After waking up malnourished at the crack of dawn I was only a Starbucks stop away from heading the track. When I arrived, the teams were already well underway preparing, tweaking and fine-tuning the cars to get every last drop out them for the single fastest lap. The competition was sure to be fierce and there were many records placed on the chopping block for the cars to slash away at. Unfortunately some mechanical failures took out two class front-runners early on. Loi Song's Sportcar Motion EG hatchback, recently rebuilt to Unlimited class specs, suffered an engine failure and an off-track excursion that left little of the front end intact. The previous Unlimited FR record holding BC/C-West carbon S2000 also was unable to come out to play as Tyler McQuarrie had to stand by idly watching his record being stabbed at.
Four teams looked like they had a fighting chance at nearing the overall record of 1:43.523 set by HKS in 2007. Sierra Sierra, FX Motorsports, Crawford and AMS all looked like they would get very close. The fastest three cars were separated by less than a half of a second! Unfortunately none of the teams were able to break into the 1:44 zone, Sierra Sierra being the closest and taking top honors with a time of 1:45.061. The overall record would stand for another year, but nearly every other record was destroyed in 2009.
Billy Johnson piloted the sinister FX/Cricket NSX to a blistering time of 1:45.247, the second fastest time of the day and broke the old Unlimited FR record held by BC/C-West by over 1.5 seconds! In Street FR, Rob Walker tore up BW config 13 in the Evasive S2000 (featured just before this article) blowing away the old record of 1:57.711 with a fastest time of 1:56.762. Not only was the blue S2K the fastest Street FR it was actually the fastest Street Class car period, coming within one-tenth of setting the outright Street Class record!
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New URWD Record - 1:45.247
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The Limited AWD class was a three-way battle between Ryan Gates, Tim Kuo and JC Meynet. Although the Evasive Evo did best its old record, Gates would take the crown with a time of 1:49.805 setting the new record. Another of Evasive's records went to the wayside, this one uncontested. Windspeed Motorsports must have done a lot of work in the last year to knock almost five seconds off last year's time setting a new Street FF record of 2:00.256, annihilating the previous record by more than three whole seconds!
The "most epic record-smashing award of SLB '09" (if there were such a thing) would have to go to Chris Rado and the World Racing Scion TC. Chris came into this event with a monkey on his back and had his sights set on breaking the record. The last two years Chris suffered from classic episodes of bad luck. This year Rado and his team implemented a few new weapons. The "Fwing" on the front of the car might be questionable looking but the performance gain over last year's setup is unquestionable. Rado would also debut Continental's newest tire, a collaboration with Hoosier. The result? An unfathomable 1:49.703, making it the first FWD car to break the 1:50 mark. With this time Chris also broke the longest-standing record in SLB history, previously held by a GM Factory backed Cobalt.
Even though HKS and the Japanese seem to have the upper-hand in time attack it's clear that the US teams are getting more serious about this motorsport. With teams like Sierra Sierra, AMS, FX Motorsports, Crawford and BC pushing the envelope in their respective classes, next year is sure to be intense. The competition keeps getting closer and more exciting. It's only a matter of time before someone takes a slice at the HKS record. Could 2010 be the year that the US takes over?