Rodin’s reimagined Sintura to take on WTAC
This year’s Yokohama World Time Attack Challenge (WTAC) Sydney has added another legendary piece of machinery to the bill: the reborn Sintura S99 via the mechanical ingenuity of NZ’s Rodin team.
The reimagined Sintura S99 machine will compete as part of the Emtron Pro Class for the fast approaching August 30-31 event.
Last seen in competition 25 years ago, Rodin Cars have reimagined the GT1-era racer after Rodin founder David Dicker found it in an ex-F1 showroom and brought it to Rodin HQ in New Zealand with a vision to redesign it as the Rodin Sintura.
The Sintura doing its paces in testing in NZ at the purpose built Wandle Downs Station testing facility
A bit of background…
The Sintura S99 was a grand tourer-style race car designed to meet GT1 regulations. Funded by motorsport figure Richard Austin (with “Sintura” being an anagram of “R. Austin”), the S99 became infamous for meeting GT1 regulations through creative means, such as fitting the race car with registration plates and road tyres.
The car originally debuted in the 1999 British Championship with drivers Richard Dean and Kurt Luby. The season’s highlight was a win at Silverstone, outperforming factory Listers, McLaren F1 GTRs, and Porsche GT1s.
The S99 also competed in the American Le Mans Series at Laguna Seca, securing seventh place. Despite a promising design, financial constraints and regulatory changes led to the end of the S99’s racing career by 1999.
Although the Rodin team may face some difficulties in keeping it purring, the Sintura will be turning heads and cracking ears at SMP
Dicker has acknowledged that re-building the S99 from scratch has been a challenging process and is far from a polished machine.
“It’s been a hard push for the team to get the car ready in time, and in all honesty, it’s still in testing mode,”Dicker stated.
“It’s likely we’ll have some challenges pop up at WTAC. Our goal is to unveil the reworked Sintura to the world, enjoy the competition, and entertain the crowd.
“And who knows—potentially we’ll return in 2025 with something faster!”
Configured for WTAC, the Sintura features 650HP and 530 Nm available from Rodin Cars’ RC-TEN 4-litre naturally aspirated V10 engine.
Revving to 10,500rpm, the sound has been described as bone-shattering and ear-splitting.
To solidify that the British-born Sintura now calls NZ home, tuning and instrumentation is managed by Kiwi-made Link ECU units.
A look under the hood at the 650HP V10 of the redesigned Rodin Sintura
And who gets the job of manning the V10 beast?
That lucky job goes to Josh Buchan, who is of course a familiar name to the WTAC, and to national Aussie race fans in general.
The 2023 TCR champion with Hyundai was both a commentator and driver, demonstrating the IONIQ 5N Hyundai.
His own love for WTAC goes back to attending his first one back in 2014 as a volunteer and camera runner, returning in 2017 to pilot a McLaren 720S in a parade lap.
The Rodin FZED is also making an appearance over the race weekend with demonstration sessions, combining with the Sintura to showcase Rodin Cars’ engineering prowess and dedication to pushing automotive performance boundaries.
Rodin’s Cosworth powered GPV8 FZED which delivers a mighty 675hp at 9,600rpm will also make an appearance at the 2024 WTAC
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