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Even with new additions come some sorry omissions! Absent from Texas was Chris Rado and the World Electronics team. After their recent announcement of some new projects they were unable to make the Texas round making this the first Global Time Attack event that the World team has been unable to attend. Although their absence was planned Professional Awesome in their Evo VII opted to choose their battles and put all of their eggs in the “kicking ass at the finale basket”; this would allow Doug Wind in his Modern Performance SRT4 to break a long standing tie with the P.A. boys and take the lead for the overall Street class championship. Heading in to Saturday Doug had his FWD beast one the books as the 3rd fastest car overall. Another car that I was very much looking forward to seeing on track was the Spec Clutch S14 and yet when they opened the trailer a bright Red Corvette rolled out. After some inquiries it appears that the suspension of the S14 was being updated and as such Dave Norton brought out a supercharged Z06 in its stead. Sounds like one heck of a “fall back plan” to me… After watching the Z06 on track it was obvious that Dave had his hands full and that the car was not happy with the heat!
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| Dave wrestled with the car for much of the event. The heat along with traction control issues (not being able to fully defeat it) made the car loose and hard to predict. Regardless Dave made the best of it and was able to turn a respectable 42.285 even with all of the issues. |
As the day progressed so did our now serious case of “asso de swampo” in the Texas dissolve and the competition in the Street and Enthusiast AWD was just as hot and steamy. The order of the day was trading tenths in these classes and it would be interesting to see what Sunday would bring. The GST L was able to get out and throw down a flyer that put them atop the time sheets with a benchmark time of 35.7 seconds. Yes that's right this flat black time machine completed the course in just over half a minute and on the first day of competition there would not be another car or driver within nearly 3 seconds of that time. In fact there were only a few cars able to break in to sub 40 second territory on Friday; among those were, Travis Barnes and Tim Schoeppner in their STi and Evo IX respectively. The only NON AWD car to break the <40 second barrier for the entire weekend was Terry Fair in the Vorshlag Mustang.
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| The Whiteline equipped pony car was fast right out of the gate and ran very fast times with little drama! |
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| Travis Barnes had his family at the event and they watched him improve throughout the weekend. On Friday he was able to break under the 40 second mark and he knew the car had more in it. |
Towards the end of the day I wide stanced my way over to the GST pit to chat up my favorite Brit; Mike Warfield. We discussed the car and changes as well as Saturday's strategy. Naturally he and I broke out in friendly banter and it was all she wrote. Yet ANOTHER high stakes wager was set up between us heading in to Saturday morning. With the course length and layout my position was that running more boost would not result in a sub 35.00 second lap time. Having learned from our last wager that it pays to clarify details Mike and I decided that he could make any suspension changes and queue up whatever power he wanted, he simply could not change to the sticker tires he had in the back of the truck. On Saturday morning if Jeff Westphal could pilot Spaceball 1 (the GST L) to a 34.9999999 then Mike would win the bet, take my money, and retire with fame, fortune, and all of the women he could handle. If I won, well then I could possibly use the money to buy a 20# bag of ice from the concession stand and sit on it for 15 minutes! I am beginning to think we have a gambling problem Mike! This would close the events for Friday and bring us in to Saturday and ALL I could think about was heading back to the hotel and jumping in the pool and that is exactly what happened.
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| I am now simply going to refer to the GST Impreza L as “Spaceball 1” as they have “gone to plaid”! |
Saturday's events brought a later start than we are used to as the first session did not begin until 11:00AM as the joint event with XDC and HIN provided a schedule that would last well in to the night. As we arrived cars were prepping to take the grid and I readied the MIQ GoPro setup in the GST car. If they were gong to go faster I wanted to have it on video, after all, you have to audit that brit from GST. The first session saw nearly every car out on track for GTA as it appeared the teams wanted to get clean laps in early! While I did my best to capture shots for this very article I was selfishly watching the GST car while standing next to Mike Warfield to keep an eye out. Mike had his trusty Casio wrist watch keeping times as Jeff lapped the car and to be honest it was DAMN fast. One thing is VERY clear at a track of this size, it is very easy to see the difference in speed between cars and the GST L was super fun to watch. Rather than tell you about how the car just squatted and launched past everything in it's path or tell you it was turning 37 second time on 8/10th warm up flyer's I will simply resort to using the words of Mel Brooks… “they went to plaid”! Not far behind GST the Fiat 500C challenge was also heating up! The invited drivers were punishing the 500C's front left tire in an effort to earn the top spot in the Fiat of Ft. Worth sponsored challenge.
Also back and ready Saturday morning was Tony Szirka in the revamped and now repaired UMS evo, he was looking very racey in the first session but then limped in after just a few laps. Shifter related issues now needed to be repaired and again it was the guys from Evolution Dynamics to the rescue with parts and Tony and his crew were back at it repairing the car and I was busy mounting up our in car setup in the Snail Performance STi after getting the blessing from Travis. As the A group cars suited up the B group was on track and while we waited in grid to turn on our in car camera in the Snail STi we got a driver off course call and were instructed to shut down for car removal. As it turns out Doug Bell in his outperformance Ford Mustang had a brake issue that resulted in a big off at the end of straight; backing it in to the armco. We knew it had to be a rather serious off as the removal and cleanup would wind up killing the scheduled session for the A class cars. As the tow rig came back the rear end of the Mustang had seen better days; luckily Doug was OK.
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| A brake rotor issue caused Doug Bell to back his Mustang GT in to the armco. While we would love to tell Doug “that'll buff right out”; it probably won't. Thankfully Doug was OK after the crash and even in a good mood! We hope to see Doug back out there soon! |
