Last week the XS GTR finished 2nd overall and 1st in the 4WD Unlimited class at the Super Street Time Attack finals at Buttonwillow Raceway in California. Tarzan Yamada, who by the way is the fucking man at driving high powered Time Attack cars, piloted the XS GTR like the master that he is. What was absolute bullshit, was the World Challenge GT3 Porsche Cup car that won first overall. A $300,000 (without mods), factory built, all carbon, race car was at a tuner industry time attack. If you add up the cost of the track time for development, Moton 3 way adjustable dampers, carbon fiber/magnesium wheels, and the host of other goodies, we’re probably talking another $100k. Anyhow, the part that KILLS me is that we lost to the GT3 by 0.12 seconds. What kills me more is that the HKS boost controller in the GTR defaulted to low boost (1.6kg/cm^2 = 630whp) for some reason so we could have tossed the CRAP out of the GT3. At Fontana (1.05 mile/lap) last year, turning up the boost yielded a 3 second decrease in lap times. Buttonwillow is a 3.07 mile/lap track so the GTR could have gone WAY faster than the GT3.
Regardless, we smoked the nearest competitor by 3 seconds which was the JDM Zero Sports Impreza STi which was also driven by Tarzan Yamada. The Mine’s BNR34 is an absolute piece of art. Fast, stock looking, and relatively quiet, it was only 1 second behind the Zero Sports Sti and 4 seconds behind our GTR. All of the US built unlimited 4WD class EVOs and STis were absolute non-factors. We were only 0.3 seconds away from the CYBER EVO lap record so we didn’t quite attain our goal. I can’t wait for the CYBER EVO to come back to the states because I want to smoke the shit out of it. The XS GTR has only been on the track 3 times ever, so I’m confident it will be much faster next time it comes out.
