Limited Class
It was evident that no other car would come close to touching the Cyber Evo, but most pushed to do their very best. Once again, Tarzan made his mark by piloting Bozz Performance's lightning-quick Evolution, the Limited AWD champion, to Second Place overall, even beating out Signal's GT-R with a 1:54.250, which allowed him to take home his second trophy of the day. Rhys Millen drove Sparco's Evo to Second Place in the Limited AWD class, and Third went to Tarzan, as he also drove for XS Engineering. James Chen, who came to Time Attack 1 with a Ferrari, instead opted for a 350Z. With the help of Eibach's James Hickerson (who actually drove the car for James), he was able to win the Limited FR/MR class with a 2:00.689, just barely beating out the top European entry, CEC's Modena 360, which had a time of 2:00.767. Bernado Martinez, who won the first Limited FF with Hasport's four-door K-Series Integra, came back with another victory while driving Progress' '88 CRX, also powered by a K-Series, to a winning pass of 2:01.966. Let us tell you, it's extremely exciting to watch these fast Hondas power through Buttonwillow.
Some discouraging news was that Elton Lo from Raceline did not qualify at all due to his DC2 blowing a turbo during practice. Also, Phillip Phuong from Injen spun an engine bearing in his EK coupe, which kept him from improving on his time of 2:14.699.
Going The Distance
So the lap times that the Cyber Evo lands at Buttonwillow don't seem as fast as they do at Tsukuba Circuit, the Japanese track used for Super Laps events? Well, that's because Buttonwillow is almost twice as long. Let's compare the specs:
Track : Tsukuba Circuit
Length: 1.287 miles
Working Overtime
Tarzan pulled an amazing feat at Time Attack 2 by driving not just for one team but five total! On top of that, out of those five, he drove three to the top three spots overall! Better add this to your Time Attack trivia knowledge.
Double Duty
We also wanted to see how well drift cars would do as circuit cars. After all, setting them up for road racing wouldn't require much modification from their current configurations. Signal Auto brought out both of the Drift Twins, with D1 contender, Kazuya "Chunky" Bai and newcomer Yukinobu "Boney" Okubo driving. Meanwhile, Daijiro Yoshihara represented Pacific Rim, Bryan Norris drove for JIC, and Benson Hsu drove the IPS After Hours IPS S13. Chunky and Boney both did exceptionally well, only one-one thousandths of a second apart, while Daijiro tapped out early due to his S13 still being equipped with drift-spec tires. At least he looked great going around the turns!
Measure For Measure
We invited GTech so it could use its line of performance meters to measure the lateral and longitudinal G-Forces on four cars in the recent Time Attack. These are the same G-forces that makes certain automotive editors throw up (ahem, Roel), and we were curious of what these race cars were capable of producing. Though we'd like to think these are the same forces that turned Anakin Skywalker into a heavy-breathing piece of equipment, they are actually the natural forces that keep you in your seat when you're racing through your school's parking lot. We picked the Avalon Audi S4, Sun Auto Cyber Evolution, Sparco Evolution, and Turner Motorsports BMW 325i.