Each year, Texas National Supra Meet gets a little better, and each year the phallic measuring stick for big-power Supras seems to get longer. For the past seven years, Peter Blach, along with help from Dusty Womack of MVP Motorsports, has put together this horsepower orgy (which we covered last year with our "1000-HP Club" feature [SCC Aug. '05]) For 2006, the event was called TX2K6 and incorporated dyno, a car show, drag racing, and a circuit shootout. Things are so out of hand now, that only Supras that can produce 6-foot flames out of their tailpipes can get in.
Thursday, March 16
The first day's venue was Motorsports Ranch Houston, a newly opened "country club"-type race track offering a 17-turn, 2.38-mile circuit fast enough to let even a Supra spool its turbo and cook the rubber and stoppers on all four corners. Everything from stock Supras to fully race-prepped trailer queens came out to take advantage of the cop-free speeding extravaganza. In addition to Jeff Watson and Ivan Curiel's purpose-built track carvers, one of the most interesting was Jim Flewelling's Supra, which morphs from a sheepish, wingless sleeper to an all-out track terror with a splitter and gigantic GT wing that melts Goodyear slicks for fun.
Friday, March 17
Racing Solutions Inc.'s new 15,000-square-foot facility was the setting for the dyno play on day two. Thanks to RSI and the other sponsors, the allure of first-come, first-served free power pulls meant there was a line of cars camped out in front of the shop before the local Starbucks had opened. In typical Supraesque one-upmanship, 2006 became "The Year of the Stroker," and the limiting factor for horsepower was how far you could bang out your engine bay to stuff in a weapons-grade turbo. We're betting we'll see externally mounted turbos by next year's event.
With 29 cars vying for title of the biggest Johnson (including more than a few non-Supras), the average for the day came out to 806 wheel hp per car. Blach hoped that his RSI-built twin-turbo Viper would earn him bragging rights this year. With 1,355 to the wheels and a little luck, he was able to pull it off. Not to be left out were Titan Motorsports and Dana Westover from Virtual Works who laid down 1,249 and 1,154 wheel hp through their automatics, respectively.
In competitions like these, there's bound to be one winner and 28 complainers. While no one experienced a catastrophic meltdown, things don't always go as you'd like, and several contenders would've liked rematches. But even if RSI built a hyperbaric chamber around the dyno and issued no-slip tires, we're sure there would've still been some whining. By the end of the weekend, after fixing various fuel delivery and traction issues, the dyno results would've been slightly different, but Blach would still be on top with 1,478 to the wheels, Ryan Woon would still have put down 1,460 for 4th, and Tommy Bahn would have ended up putting down about twice what he did on Friday with 1,078. There's always next year for more coulda, woulda, shouldas.
Saturday, March 18
We opted to sleep in and miss Saturday morning's "scenic cruise" (which the cops seemed to have found especially scenic). Afterward, the group congregated back at RSI after the cruise for a BBQ and show 'n' shine. Armed with camera in one hand and instant detailer in the other, the owners scoured the lot for ideas and spots. Every year, there's always something new and different to catch the eye. There was the Fast and the Furious wild, but thankfully most cars were mild, tastefully tuned, individualized rides. Unlike other shows, however, even the flashiest, most tasteless Supra at this meet's show 'n' shine had just as much go to back it up. Having been to a lot of Supra meets, one of the highlights this year was to see perfect examples of all four generations of Supras lined up next to each other, side by side, and completely untainted by tuner hands.
When you have dozens of Supra guys forced to sit around a parking lot polishing their cars all day, they inevitably get antsy. By nightfall, the Supra owners and groupies had congregated at an undisclosed retail location on the outskirts of town known to be the local place to go on a Saturday night. Already filled with several hundred cars, this parking lot adjacent to the freeway became the destination of at least 50 Supras, which had come to mix in with the usual imports, Vipers, Vettes, and street bikes.
Watching from the safety of the rental car, we sat around counting the minutes before the Man showed up. They didn't. Unlike in Southern California, the fun lasted more than 8 minutes and wasn't ruined by 47 police cars and a half-dozen news helicopters.
One of the local favorites is the four-across-lane highway pulls. The problem is, you can't see anything from the roadside, and since our rental car would probably have imploded past 107 mph, we decided that highway pulls weren't in our immediate future, and so we headed back to the hotel to call it a night.
Sunday, March 19
Sunday morning didn't look good for the drags. The weather in Houston was dreary, and there was steady rain near San Antonio Raceway. We headed out nonetheless and had some luck. The rain subsided by the time we got there, and the track crew had just finished drying out the half-mile battleground.
Most of the "big boys" from all over the country come out to the heart of the action. One surprise standout was Kean Wang's incredibly consistent, 8.1-second e.t.'s. No doubt, many late nights and many test 'n' tunes were spent to get this car dialed in, and it's no surprise this Boost Logic car was heavily influenced by Chris Johnson of Performance Motorsports and Tuning and dialed in by Justin Nenni of Tuning Concepts.
By the end of the day, Titan Motorsports broke into the 7s to plenty of 8 and 9 second passes, but consistency was the key. Titan had eaten a turbo and wasn't able to make it into the finals with a borrowed one. It was Kean and Sound Performance's crew who took 1st and 2nd place trophies in the Unlimited Class. Blach and Womack's 3rd didn't even make up for the long list of parts to order on Monday.
Looking back on this and past Texas National Supra Meets, it's obvious that the competition gets better and harder every year. No doubt Blach is cooking up ways to make next year's event even more exciting, and we're sure Womack and other sponsors are sticking money in their piggy banks to help fulfill Peter's pipe dreams. Likewise, the hundreds of Supra enthusiasts are already scheming to do something new, different, and better for their next trek back for TX2K7.