Okay, Okay I know I have been slacking bit lately on the whole blog thing, it's not that nothing was happening the excuse for me is going to be that too much was happening as we've been a little busier than a one legged man in an arse kicking contest lately!
So we went out East, yup that's right we broke the confines of CA with a little (ok that's bullshit, a LOT) of help from our friends at WORLD Racing to take on the East Coast and also tackle a couple of new track for Time Attack.
Up first was Global Time Attack Road Atlanta, I have to say if your anywhere near local to Atlanta and into cars you need to hit this place up it's absolutely stunning, if your local and into cars and don't basically your a vagina and reading the wrong blog!
We had a good event and even with a clutch failure managed to post the fastest time of the weekend and a new overall track record (I don't expect the time to stand for long, but hey that's what records are for right!)
Moving right along next up was Global Time Attack Palm Beach Florida, I actually thought the track was kinda blah but the event has potential piggy backed with Formula Drift, one downside was this event was 3 weeks after Road Atlanta which left some teams scrambling due to issues.
It was during this event (Oh we set FTD and overall record but who cares anyway) something hit me, I mean I remember when Redline dropped the East Coast events and everyone from Chicago East started crying online about having no TA events, roll into GTA's 2nd year of doing this and adding more East events and what do you know? The online crying is gone! but none of the homo's crying are showing up??? WTF you have a series putting it's arse on the line and splashing the cash to come out where you asked and not only that tying the events into FD with crowds in their thousands and media up the arse and the whiners stay home.
I did a little research after Florida and found there to be a fair amount of heavy hitter shops etc that ply their trade based off build "Race Cars" and not one of them where in attendance, Weak! Probably all hanging out down in Miami with their stick on furry chests, mullets and knock off "I'll turn your skin green" medallions or something.
Next up was Global Time Attack New Jersey, now if by now our car had not turned into a pile of used duct tape and zip ties I would normally have been excited by this as last year this was one of my favorite tracks and events but sadly by now the L was begging to get back to home base GST for some love so I set my expectations accordingly, I think it went something like this..
If she fires up in the rig and is able to get out and into the paddock area we should have a beer and celebrate!
If she completes one lap and makes it back to the paddock area we should have a beer and celebrate
If she completes one lap and makes it back to the paddock area we should have a beer and celebrate
If still running add boost and repeat the above!
As it turns out even with a tired motor, a transmission that kicked the shifter out of 6th and then breaking the center diff we were able to set fastest time of the weekend and 8/10's off our previous years record (we were down 8mph on the front straight alone with the motor let alone the diff pulling the steering wheel out of Jeff's hands at every corner) My data shows low 1:01 is cake so I hope to go back there again.
Anyhow the car is now safely tucked back in the shop and honestly with the shitload of work I have to put things right I probably shouldn't be even writing this right now hey it's only 6pm so I still have till about 1am until the ball and chain starts blowing my phone up!!!
So how about that little bit of breaking news today?? Redline Time Attack is to rise from the grave to grace us starting 2013. From the announcement I saw it will be headed up by former partner Chris Williard, now I have nothing personal against Chris but I think he must have bumped his fucking head! Simple fact yes there are some of the previous Time Attackers swinging off the "Good ole days of RTA" nuts while hard parking their cars currently at various LA car shows but reality is RTA took a very promising sport/event and systematically fucked it for everyone in it.
Now I could expand on what they did for days but in a nutshell they damaged the legitimacy of TA in the US so much so that by the time of shooting out sponsorship proposals late in 2010 for 2011 season sponsors were basically laughing back at me. Granted who the hell am I, nobody special but at the time we were Unlimited series champions and had a very strong 2010 showing, since the demise of RTA it's been hard to impossible to secure sponsorship funding.
I'll list a couple of things that spring to mind,
Rules that could be changed and broken more times than Freddie Mercury's arsehole
Cars basically in a class they shouldn't have been essentially ensuring a championship!
Waivers passed out for mod's outside of rule sets on the fly like candy.
A season championship structure based on driver not team/car allowing shit like a rental automatic car to be used going slower than a Prius in the fast lane to collect points.
Etc, Etc, Etc
But hey "the good ole days" are coming back, perhaps the hard parking yesteryear contingent will come out in their droves, good luck to them I'll be thrashing on a car trying to break a record somewhere else!
Ok so now something I do give a flying fuck about, yup you got it Global Time Attack is coming to Texas, or to be more exact Texas Motorsports Speedway. Now I'll be the first to confess that not running the roval kind of sucks but hey the event's tied into XDC Drift and some huge high profile car show event (Hey old school TA's bust out your wax you can hard park at this event!!)
I'm excited about this event for a couple of reasons,
The AZ boys of Snail Performance and UMS (I haz a GTO) Tuning will be back in the house!
My kid is only a few hours away at school so will be coming up to hang out!
Now I did my research a little early on this event and it turns out there are some big boys down in that neck of the woods with some serious machinery!
First up with have the heavy hitters of all things flappy paddle SSP Performance! I know Jeremy will be out there in one of their cars so that will be cool.
Cobb Tuning the mecha of all things ecu programmable and makers of some pretty nice parts as well have a host of cars, the only thing with Cobb is I seriously hope they are not so busy following up on their blockbuster marketing video of their tube bending machine "Bender" (It's very nicely shot and edited though, look it up on YouTube) with something like Bender 2 "Revenge of drilly the drill press" or something like that as considering they debuted a tracked out Focus at SEMA it would seem a little odd not to bring something like that out to race with they even have a couple of in house shoe's to drive!
Jotech, Now I don't know much about these guys but it seems from the info I can find I couldn't afford to have them work on anything I own and they build or have built some seriously fast cars!
There's more but I'll do that on my follow up in a couple of weeks for now it's time for me get some real work done!
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