It’s no secret that Yellow Speed Racing coilovers have featured on many event winning cars over the years in all continents and this year proved no different as we caught up with Paul Cunnington a.k.a Pauly C to find out how his 2023 season went. Earlier this year, we hooked Paul’s 850 horsepower 2JZ powered Silvia S15 up with a set of our Advanced Pro Plus Racing 2-way Drift Spec coilovers as he wanted to take his suspension game to the next level.
After a season of top level competition in the MSUK Drift Pro Championship, we caught up with Paul to get his thoughts on his new suspension setup and how his new coilovers made all the difference!
“Now that the dust has settled on the 2023 season, I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on the year and give a review of the Yellow Speed Racing coilovers that have been used on the car.
At the start of the season we didn’t get as much testing as we hoped for coming into our first competitive event! However, we did manage to get the fronts coilovers on the car prior to some demonstration runs at Castle Combe. Unfortunately, as the car was still being built up again, the rears were not ready to install at that time.
Our initial feedback with the front coilovers in place was positive, although it was difficult to really be able to scrutinise the coilovers because we didn’t have the rears installed and generally I hadn’t been in the seat for a while and I was still finding my feet with the car.
Fast forward a couple of months to the first round of the MSUK Drift Pro Championship at Cadwell Park, we took a gamble & installed the rears untested. The car was aligned to our usual settings & after some conversations with “shockin”, we selected some fairly basic settings to the coilovers. This involved adjusting both the bump & rebound settings. We then went out for our first laps of the season to see what we could do.
To my amazement, the suspension worked incredibly well straight out of the box! We had total control of the car; making transitions more predictable. This gave me more confidence on initiation and much more straight line grip. A competitor even remarked, “How on earth are you going up the hill so fast? I just keep spinning!” The most important thing for me though, was being able to get on the door of my rivals far easier than I have ever done before, as the car is able to find grip and push on to where I need it to be.
In the past I had always struggled with grip against fast cars like Ian ‘Bizz’ Phillips LSZ, Josh King’s V8 E36 and Ryan Hughes GT86. Laying the power down to the asphalt was always a challenge, but clearly not anymore!
The first round of the weekend saw us earn a podium finish which was amazing! Unfortunately, the second round of the weekend ended early thanks to a damaged throttle body, but we still clinched a top 4 finish.
For those that have been following my progress this season, you’ll know that we suffered catastrophic engine failure at Brands Hatch, which was actually caught on camera by the Tegiwa media team. This put us out of competition for a short while.
However, we managed to make it back onto the grid for Donington Park & Go Japan at Brands Hatch. This time round we had a completely new engine setup (thanks to a severely damaged wallet!) During these rounds, as you can imagine, my confidence wasn’t at it’s usual high, so annoyingly we didn’t make it past the top 8.
The final round of the season was at Snetterton. We were blessed with good weather (which was a shock in October) and the fire inside me had been reignited.
The track is very challenging to get right. The turns are awkward & there’s lots of moments of going very fast to very slow, but when it all comes together it’s very rewarding.
The suspension really came into its own that weekend and showed what a great system it is. The start line is essentially a drag race to the first turn. I was at such an advantage as there wasn’t a single car that could drive away from me and much to my disbelief, I was driving away from some of the faster cars, leaving them standing!
The first turn is a medium right hander which you really have to be flat to the mat to make a tight hairpin. Again, having the ability to not only drive away from my competitors, but be able to slow the car down braking later than I had done in the past was a real advantage.
Coming out of the hairpin there is a long ‘manji’ across the track into a seriously fast left hander. The transitions through the track felt effortless & gave me the confidence to be able to be on full throttle for longer.
With my new found confidence in the car thanks to the Yellow Speed Racing coilovers, we qualified in first place and secured the top spot on the podium too! This was was a great end to the 2023 season, especially given some of the challenges we had thrown at us.
On reflection, the YSR suspension has been the one thing that has just worked this year. We pretty much installed it straight out of the box and we have had zero issues with it. We can’t believe the results that we have achieved this season, given that we’re only on the most basic of settings! During the off-season, the suspension setup is something that i’m going to explore in greater detail, as they have much more potential to offer. Watch out for us in 2024!”
We can’t wait to see how Paul continues to develop his S15 next season with his Yellow Speed Racing coilovers. We’re hopeful that he can secure plenty of podiums and silverware and mount a bid for the title challenge too!
