Super Lap Battle Finals

Buttonwillow, California-it's an interesting little town, not a lot more than a small truck stop off Interstate 5 near Bakersfield. If you blink, you might miss it. The people are nice and friendly; however, the food is bad and the hotels are worse, so you can imagine why it's not much of a tourist destination. But don't be fooled, there's a secret here. Well, maybe not a "secret," per se, but something unexpected if you don't know to look for it. Here in the middle of the desert, many miles away from pretty much anything besides farms and freeways, sits a racetrack where some of the fastest cars in the world come to compete.

Time attack racing (also referred to as time trial and Super Lap) originated in Japan as a way for tuning companies to showcase their abilities in extreme performance modifications. The Tsukuba Circuit track located in Shimotsuma, Japan, is famous for being the birthplace of time attack; it's the ultimate place to go if you want to prove your car's worth once and for all.

Time attack racing (also referred to as time trial and Super Lap) originated in Japan as a

The Super Lap Battle series brings together teams from across the globe to compete in time attack by U.S. rules. The point of time attack is to get the single fastest lap time in your class (the best run of several heats throughout the day is your winning time). At this year's final event of the season, we saw some familiar cars and some fresh meat ready to get on track and run the gauntlet against the tried-and-true tough guys. As always, the Super Lap Battle runs in different classes: Street, Limited and Unlimited. Within these classes, drivetrain categories separate competitors into groups of FF, FR and AWD.

For a car to qualify in the Street class, it must be currently registered, drive on street tires and make the journey from the hotel to the track under its own power-no trailer queens in this class. The cars in the Limited class (sometimes referred to as "Modified") are allowed to have more race modifications. Things like welded-in rollcages, grooved racing slicks and extreme weight reduction, as well as allowing teams to trailer the car to the track, are allowed in the Limited class. The most heavily modified race cars fall under the Unlimited class. Major chassis modification, drivetrain modifications and basically anything else that disqualifies for a lighter class bumps the car to Unlimited. Racing slicks are not allowed in any class in the Super Lap Battle Series, and tires must have at least two vertical grooves to qualify.

The fastest time of the day came courtesy of the Unlimited AWD Sierra Sierra Enterprises EVO VIII, clocking in at a blisteringly fast 1:45.061. They were followed closely by Billy Johnson and the FX Motorsports NSX at 1:45.247, with the Crawford Performance STI clocking in a 1:45.552. Chris Rado piloted the World Racing Scion to the podium with a record-breaking run for Unlimited FF-the time of 1:49.703 beat GM's previous record by more than 1.5 seconds. At a track like Buttonwillow, even a single second is a lot of time and can mean the difference between victory and sad trip home.

1:49.977

While the Unlimited category showed us the fastest overall times, we can't forget about the rest of the field. Some of the most exciting and entertaining racing of the day came from the Street and Limited classes. The WindSpeed Motorsports Dodge SRT-4 sponsored by Continental Tires set the track record for Street FF with a time of 2:00.256. Evasive Motorsports managed an impressive 1:56.762 in their S2000, fast enough to set a new track record for Street FR, and they did it in style. Their bright-blue S2000 sports the first AP2 Voltex kit ever. It was very cool to see them race a car with such rare expensive aero, and considering the results, it was worth it. By simply upgrading the aero on the car, changing out a few suspension components and updating a few bolt-ons, the guys managed to shave almost 2 seconds off their time from last year.

All in all, the event was a great success. Everyone had a good time, records were broken (along with a few cars) and no one got too sick from the BBQ restaurant. With new things learned at each event, there are sure to be plenty of refreshed and rebuilt cars for next season. We can't wait to see what's in store from all the teams for the future of the Super Lap Battle Series.

By Nate Hassler

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