Redline TA Rd. 1

Time attack season has just begun, but yet i'm sitting on the sidelines. The first round of Redline starts off this past weekend at Buttonwillow. A place where the locals don't need shampoo. But the BBQ is one of the best i've tasted. I've got a splitting heading so let's keep this short.


We are greeted by the only AE86 pilots in the field. Orange county hooligan Steve C. and Andy (every fanboys dream) Y. and some random little girl who jumped into the pic.


Looks like Andy giving some guy the finger after passing in the straight. But he really wasn't.


Even MR2 maniac Super Pilun putting foot to ass in the AW11 MR2. He loves 13in wheels. I think he's been hanging around the lowrider crowd way too long.


The little girl we met earlier is also a great tire changer, but you'll need to ask Mr. Rodgers if you can borrow her. He'll probably cut you if you even dare ask.


There was even a couple of R35 Skylines testing their skills on the track instead of having coffee in a parking lot in Irvine.


Something not seen very often, Toyota Tercel.

Overall a great weekend, though the level cars wasn't too impressive. But I give props to all who participate and do their best. For the rest of the pics click here.

Pro Am Utah

This past weekend was spent at Tool Tooele, Utah, which is about ½ hour away from Salt Lake City. You’re probably wondering what would be interesting in a place called Tooele? Miller Motorsports Park of course, which was the site for GT Live 6, I was there to participate in the Formula D/ Pro- Am qualifier presented by Mazda. Miller Motorsports Park, located in Tooele, Utah, is the host to great racing series such as American LeMans, AMA Super Bike, Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series, etc.

The plan was to leave Thursday night with an ETA of noon Friday. Only after a 2 hours of driving I had to stop. I was so drained the past few days that the road started looking like this, so I had the co driver take over.

As we got closer to Salt Lake City, gas got cheaper. But you get cheated by being served up 85 octane. Being the cheap bastard, I filled it up to the top. It’s a Ford it’ll take anything you throw at it. I had arrived at the track Friday afternoon after a long 12 hour drive up from Los Angeles.

Even being in the middle of nowhere, I have to admit, that this was one of the most amazing tracks I have been too. It's a bit smaller than what I thought it was. It seemed much bigger from videos and maps I saw online.

We were assigned a garage space, which was setup along pit row. Here’s stupid Choh’d getting in the way and ruining the shot. The garages themselves are fully decked out, with all utilities. From air hook ups to televisions, even the bathrooms were hella clean, I couldn’t ask for anything more. It definitely beats working on the car with the under the sun.

With 1^st day of practice over, I really hadn’t been able to link the whole track. Due to the higher elevation, my car was down on power. I couldn’t get the tires to keep spinning as I normally do back in California. I’m not making any excuses, cause AE86 drivers don’t need power to make things happen. Just a bigger bag of pixie dust will make things work, not excuses here.

On Saturday my car was just had some minor problems, leaky clutch slave cylinder and an oil leak around the rear main seal. I had to travel back to the city to get the slave because the little town of Tooele didn’t have them in stock. But I noticed that this town doesn’t have very many import vehicles to begin with.

2^nd day of practice was much better, with some good advice from Taka, I made some changes to my setup and my driving technique. I was able to link up the first 2 corners once, I was getting very close.

There was a time attack on our side of the track so here’s a couple of snaps.

She wasn’t driving but still looked fast.

On Sunday Naoki decided to put his art skills to use and drew a penis on my car. Why? I never did anything wrong. Competition consisted of 3 runs taking the best of 3. All that was needed was one clean run. My goal for the day was to score points for by completing first 2 corners, I really didn’t think I was going to make the third corner. 1^st run was o.k, too many corrections more than likely a zero run. 2nd run was a zero dirt drop at the end of the 2^nd corner. By this time I wasn’t sure if I was going to choke and go home empty handed. Naoki came over asked me how I was doing and I think he offered to draw another penis on my window. 3^rd run definitely a score. A bit on the dirty side but I’m pretty satisified, I hope the judge was too.

Returning to the pits, I was greeted by a beautiful sight. The GT Live models happen to be hanging around in front of my pit garage. So I took it upon myself to at least grab one picture with all of them because I couldn’t find them during my pit walks.

She was hella pretty.

After all the fierce competition, we’re all still friends by the end of the day and it still shows.

Congratulations to the top 10 who got invited to Pro-Am. Which includes me!

The rest of the pics are here

4AG Challenge

Yeah, yeah, it's already old. But I decided to post a couple pics of the event.


Event: 4AG Challenge
Date: December 9, 2007
Location: Willow Springs International Raceway aka. Big Willow
Mission: Search and Destroy all competition

It's been a long time coming, but it is finally time again for 4AG powered vehicles to do battle with the clock to see who's fastest, or at least who has the fastest car. The last time attack I participated in was when Eric @ Rhys Millen Racing organized the event. This time PASS racing was gracious enough or maybe crazy to hold this event for us Corolla/4AG enthusiast at Willow Springs race track.
I had my doubts when I signed up for this event. The track itself, I feel is catered more towards big horsepower vehicles. If you know 4AG power, it ain't much, and it cost alot of money to put a little more power. But when people start calling you a pansy, that's when the gloves come off. But I was just being ignorant since I only ran it when testing the LeMons car during a Redline track event. Yes, I was bored and annoyed at all the faster cars lapping me. But the MR2 was very much stock, just a gutted interior and roll bar. It was alot of fun to drive, can't get enough of that body roll.
Since my car is highly modified, I decided to see what it can do on the track. I didn't make any changes to my setup, since I'm already happy with how it's handling. I'm trying out a new set of V710 R compound tires from Kumho. They are one step to full on race slicks and I was really excited to use them. The whole day I was running really well with no major problems, good times. I was passing people left and right in my group. 2 cars, R33 Skyline GTR and an Audi don't know what model, who were faster in the straights, but too slow around the turns let me pass. I left them as I carved through the corners, oohh yeah.
Ivan in his Evolution gave me a run and slowly pulled away from me. I couldn't catch up, boo. But his car ain't stock, so that makes me feel better, LOL. He was in our group cause he was able to finish his AW11 MR2 in time for the event. I think they should have gave him size 13 boot.
The 3rd and last session before the time trial, I thought to myself I was going to take it easy. But my sorry was greedy and wanted to show people the power of turbo. While chasing a Porsche Turbo and Ford Mustang, I was setting up for a pass from those 2 guys. Unfortunately, I the Porsche driver was a puss and slowed down while I was on full throttle. So I had to slow down and down shift in order to maintain the engine in the optimum power band. That's when the ring and pinion broke, while flying down the back of big willow. I pulled over into the dirt so that I won't drop oil on to the track cause at first I had no clue of what happened. I slowly nursed the car back to pits. Pissed that I won't be able to participate in the time trial. I was running 1:40s all day, so I'm guessing that my times would be around 1:37 if I was able to run the time trial.
At the awards ceremony, they held a raffle and I won a little pocket bike. I guess it's a nice consolation prize for breaking. Too bad they didn't raffle off a ring and pinion.
The event was alot of fun, kudos to PASS racing for organizing such an awesome event. I'd definitely do another event.

Since I didn't participate at the timed runs I was able to take a couple of photos of the event. Click here.