re done with your heat) right after his warm-up lap thinking that that was the hot lap? Not that that was me, of course.

I mean, we’re not celebrities here. We may be more good-looking than Piolo Pascual and Angel Locsin combined, but why should you be interested in our adventures on the track? And it’s not like we’ve got the talent of Michael Schumacher or anything… however fanciful some of the participants’ imaginations may be. In a lot of respects, we’re just like you. We drive ordinary cars every day, maintain them, occasionally bitch about them, and very rarely do we ever drive them to the limit.

Hey, we still have to maintain some semblance of resale value to our wheels, right? But there you have it: over the years, the Honda Media Challenge has given readers, viewers, and listeners a glimpse at what it must be like to play race car driver for a day. And because Honda has always stuck to using its mainstream cars for the series (from the 1st gen City to the 3rd Gen Civic to the current Jazz), the choice of automobile has kept things to a level that anyone with a car of the type can relate to. Perhaps even get them into joining any one of the dozens of slaloms, drag races, and run-what-you-brung events held throughout the year by various organizers.

For our part at The Philippine STAR, it’s been our job to relate to you what it feels like from the driver’s seat, not just to bring home the bacon for us to crow about for a while. And being an avid reader of car-stuff myself when I’m not the one typing up the story, I find the vicarious experience of driving cool cars quite enjoyable.

So what does the Honda Media Challenge feel like for a participant? Here we go then: First, you have to get to the track, which is the Carmona Race Circuit. If you live in the north side of Metro Manila, this can be quite a hassle for you, especially since the races have always been held on Saturdays. But that’s motorsports for you, and if you’re not prepared to drive to get to the race, then you can stick to your Playstation. Anyway, the circuit is actually a go-kart track, but it’s a real racing track and not a fun kart circuit, so the straights and turns are fast enough and hairy enough to pose a challenge to any driver in any car short of a Maybach.

Next, you get to the waiting area, sign-in, suit up, and wait for your turn to drive. At the start of every series, you’re issued a suit and a balaclava. The suit is only made to look like a race suit, but it’s not made of fire-retardant Nomex, which is prohibitively expensive if you’re Honda and you’d have to dress up dozens of people. It will, however, protect you from any glass shards if you ever roll the car and shatter the windows, which has happened in the past.

When your name is called, you head over to the "grid area", where you are assigned to one of the four Jazz units lined up (the racing seats are different in each car to accommodate our widely varying waistlines). You get in the car that’s assigned to you and try not to bang your helmeted head on the roll cage. Then, you’re strapped into the 4-point harness after you’ve gotten the seat distance right. If you insist, you can lock the harness yourself, because it’s situated near your crotch and no straight male is ever comfortable having another guy get his hands anywhere near Junior. When you’re ready, you head out to pit lane and wait for the go-signal. If you’re jittery, your hands will get all clammy, your heart rate will go up, and your sunglasses might fog. Try to ignore the dozens of whistles, hoots, and trash-talk sent your way by your well-meaning colleagues, because it’s all part of the fun. Flip ‘em the finger if you want, but just make sure they know you’re also kidding! Will you ride with the aircon on or off? Windows up or down? Stereo on or not? For my last lap in the series, I decided to do it with Chemical Brothers blasting in my ears. It was actually my best ever lap, too.

On "Go", you head out to the track for two laps: your practice "out lap", and your official "flying lap". Because this is not a fender-to-fender, crash-n-burn series, the race is actually a set of time trials: 1 heat in the morning, and another in the afternoon. If there’s enough time left, everybody gets to do a 3rd heat. The fastest heat is your official time for the day, and whether you’re at the top or at the bottom of the list will all depend on your skill, your nerves, and the weather conditions (if it rains in your heat but dries up in your rivals’, then you’re screwed).

So. Out of pit lane in 1st gear, you accelerate to 2nd, reaching 90+ kph in just a few seconds on the front straight. There’s just enough time to pop it into 3rd (kissing 100kph) before you slow down for the 1st turn, a sweeping right that ends in a few dozen meters to a right hairpin. Brake hard, downshift to 2nd (to 1st, even, if you’re adept at heel-and-toeing), then steer into the hairpin towards an acute left which then leads toward another hairpin right. Accelerate out of 1st and into 2nd for the tight, round turn that’s next which opens up into a short downhill straight. You’ll be reaching 3rd if you’ve got it floored from the apex. Brake, brake, brake hard so you can make the last hairpin right (one driver has really driven himself into the gutter here), exit in 1st, floor the throttle to speed shift into 2nd past the chicane, then past the timer for your "official lap".

Only this time, you go flat-out, smoothening the turns you messed up the first time, balancing traction with acceleration because in this series, winners are separated from losers by fractions of a second. If you’re not racing, the track is very easy to negotiate. But if you are, then it’s a devil to master. Braking points, turn-in points, apexes, all vary from corner to corner (and they change with every leg of the series too, as Honda keeps adding/removing pylons here and there to spice things up).

You’re constantly steering, shifting, braking, and trying to get the timing right, because aside from a weight reduction program (all carpeting and extraneous seats have been removed) and the addition of a roll cage, the Jazz is completely stock. The tires and brakes have only so much performance in them, and on a tight track like Carmona, the 1.5-liter VTEC engine produces enough power to spin the tires in all the turns… and wheelspin adds seconds to your time.

In this series, you will get to experience all the laws of physics in extremis on your car, from understeering into the foam barriers to oversteering into the grass to, yes, rolling over and over if you hit a curb at the wrong speed and at the wrong angle. Exciting? You bet, but many a hotshot, newbie driver has been humbled by his tire-screeching, but ultimately slow technique.

In any case, whatever your lap time you head back to the garage, exit the car, and try to look as nonchalant as possible as the announcer tells everyone how fast or slow you were over the PA system. As you sit down to enjoy a Coke, you then watch other competitors either go slower ("Yay!") or faster ("Crap.") than you. Then you try to do better in your final heat. Finally, you try to communicate what it feels like to the readers later on.

Now, I think Honda here should get the credit for educating many a budding motoring journalist/reporter on the intricacies of car control. It’s one thing to know what "understeer" is, for example. It’s another thing to experience it when you go too fast into a turn and the darn car is about to plow into the barriers despite your frantic steering.

Unless the person started out in motorsports to begin with, any motoring writer who’s ever told you that this car has sloppy steering or that car has a "twitchy rear end" probably got educated first-hand on what the laws of physics can do to a car in the many years of the Honda Media Challenge. And because it’s our job to share the love, the motoring beat has constantly tried to help the public understand and appreciate what enthusiastic driving is all about.

Thank you, Honda, for another great Media Challenge, and here’s looking forward to another great one next year. What’s the difference between "understeer" and "oversteer"? Well, from what I’ve learned over the years with the HMC, "understeer" is when I hit the wall front end first, and "oversteer" is when the ass-end hits instead. But I’ve yet to roll the car, of course.

Keep those messages coming in! Here are some messages from as far back as two weeks ago (Too much praise for James Deakin’s rants forced us to leave them out.)…

The MMDA approach: Crowd roads with ugly fences, negate intersections, force dangerous and unguided U-turns, ignore errant drivers. The result: Chaos! The only thing good that came out of the MMDA is the Number Coding Scheme. — 09178545033

Jeepneys plying the Muñoz-Taft route, especially at the corner of Roosevelt and EDSA, cause traffic because they have made the area their terminal! — 09176264229

To solve traffic due to PUVs, regulate the industry by giving drivers fixed monthly wages. The boundary system forces drivers to compete like mad for commuters. — 09209503586

Speak out, be heard and keep those text messages coming in. To say your piece and become a "Backseat Driver", text PHILSTAR<space>FB<space>MOTORING<space>YOUR MESSAGE and send to 2840 if you’re a Globe or Touch Mobile subscriber or 334 if you’re a Smart or Talk ’n Text subscriber or 2840 if you’re a Sun Cellular subscriber. Please keep your messages down to a manageable 160 characters. You may send a series of comments using the same parameters.