When Turbo Fenton — yes, that is his real name — and his father Lance decided to start racing seriously, they hired an experienced racer-instructor Kevin Madsen to guide them. Wise move. Madsen had his beginnings racing with NASA in the early 2000s and took off. He has raced a wide range of sports cars and prototypes in North America and Europe. Bringing the pro onboard saved the father-son duo time and frustration not only because Madsen could help them drive, but because he knew the perfect car to help Fenton move beyond the preliminary stages of racing.
The car with which Fenton earned his spurs was an honest third-gen Mazda MX-5, in which they started him on skidpad and private track work to gain a basic understanding. From there the youngster continued to improve at track days with Madsen in the right seat. Finally, he jumped up to wheel-to-wheel racing in a local series at Hallett Motor Racing Circuit and continued to improve.
When Fenton was showing real promise, Madsen suggested they buy a used touring car to take to the sharp end of the pack in the Western Endurance Racing Championship. There, Fenton could accumulate thousands of laps at a reasonable cost. Madsen reached out to his friends at LA Honda World for a platform that would be approachable and challenging.
“We wanted a car that we could take straight into a new series without doing a lot of setup work,” Fenton stated.
Their ex-TC America Honda Civic Type R (FK8 generation) served as a versatile development tool to teach Fenton how to manage more power in a newer platform with moderate aerodynamic grip and obvious drivetrain differences.
The FK8, the second iteration of the new turbocharged Type R recipe, was a step on from the first version (FK2) in several ways. It was fitted with a lighter flywheel, thereby getting rid of some of its predecessor’s low-end lethargy, and Honda replaced the FK2’s torsion-beam rear with a multi-link setup.
So much of that perfected formula that defined the low-torque, high-revving atmospheric engines of old Type Rs went out with the FK2 and later the FK8. It also gained some weight — the race version of this four-door coming in at 2,850 pounds. Not hefty, but not the quintessential Honda featherweight, either.
The old Type R DNA had been altered, but this new recipe came with a few perks.
Soft Landing
Madsen knew that this car would make the transition easy. At his insistence, the Texas-based Fentons committed to a season of the Western Endurance Racing Championship. Not only would this new car slot nicely into E0 without much modification, but the series itself would provide the right sort of environment in which Fenton could get up to speed safely.
The FK8 didn’t need much to be eligible for competition. The biggest ticket item was a RedHead dry-break fueling system, which can transfer 5 gallons from their Hunsaker fuel jugs to the fuel cell in touch over 10 seconds. The team also added a rearview camera, bungee cords attached to the race harnesses, and Velcro radio cables — all to facilitate driver changes. Because the WERC series has a mix of day, dusk and night driving, an off-road, wide-angle light bar was installed for the night stints as well as a few other touches to make life easier for the drivers.
“The WERC rules set is reasonable and the tracks are forgiving,” Madsen added.
When Fenton and Madsen got their hands on the new car, they were thrilled — surprised, even. “It was so quick right out of the box,” Fenton recalled. It was comfortable, easy to see out of, and surprisingly strong. What would likely fail was already known and could be planned for.
Madsen knew of the transmission’s tendency to break — third gear isn’t suited to the torque — so he procured a backup before the season began. The factory Brembo four-piston brakes could handle most of the additional strain of big power and considerable mass, but they needed a little improvement before the team felt confident in them over the long haul.
The stock brakes came ducted, and Counterspace Garage provided the right pads to suit the car’s weight. “The CTR has always been hard on brakes — we’d say it’s just as hard on brakes as the R35 GT-R or any other modern sports car that somehow turns and brakes well, despite its weight. The electronics on these vehicles tend to make the brake systems hyper responsive and thus, they stress pads much more than older, lighter vehicles will. With all this in mind, we decided to use one of our more durable sprint pads. Not only does this pad have good durability for medium length endurance races, but it offers consistent bite, even in high operating temps,” Counterspace Garage’s David Leung explained.
In fact, the brakes were good enough to need some heat on occasion. In some cases, they were advised to close out the ducting on cold days when they couldn’t maintain the heat in the brake system.
Thermal Constraints
However, the heat in the engine bay was always bordering on excessive. To address the worrying oil and water temperatures, the team devised a series of minor alterations to the bumper that would increase airflow through the inlets by employing the venturi effect.
Cagey as he is humorous, crew chief David Morton remained tight-lipped about his ways of maximizing airflow under the car. “In following WERC’s guidelines for minimum height of the front bumper, we made sure airflow under the car extracted as much heat from the engine bay as possible,” Morton hinted.
Massaging the inlets, playing with various pipe sizes, wrapping the exhaust, and devising items like a heat shield around the turbocharger helped bring temperatures down somewhat.
What tied all this together were the detailed files they had on the car. The car’s former owners were happy to provide years of race data to help guide the team toward a solution. All the relevant data logs from several years of SRO competition helped them get a sense of where and how they’d be limited most by any thermal hangups.
Invisible Touch
The FK8 was happier handling longer days with these changes, but the drivers still had to play a part in managing the machinery. Only if they proceeded cautiously and with some mechanical sympathy would their outright pace carry them to a favorable finishing position at the end of six hours.
“We usually wait until we see the warning lights, then we start short-shifting, reducing load on the engine, and lifting and coasting a little more,” added Fenton.
The drivers were instructed to gradually release the throttle and endure a momentary coasting phase prior to braking helped drop temps, and when entering the pits, they had to try and keep entry speeds as high as is legal, as opposed to nearly idling as so many do.
Beyond that, there wasn’t much else they could do aside from point a few leaf blowers at the front-mounted intercooler during pit stops and chilling the fuel prior to qualifying. At the Utah Sunchaser Six Hour, all these tactics had to be employed to last as long as they could, but the thin air and high-desert heat made life particularly tough and the motor suffered its only turbo failure.
Turbocharging changed the driving experience in several ways. Obviously, the upside to all the K20C1’s turbo problems is considerable power. With 295 horsepower at the wheels and 295 pound-feet of torque (available from 3,000 rpm) torque, few cars in E0 or ST3 could match its straight-line performance over two years of competition. Low-end turbo torque helped maintain speed with less effort — a real asset when short-shifting and reducing throttle input are mandatory.
With all this mid-range grunt, the K20C1 could easily overwhelm the 265-section fronts in lower gears before the right setup was found. An SRO-legal OS Giken 1.5-way helped, but the real solution to wheelspin was finding the right rebound settings. “Once we dialed it in, we had no difficulty putting the power down well in the dry. Wet weather was a different story — we really had to tip-toe,” added Morton.
With its low-speed traction hangups mostly solved, the motor had one more flaw: it remained a little less than perfect in situations that required much pedal massaging. “There were times when I couldn’t quite manipulate the throttle as deftly as I’d like to,” Madsen started, “like in Bus Stop and Riverside [at Buttonwillow Raceway Park]. I usually felt a little behind the ball there.”
Fortunately, the balance helped counteract any turbo lag because this point-and-shoot car got ever so slightly loose at speed. It rotated gently and progressively, and never surprised its drivers, regardless of how quickly they were going. Even when finding the right throttle position seemed impossible, Fenton, Morton, and Madsen could always place the car where they wanted it.
A versatile package, a sturdy composition, an enduro-appropriate ease of use, and, thankfully, soft edges — as expected of what Madsen classifies as a quasi-street car. “It’s incredibly easy to drive. In fact, it’s a lot like a well-sorted street car. Honestly, it’s one of the most enjoyable front wheel-drive cars I’ve ever experienced. Good bang for the buck, too.”
Combine all those traits and it’s not hard to see why they were so successful with it. Their two fruitful seasons culminated in winning the WERC E0 title in 2023.
After asserting themselves as one of the strongest packages in WERC, they had to make a decision. Fenton was showing remarkable speed and maturity behind the wheel, and the Honda started to feel, ever so often, like a little bit of a hangup. The harsh reality was, in order to go much faster, the motor would require extensive development that would exhaust the team coffers. Maybe that’s just the reality of running a turbo motor in a modified road car in a long-distance setting.
The original approach of finding the right car for the circumstance had paid off, so they put that to work once again when the time was right. Something a little less compromised, something that could put in fast laps without as much babysitting. So, with those aims in mind, they sold the Honda and picked up a Ligier JS2R.
The single-purpose French FR has been considerably faster and less temperamental, making it another serious contender in E0, but its edges are sharper and the car is far less accommodating to a wide range of drivers. That’s fine once the skills have been acquired, but perhaps it wouldn’t have been a possibility had the Honda not laid the foundation.
At the end of the day, it’s hard to replicate the ease of hopping in something that’s mostly a streetcar like the Honda, and when it’s as fast as a well-sorted FK8 is, that comfort softens the learning curve slightly.
