WTAC 2014 – Final Competition Day Coverage Presented by BorgWarner EFR
by Martin Gonzales
With day one of competition in the books, it was now time for the final showdown to commence at Sydney Motorsports Park. Scorch Racing was at the top of the Pro Class leader board, with MCA and Tilton nipping at their heels less than a second behind. And who could have predicted that a Pro-Am car would be at the top of the overall rankings!? PMQ Racing's Evo blistering time of 1:25.27 was the talk of the paddock at the end of Friday's competition schedule and fans and teams alike we're anxious to witness what would happen on the final day of the 2014 World Time Attack Challenge.
Before Jeff and I even arrived at the track we knew we were in for a treat on this final day of WTAC competition. The first day of competition was on a Friday, a work day, so on Saturday streets leading to the main entrances to Sydney Motorsports Park were filled with loyal and dedicated time attack fans. If it wasn't for our media access to the venue, it would have easily taken us almost an hour to just get in and find parking. It was amazing to see the the parking lots and even the overflow parking lots filled to capacity.
And it wasn't just the spectator parking that was filled to capacity. Here's a quick look at the Show-n-Shine area which had close to 300 enthusiast pre-register, but ended up with over 400 cars in the lot! Though some of the cars on display weren't exactly our cup of tea, we can confidently say the grand majority of them were MotoIQ Approved – the Australian enthusiasts really get it! Being a Nissan fanatic myself I couldn't pass up the chance to take a closer look at some Nissan models I only get to see on the interwebs, like the Nissan Almera and S15.
WTAC taking it to the next level! This year some lucky fans got the opportunity to take a ride in a chopper during competition. We signed up so we could get a chance of getting some sweet aerial shots, but didn't win. Next year we'll just have to pack some drones in our luggage so we can bring you a different perspective on the WTAC. Go buy some parts from our supporters so we can start feeding the drone-fund!
The power steering line failure and subsequent engine bay fire the Tilton Evo experienced during Friday's competition did not result in any damage the team would not be able to manage. Garth Walden and the rest of the team would be ready to defend their title. We had the opportunity to speak to team engineer Louis Kapitsas and were able to get a little insider info on their Evo's performance. Though the car was making more power than last year, it had significantly more downforce to overcome and they were not hitting the top speeds they needed to break the track record they held. Part of the team's strategy would be to experiment with reducing the amount of downforce the car was producing in order to hit higher speeds down the straights. Would it work? Or would the decreased downforce create an unmanageable car in the twisties?
America….fuck yeah! After another sleepless night fabricating yet another jumper harness to run another ECU the ARK Designs BNR32 could be heard in the pits revving…and backfiring a little, as the team prepared it to finally hit the pavement of Sydney Motorsports Park. Keep in mind that it's not as simple as “just” creating a new jumper harness and plugging things in. The team needed to basically re-tune the car every time this happened. A daunting task without a dyno indeed and not the way anyone would prefer to do it, but Team America was determined to at the very least put the car on track and start the shake down process.
