Fear and Loathing in Bonneville (My Trip to Speedweek)

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As usual, officials at the start do a final check before each run.  We don't have any action shots because unless you have a really long telephoto and are positioned on the course, all you see is a tiny dot!
The best the car could do was 186.4 mph, which was almost 20 mph shy of the new record of 203.9 mph, which we learned was set the day after we left. Still this exceeded our expectations of what a stock SR20DET with a very small turbo could do in such a short period of time.  In this shakedown run, the car's systems were all proven.  Traction is an issue and high speed stability problems seem to be all traction related according to Chuck.  The car seems very aerodynamically efficient. 
The slip.
The crew from left; Christa Kojima, Mike Kojima, Annie Sam, Chuck Johnson, Chris Marion, Sean Rossi, Stephen Quinn, Ben Diaz (Not pictured: John Kuchta, Sharry Lai, Jessica Casillas, Joe Lu.)

We had to leave by early Sunday morning to make the long drive home so we could be at work Monday which happened to work out as Jou Lu and Sharry Lai were coming up to help and Sean Rossi was staying.  This would leave Chuck and Annie with a decent amount of help for his record attempt.  In my case leaving would give me and Chris plenty time to work on the Team Falken cars prepping them for FD's Vegas event the coming weekend.  We had some new stuff that we were going to test on one of the cars that would require some attention.

The car did not set the record but was still able to reach 186.493 which was more than expected with the low power motor.  Next year the team will be back with over 200 more horsepower and a year of testing at El Mirage under their belts.  More development will go along with more experience which will give us a better shot at the record next year!

My immediate goal is to rest up for a few days to recover from all of this stuff going on.  I think it's going to take a couple of weeks to get over it all.  I still feel like I have jet lag.

Stay Tuned for more updates on the construction of Project LSR S13 in the near future.

Read more about Project LSR 240SX here!

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