Next quickest among the FWD competitors was Brady Dohrmann in the Ksport DC5 Type-R. Clearly Brady’s local knowledge of Firebird helped him hustle the Ksport Integra around in just 1:07.12, just 1.5 seconds behind Tage’s class-winning effort. And Tim Kuo, who’d never driven at Firebird before (let alone in the dark!), posted a very solid time of 1:08.42 in the Sportcar Motion EG Civic. Front-drive fans need to keep their eyes on this machine, because owner Loi Song recently equipped it with a Kraftwerks supercharger, boosting engine output well north of 450 whp.
Fastest among the RWD competitors and fifth overall was ScienceofSpeed’s gorgeous widebody NSX, a machine with show car level of attention to detail and truly top-shelf components throughout, like the Moton double-adjustable dampers, SoS 6-speed transmission conversion, and SoS twin-screw supercharger that pumps out 10.2 psi of boost at 8000 rpm. AFI’s S2000 was just more than1 second behind with a best time of 1:07.37 seconds, and Forrest Wang was having fun trying to drift the last corner onto the front straight while posting a best of 1:12.34.
Sharif took the wheel in his Forged Performance GT-R for the time attack, having honed his skills over the last few seasons in his now retired 350Z time attack machine. Having seen the standings going into the final event, Sharif knew he just needed to put down a decent lap to lock down a podium position in the overall standings, so he showed some restraint when posting a best lap time of 1:06.96, rather than going for broke and risking a DNF. Sometimes you must lose the battle to win the war.
Tony’s UMS Tuning EVO 8 was battling some overheating issues during the time attack, so he only managed to post a best lap time of 1:11.35. But during an earlier session that same night while running the car in the HPDE group, Tony beat his personal best street tire lap time while running on Conti’s CS3 tires. “During the auto-x the Continental tire’s excellent wet-weather characteristics really helped, but I was particularly impressed by the CS3s during the time attack, which definitely performed better than I expected.”
Final Results
Mike Warfield and his crew from GST Motorsports know how to play the game. According to Mike, “We would have liked to have turned up the wick for the drag race, but due to the limited grip were unable to run more than just our wastegate spring and even had to turn off flat foot shifting. We also had a last-minute issue with one of the valves, which meant we had to work through the night the day before we left for the Shootout. As a result, we had to reuse a head gasket, which other than obvious nervousness of whether or not the gasket would hold, we decided to turn the boost down on the car by a little over4 psi to keep things as safe as possible.”
It’s this kind of strategic thinking and determination to survive four very different and challenging events that has made GST Motorsports our first ever back-to-back Shootout Overall and AWD champion. With a grand total of 320 points out of a possible 325, GST’s performance was virtually flawless. Quite an achievement for this tireless crew from Hayward, California, which seems to find ways to continuously improve their GC Impreza L. Rumor has it they’re also working hard on a GD chassis that’s going to be lighter and even more radical than their trusty old GC. Sounds like the perfect machine to try for a Shootout threepeat!