Sport Compact Car/Super Street Time Attack Challenge

Dawn cut through the chilled, cloudless desert morning bringing warmth and movement to the Motel 6 parking lot in Buttonwillow, Calif. Condensed breath and exhaust vapor rose from the collection of extreme street cars and their sleepless stewards. Cars had driven from as far as Texas to compete in the inaugural SCC/SS Time Attack Challenge, and competitors regarded each others' finery with respectful, distant eyes.

Some trends from Japan, like digital pets, are perhaps not so great. Others, like drifting and time attack, we like. The premise of time attack is that street-car-based vehicles on "street" tires attempt to turn the single fastest lap on a given track, period. Most established Japanese tuners field at least one time attack car; popular magazines and videos sponsor contests. To win a time attack challenge, there's no half-assing any part of the car. The drivetrain must be as well developed as the suspension.

Our chosen track was the 2.68-mile configuration #13 clockwise at Buttonwillow Raceway in the Central Valley of California. This track is technical and demanding, and is defined neither as a horsepower or a handling course. Plus, the weather there is always 75 degrees and sunny.

For the first such event in the United States, we left the rules fairly open, the most important being "No whining." Cars were separated into two groups, limited and unlimited, before being broken down further into front-wheel-drive, rear-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive categories.

The general eligibility requirements for time attack were as follows:

·All vehicles must use tires that are legal for use on all public roadways in either the United States, Japan or the European Union
·No pushrods
·No flat-six engines
·No engines with more than eight cylinders
·Vehicles must be built from a model originally produced for legal street use
·Vehicles must have a silhouette that is largely faithful to the original
·The entire floorpan must be in place

Limited Class cars must have had current tags and registration, glass windows, and to prove they were indeed capable of street use, they had to meet 15 miles from the track at the Motel 6 on race day morning to caravan to the track. Limited Class cars also had to meet the basic safety requirements for street cars as defined by the National Auto Sport Association.

Unlimited Class cars must have met the above general requirements, but the class was otherwise "run what ya brung." Safety requirements were more stringent, however. The National Auto Sport Association safety regulations for racecars, including a cage, proper racing attire, etc.

Team jackets and matching shirts segregated the sea of bodies that amassed in the driver's meeting. At stake were bragging rights, pure and simple. Thirty-nine competitors were on hand to prove their might or meagerness, and Trump-worthy egos, chat room battles and tuner rivalries were about to play out. Ryan Flaherty, the national chairman of NASA, officiated all timing and scoring, and did a stellar job of scaring the competitors into driving an incident-free day.

Our "gaijin" time attack gave competitors a bit more breathing room than the Japanese equivalent. We made sure plenty of time was earmarked for learning, people blowing stuff up, and us cleaning up blown-up stuff.

Immediately following the driver's meeting was an hour-long open practice session. We used these times to break the cars into three run groups, depending on recorded lap times. Each run group was given four 20-minute timed sessions and just the fastest laps out of 80 minutes of track time were counted. Each car was fitted with an AMB transponder, the same system used at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which records each and every lap.

Epic battles
Nothing short of a huge cash purse can push drivers to go faster, or make more errors, than healthy on-track rivalry. It's good for racing and good for the fans, and luckily, requires nothing more than ego. The following battles were favorites with trackside critics.

Integra vs. Sentra
Bernardo Martinez, a local front-drive circuit guru, was singular in his aim: to set the fastest front-wheel-drive time, period. He came well armed, packing an Unlimited FWD Class, 300-hp, blown K24, VTEC-powered, four-door Integra owned by Hasport and campaigned in NASA's Honda Challenge. The engine was assembled by Eric Valdez of Street Image, and uses a stock K24 bottom end with RSX Type-S head fitted with a Jackson Racing supercharger. Hasport mounts were modified to move the engine back in the engine compartment for better weight distribution. Ueberexpensive and bitchin' Tein N1s with hefty 1,000-pound springs in the front and 1,200-pound springs in the rear keep Hoosiers, 225mm wide in the front, 205mm in the rear, smashed into the racing line. The racing line, incidentally, consumed three sets of brand-new Hoosiers on the front.

Martinez was seen between rounds taking a minor amount of camber out of one corner of the car, as his Honda was dragging a tire through Talladega, a triple-digit sweeper. When combined with talent, that kind of neurotic attention to setup bags championships.

In the other corner, we had the Unlimited FWD Class SE-R Cup Sentra owned by Jeff Naeyert and piloted by Ryan Flaherty. Jeff's Sentra is one of the nicest SE-R racecars around, making it a nice Sentra. It features a cage Jeff built himself and a homemade intercooler using a Griffin core. Jeff even made the bumper-exit exhaust and wastegate dump tube.

The turbo setup uses a Pulsar GTi-R exhaust manifold, to which is attached a Garrett GT3037 ball-bearing turbo, and a Tial wastegate. This custom turbo setup pressurizes a completely stock $275 junkyard SR20DE. Worse, in fact than stock; two days prior, Jeff had over-revved the car, scattering shims and pads in the valvetrain that were never recovered, just replaced. Jeff estimates that, with 6 psi of boost,the car makes 230 wheel hp. The only other really trick item is a set of PAR straight-cut gears, which better handle the turbo power, and are so trick the car pops out of gear with regularity.

Wasting no time, Bernardo went to work early in the morning laying down blistering lap times. Ryan went out for a session in the Sentra after lunch, to be told he was off Bernardo's pace by just 1.5 seconds.

"Hoosiers have to be worth at least a second," Flaherty figured. The Battle of the Econo Crapbox-Driving Egos thus began. Prancing with joy, owner Naeyert sprinted to the tire barn to find the largest slabs of rubber they could squeeze in the Sentra's front fenders. Four hundred and forty dollars later, 245/40-17 Hoosiers were on the front of the car just minutes before the fourth and final session of the day. With endless ribbing at stake should a lowly Sentra beat a blown, built, developed and well set up Honda Challenge car, both men approached the last session with the levity reserved for tax audits. Both men pushed hard enough to spin, but not before Flaherty recorded a 1:59.3, just over half a second behind Martinez's winning time.

Flaherty added, "If I had known this car would actually have been a contender, I would have set this baby up. It was awful. Between crappy brakes and suspension setup, there are at least four more seconds in there."