FF
Last year GM laid waste to the Unlimited FWD landscape with its supercharged Cobalt. GM Performance Division Director John Heinricy ripped off a 1:51.318 which still stands as an FF record and the sixth-fastest Time Attack lap of all time. At this latest event, Christian Miller recorded the fastest FF time in the 034 Motorsport Jetta Touring Car. But even this VW Motorsport engineered purpose-built racer was no match for GM as Christian's 1:55.872 was more than four ticks removed from the record lap.
Brian Gillespie and his merry band of Hasport hellcats are big on the do-more-with-less approach and their '95 Integra GSR is a perfect example. Bernardo Martinez drove the blown K24-powered Acura just as he has done at all of our Time Attacks, and he showed consistency and the slightest bit of improvement as his 1:55.581 bettered his '06 time by just .004 second. Even more astounding is that he came within .009 second of the Jetta racecar with Hasport's venerable old Integra.
Another racecar that ran at Buttonwillow wasn't exactly a flame-throwing monster going restrictor-free on cheater tires. 5Zigen's Accord Euro-R (Think TSX) was built for the Group N+ class of Japan's Super Taikyu series-a showroom stock class with severe limitations on engine mods. The naturally-aspirated Toda-built K20 makes 270hp-impressive for an N/A race motor but not quite enough for Time Attack. Even still the 5Zigen Euro-R came in Third place in the U'lim FF class with a solid 1:57.544. This time probably had as much to do with the performance of the JDM Honda sedan as it did with the driver. Ryo Michigami is a JDM Super GT pilot who just took Third place in the '06 GT500 Championship in the Takata Dome NSX. Yeah, he's big time.
Drift
We created the Drift class to see just how well the world's top sliders perform in grip-style racing. Any driver who has qualified for a D1 or Formula D event is eligible, but they must drive the same qualified drift car at the Time Attack. We've had quite a few top drivers compete over the years such as Kazuya Bai, Yukinobu Okubo and Calvin Wan, but the most consistent of all has been Bryan Norris who has won this class for the past two years. Bryan was looking to three-peat this year, but he was upset by a rock star, Dai Yoshihara that is, in his Rockstar S13. By the end of the day there wasn't much left of Dai's car as pieces of it seemed to fall off with each session. Dai took whatever was left of his Silvia and coaxed a 1:59.149 out of it.
Micro
Whether you call them B-Spec or subcompacts, these little cars are hot. This was why we created our Micro class because we're all about being trendy fashion boys. We specifically targeted the Fit, Versa and Yaris with this class, but what about cars like the Aveo, Mini Cooper, xA and xB? Well, we're not too sure because we just made this class up to see who would show up. To our surprise a handful of these little cars came ready to run-or at least move at a fast-paced walk. Oscar Jackson stormed back onto the scene with his supercharged Fit, and Tyler McQuarrie moved from JIC's super-fast S15 to Spoon's super Fit, coming in Third. In addition to the S2000, A&J Racing also brought a US-spec Fit and Robert Walker drove it to Second place. But these Micros were no match for our October '06 cover car, Norman Tong's Fit. True, the naturally-aspirated K20 gave this JDM Fit an advantage, but we have to give credit to Norman and his N1 Motoring crew for making it work. Frank Lin gave the little Honda its 2:10.341 winning lap.
For the 2007 season we'll be giving you extra helpings of Time Attack in four different super lap contests across the country leading up to our final event on November 7 at Buttonwillow. Good times!
Going Back To The Streets
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration established the Universal Tire Quality Grade (UTQG) standard to measure performance and longevity based on treadwear, traction and temperature capabilities. The UTQG 100 rating for our Limited class cars is truly at the ragged edge for daily-driven street cars. We know quite a few ruff riders (us included) who run these kinds of tires, but the accelerated wear is not ideal for a true daily-driven street car. With this in mind we created our Street Tire class designed to showcase the limits of a real world UTQG 140 tire.