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As we broke for lunch we made out way over to the GST pits as they made changes to the car. I also went over to collect my $10 from Mike! Despite a blistering pace in the AM they ran a 35.079 just a metric pubic hair away from the 34.99 they needed for Mike to retire on my dime! Yet again we began to banter and because I cannot help but think that me betting against him provides motivation to shut my ass up, the bet was up AGAIN. I told him that if they ran a 34.99 BEFORE the end of the event he could keep his coins in his pocket. While GST prepped for going out in the last session the other cars were doing the same. We moved our trusty in car over to the UMS Evo while they prepped the air/water IC reservoir and made sure the shifter was going to stay put. I can tell you that the inside of the UMS car gets HOT. The recent changes have removed the entire dash and it is AMAZING how much heat gets transferred through the firewall and roll cage. I singed some arm hairs while working on the in car gear and after climbing inside came out completely drenched with sweat. It was now time for all of the heavy hitters to take to the track and settle this shit!
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| The crowd was enjoying the close battle in the Street AWD class between Taylor WIlson in his “to go pack” WRX and Joshua Dunn in the Evolution Dynamics Evo XI. |
The cars are sent on track based on lap time to provide the best opportunity for people to go fast without traffic. Right away it was clear that Tony Szirka in the UMS Evo was on a mission. The car was flying and I found myself amazed by the proximity he kept with the GST L in front of him. As they headed in to the turn around at the south end of the track the GST car appeared to lockup and/or get squirly under breaking resulting in what looked like a major off. Tony blasted by and ripped up the rest of the track without issue while Jeff Westphal limped the GST L around the outside of the track through the gravel and came up to our vantage point. We ran over and I quickly asked him “Jeff are you O…” Before I could finish asking him this he was yelling “how's the splitter?” HEH true driver worrying about car condition and I was happy to tell him the car looked fine despite some grass on the FMIC. Jeff is a very cerebral driver and I have never seen him set a tire wrong before, even when the off happened he was super level headed and kept the car completely off track that only resulted in a very short corner yellow.
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| The side exit belched healthily. Luckily the grass was trimmed down to nothing or we would have needed a fire truck with as dry as it was. Notably no drivers, cars, or photographers were harmed in the making of this photograph. |
As the session finished up we made our way back to the paddock to check our in car of the UMS Evo and the GoPro simply flashed a middle finger in the shape of a thermometer in our direction. DAMN, I told you the UMS car gets hot… Luckily we were able to capture the entire session and get Tony's fast lap before the camera shut itself off. As the GTA crew prepped the awards location (my favorite ceremony to date BTW) we took a few minutes to rehydrate and skate around the paddock. Now filled with hella stanced HIN cars and bumping beats it was fun to roll around and “remember when”. We made our way back as we heard Nads Naderi begin announcing the live stream results; if you have never watched a live stream from Global Time Attack you should! John Naderi is a great front man, truly entertaining and he is also quite the warm up runner. Heck you might even look at his posterior and think it “cuppable” with the way this man gets on while on camera!
New for this event was the use of our GoPro and external mic. to try and give our readers a taste of what it is like to take a lap inside on of these beasts. Before we share the final results we thought we would offer some in car footage for the top 3 fastest cars of the weekend, all of them competing in the Unlimited AWD Class.
GST Impreza L tearing it up in the Saturday AM session.
UMS Tuning Evo Sunday Final Session.
Snail Performance STi on track. Sunday late afternoon session.
