CTCC Shaoxing: 1.5T Underdog Wins TCS Class on TTSPORT Brakes

At the CTCC Shaoxing round (June 27-29, 2025), TTSPORT & YITRON Racing's 1.5T Honda FK7 — nicknamed the "Red-Eyed Devil" — beat a field of 2.0T machines to win the TCS class, China's top CTCC Cup grade, where cars are built and prepped close to TCR spec.

A New Livery for a Bigger Fight

TTSPORT & YITRON Racing showed up in Shaoxing with a freshly wrapped 1.5T Honda FK7, running in TCS — CTCC's premier Cup class, where 2.0T cars built to near-TCR specification are the norm. The team's target wasn't just a good finish; it was proving that a smaller-displacement car could hang with the class leaders on braking and chassis balance alone.

The new wrap uses a red-and-white graffiti-style split with an aggressive "red eye" front fascia — one of the most recognizable liveries in the paddock this round. The team's mascot made its debut worked into the graphics, giving the whole program a sharper, more unified identity heading into the season's back half.

Drivers Sun Zheng and Wang Wenbin shared the car again, both kitted out in newly cut TTSPORT race suits with reinforced, breathable liners and fire-rated fabric — gear built for a 55-minute-plus-one-lap endurance format that punishes any weak link in the car or the crew.

A 1.5T Car in a 2.0T Class

The FK7 lined up as the only 1.5T turbo car in a TCS field built entirely around 2.0T power. It also ran on smaller tires than most rivals, giving up cornering grip on top of the horsepower deficit. On paper, none of that adds up to a class win.

What closed the gap was the brake package. TTSPORT fitted the FK7 with a newly developed racing caliper system, engineered with input from European consultants: a one-piece forged-aluminum caliper paired with a racing rotor and racing pad. The goal was caliper rigidity, heat dissipation, and pedal feedback that could match TCR-level hardware — because a driver who can trust the pedal late into a braking zone can out-brake bigger engines into the corner, even without the horsepower to out-accelerate them out of it.

A rigid, consistent caliper matters most when the pads and rotor are already hot — flex in the caliper body eats brake-pedal travel and feel right when a driver needs to trail-brake deepest into a corner. That confidence let Sun and Wang attack braking zones aggressively and defend the inside line under pressure, turning the brakes into the FK7's real weapon against bigger-displacement traffic.

Qualifying Disaster: Last on the Grid Before the Race Even Started

Friday's qualifying session — the team's shot at a decent grid slot — turned into a crisis. During the warm-up lap, the FK7's steering pump failed, killing all power-steering feedback. The crew scrambled a replacement pump, but the substitute part ran a different firmware version that wouldn't talk to the car's ECU. With the clock running, driver Wang Wenbin worked directly with the team's engineers to rewrite the steering protocol parameters and force the mismatched hardware to communicate with the car's electronics — getting the FK7 back on track, but too late to salvage the session. The team lost qualifying entirely and started the race dead last, P21.

Rain, Safety Cars, and a Race That Turned Into a Scramble

Race day heat pushed track surface temperatures near 60°C, stressing both cooling systems and brakes before the weather flipped the script. A late storm soaked the circuit, grip dropped off fast, and multiple cars slid off in the wet. Two safety car periods scrambled the field's rhythm, and tire choice and brake temperature management became the deciding factors for anyone hoping to move forward.

The FK7 still couldn't match the 2.0T cars on straight-line power, but its brake system and suspension setup let it fight for every apex. In the wet, that meant consistent, predictable stops when the car ahead locked up or lost the rear — exactly the kind of margin that turns a defensive drive into a passing opportunity.

From Last Place to the Top Step

Working from the back of the grid through 55 minutes plus a lap of changing conditions, Sun Zheng and Wang Wenbin picked off cars one at a time and made the moves that counted when the safety car periods reshuffled the order. The "Red-Eyed Devil" crossed the line as TCS class winner — a result built on team coordination, driver judgment, and hardware that didn't fold when the weather did.

Track-Proven Brakes, Headed to the Street

Shaoxing put the TTSPORT racing caliper system through both ends of the stress range in one weekend — track temperatures pushing 60°C, then a sudden soaking. Through both, the forged caliper, racing rotor, and racing pad combination held rigidity and pedal feel, which is exactly what let the drivers brake with confidence deep into corners on a car giving up horsepower everywhere else.

The engineering lessons from this caliper program feed straight back into TTSPORT's street-going big brake kits. The aim isn't a race-only product — it's giving daily-driven, track-day, and club-racing customers the same rigidity, heat management, and pedal confidence proven under a wet, 55-minute CTCC endurance race.

TTSPORT & YITRON Racing is already turning its attention to the next round at Ordos International Circuit in August, carrying the experience — and the result — from Shaoxing into the second half of the CTCC season.