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| You know the man and you know the car. |
With one session remaining bets were being placed whether or not World would get the Scion on track and whoever bet against them LOST. Quite simply if you put a time lapse camera on the World pit you would simply speed it up and add orchestral music. The teamwork was that fluid! Chris strapped in for the first time to discover the brake pedal needed to be moved forward and after a scramble to adjust it, he strapped in and the TC spat flames and rolled under its own power on a track for the first time.
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| “Listen Gary… I can’t push the brake pedal all the way down…” |
The car in motion is absolutely something to experience. It is visceral and despite the fact that many people are NOT fans of the big wing and its aesthetics no one can deny the build quality of the car! (To let people know MY position I LOVE the “hellafunctional” front wing). The fact that it ran in session 6 for the first time without anything falling off or lighting on fire is amazing. While Chris was on track one could clearly see the suspension was not setup ideally. The rear ride height was too high and resulted in a car that was very prone to oversteer and dragged the front splitter even under steady state throttle. It was quite clear that this was not meant to be an attempt at FTD, it was a shake down to make sure it worked in anticipation of a Sunday ass kicking. Despite the shortcomings Chris was able to turn a respectable 1:43.717.
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| Despite a less than ideal setup out of the box, the car is truly a work of art. FWING FTW! |
During the last session many teams took advantage of the best track conditions we had seen all day. One of my favorite cars of the Weekend was Aaron Byram’s Pure Tuning Honda Civic Hatchback. With a curb weight of 1850 lbs. without driver, a 260 WHP K24, Ohlins dampers and serious brakes; Aaron’s Civic posted a blistering 1:31.628 which was good enough for the 5th best time of the day and the lead in Unlimited GT FWD.
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| Pure is right. Pure ass kicking for a FWD car. Aaron Byram drove this car amazingly well! |
Professional Awesome had slaved all week, and looked over every nuance and bit of data from the day to turn their best time in session 6 and beat their own record in Street GT AWD. Daniel O’Donnell piloted the left hand drive EVO VII to a 1:34.275. Quite an accomplishment for STREET tires. Gary Rubio in the Performance Motorsport 370Z turned a 1:34.851 to take the days top spot in Unlimited GT RWD, and the team’s counterpart Carmine Del Aquilla in the duct taped and windowless ZO6 tripped the beacon with a 1:42.264. Wisconsin native Miciah Hackbar showed up last minute and despite experiencing a pucker moment in an earlier session via a brake line failure, they fixed the car and regained enough confidence to turn a 1:36.492. His weapon of choice is an EVO IV in the street GT AWD class. Rounding out the fast times in Saturday’s last session was Bryan Hedian in his S2000. His time of 1:44.034 was submitted and approved for the day’s top spot in Street RWD.
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| The Performance Motorsport 370Z was all function. The car was well built and had a unique approach to oil and diff cooling by using ducted exchangers in the rear of the car. |
Many of the teams were happy with the day and what Sunday might hold. Weather conditions looked like they would be optimal in the morning with a chance of rain in the afternoon. We were all anxious for the first 2 sessions on Sunday where we hoped the teams would hang it out there like a flasher in a nasty overcoat. Wait… errrr… perhaps not exactly that but we were hopeful of “kill mode”.
While I wish I could regale you with stories of a crazy party shenanigans with all of the GTA folks and teams, the reality is that getting 4 hours of sleep the night before and spending the entire day in the sun walking miles takes it’s toll on a man. I was drooling on myself by 10:00 and our counterpart photographer, Connor Harrison wasn’t far behind….
