Castrol Syntec Top Car Challenge - Special Thanks

You try to do everything you can to prepare yourself for situations like this. You keep your expectations a bit lower than normal, tell yourself "if it's meant to be, it'll happen" but still it was hard to see the Z limp into the pit much much later than expected. The fuel pump had started to give out, and to quote Billy "the car fell flat on its face and just wouldn't go anywhere." Thankfully we did have at least one timed lap in the books in the 20-minute session, but still, all the hard work (and money) you put into a car to do well at the track, it felt to me that I had somehow failed my sponsors and I couldn't do a better job of representing them in the way that I wanted to. It was only because of their generosity that I could have gotten the Z to be selected in the competition, and to not do as well as you hoped, was hard to swallow.

In the end, even after all the craziness I had endured during the competition, I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything. Yea, of course I was bummed to see my pride and joy hurt, but seeing the other cars compete against was awesome, I mean, this is why we build cars! Not so that they look pretty but because they have a purpose and function. The Z is getting repaired as I type this, and hopefully it'll be healthy soon. Driving my bone-stock Evo X is getting pretty boring! To sum it up in one word would be: epic. No way in hell am I going to forget using that dryer hose.

I would like to really thank everyone that helped me out: Howard, Richey and Tadashi at Techno Square, Ken at Cosworth, Eddie at Performance Nissan of Duarte, Howard at StopTech Brakes, Chris at KW Suspensions, Tom at Lucent Auto, Nestor at K&N, Steve at S&A Designs, Rick at VIP Status, Mike & Stan at Toyo Tires, Brian at Mackin Industries, Sean at OS Giken, Noah at GTSpec, John & Jesse at Finish Line Autocraft, and a special thank you to: Billy Johnson, Taylor Brooks, Steve Mitchell, the Super Street staff and of course my awesome wife Angie.