The Grass Roots Motorports Ultimate Track Car Challenge (UTTC) is at VIR (Full Course) this year. I’ve been invited and will be running the Varsity Shop category. I’ll be posting updates from the track on Friday so please check back if you would like to know how practice and the actual competition is going.
So far an overall win isn’t looking too good but I hope to uphold the Subaru honor. Here are mostly likely the fastest cars running at this event.
Michael Skeen: Muscle Milk Trans AM series Corvette (Grand AM and Trans AM series driver)
Click here to read more.. »
Race Reports January 19th 2010
Pocono Raceway was host to the final round of “Super Lap Battle” qualifying. With hurricane Hannah hammering the east coast with high winds and massive rain storms, Saturday was just a day to skip for us . With the weather looking great for Sunday we headed north to Pocono Raceway in the town of Long Pond, Pennsylvania.
Sunday’s weather was beautiful with a nice breeze and cool weather. Having never run on a NASCAR oval I honestly didn’t know what to expect. What I was greeted with was an ultra high speed freak fest. LOL! I’ll be the first to admit it took a few laps to allow my brain to run flat out on the oval shifting into 6th gear mid turn. With ample downforce, great JIC suspension and Hankook tires the car stayed well planted at high speed. The lower speed corners were a whole different ball game and taming the Element Tuning power house STi proved difficult.
On the third session I ran comfortably but the car started pushing on the oval at the apex just before the straight at around 140 mph so I pulled in. What we found was the outside front tire loosing air at it only had 23 psi hot. Without much competition in the “Unlimited” class we knew we had the win with this time of 55.6 seconds.
While this was all fine and dandy I wanted to be the fastest at the track! Um, it was all about bragging rights I set my sights on these race cars which were the fastest at the track so on went a new front tire/wheel.
Click here to read more.. »
Race Reports January 19th 2010
Back from GT Live at VIR and still recuperating from a weekend of problems but overall very happy we finished 2nd place in AWD Unlimited and 2nd overall. Having struggled the weekend before at another Redline Time Attack I was hoping this weekend would go smoother since we’ve spent some time at VIR. Finally we’ve been able to solve our overheating issues and it was as simple as cutting the backside out of the hood scoop. Ugly but effective! This just allowed the air to flow into the radiator and out the backside of the hood scoop.
Click here to read more.. »
Race Reports January 19th 2010
Phew…what a weekend! As sponsoring Phil and his Element Tuning Time Attack Race Car, we had our work cut out for us in preparation for the event. We all knew that there was going to be stiff competition, so we did our best to make sure the car was as prepared as possible.
Aside from getting the front bumper fixed, we added a SYMS rear bumper, Seibon doors, Seibon side skirts, and painted the roof black. Seibon doors also came in just in time, as well as the APR GTC-300 wing and APR front splitter.
With the last-minute work still going on Phil’s car, the rest of us pretty much packed up the entire showroom into a U-Haul truck, along with some flooring and tents thanks to Dan from Prodrive America. We closed down the shop very early on Friday to make sure we could concentrate on getting everything packed up. After about 7 hours straight of work on all fronts, we were finally all packed up and ready to go. Our caravan left the shop here in Kent, WA around 7 pm, grabbed some dinner down the road, then headed off.
The group got separated along the way, with Phil (driving the Time Attack car, no trailers here) leading the first pack and Jonathan and myself switching off leading the second group. We stopped just south of Olympia in hopes that the group would reconvene, but Phil’s group decided to head on straight down to Portland. At this point, Subiesport photographer Nick Parker realized that his camera bag was missing, and after about an hour and a half of phone calls, it turns out a good samaritan had returned his camera bag to the local police station, completely intact. With Nick’s fears alleviated, we continued on down south.
Click here to read more.. »
Race Reports January 19th 2010
GT Live, what a story I have to tell. Going into this event Element Tuning really just wanted to iron out the setup of our new STI. One day before the event we removed the temp tags so we’ve been on an accelerated learning curve over the last few weeks to get this car ready for “Limited” Time Attack competition. Knowing the competition we were up against competing with “Unlimited” cars we really didn’t have aspirations of winning but were using this event as a measuring stick. Since I was going to drive the car we decided to keep the car mild and run the Element Hydra EMS, Hydramist, TurboSmart E-Boost and our Element GT52 bolt on turbocharger which is based off of the TD06 frame but uses a Garret GT30R compressor wheel and a few other items. We had up to about 450 whp reliable HP available to us but more importantly it was very easy to drive with a huge powerband.
We showed up late on Thursday not in time to run the practice session as we hadn’t installed a new set of race pads yet. A big special thanks goes to Ken “Brake Guru” for delivering our brake pads and titanium backing plates and kindly installing them at the track for us.
Friday morning was nothing but rainy and cold! We braved the wet session and headed out to bed in the new pads and feel the out the car in the rain. I started at medium boost and quickly dropped down the lowest boost setting we had. LOL! To say it was slippery would be an understatement. To our surprise we ended up with the fastest practice session time on Friday morning.
Click here to read more.. »
Race Reports January 19th 2010
In preparation for Subiefest 1 the 2006 Element Time Attack STi was sent to World One Performance in Seattle, Washington, the location of www.subiefest.com for a bit of a transformation. For prior Time Attack events, we went with a smaller GT52 turbocharger, but at Subiefest it was important for me to showcase our flagship turbo kit the Element Tuning GT65 Rotated Turbo Setup. Wayde and the technicians at World One outfitted our race car with the GT65 kit, new brake pads, flushed the brakes, changed all fluids, installed different rear springs, and a different front sway bar so that when I arrived in Seattle the car was ready to go.
Subiefest Time Attack began at Pacific Raceways in Seattle bright and early as the sun came up over the Pacific Northwest. After filling up with race gas and checking to make sure all was in order the car went out on the track for warm up hot laps.
Click here to read more.. »
Race Reports January 19th 2010
Engine Blocks
Engine Management
Engine Components
Exhaust Systems
Turbochargers