OK, so maybe it’s too soon to be cracking jokes about Tage’s fried neck or the unintended BBQ that started beneath his Hasport EG Civic, but we’re not the most sensitive bunch around here. And amazingly enough, Tage has kept his sense of humor throughout the whole ordeal, so we figured we’d keep it light and breezy.
On the dyno, things went more or less as expected, posting the second lowest score but showing a broad powerband and a surprising amount of torque (388 wtq, more than the other FWD teams and the SoS NSX, a result of Hasport’s well-timed use of NOS). During the drag event, Tage struggled with the second-to-third-gear shift on his first two runs (and also had clutch issues), but he got it all together on his third and final run and posted a surprisingly quick 11.58 at 119 mph, putting him right back in the hunt going into Saturday’s autocross (an event he’s dominated in the past) and time attack finale.
Things didn’t go quite to plan during the autocross, though, with JC and Zenkai both posting quicker times than the Hasport EG. “The Continentals weren’t an optimal size for my car or compound for autocrossing,” Tage says, “but they pleasantly surprised me with their performance and grip.” With a third-place finish around the cones, this giant-killing little Honda still had a chance going into the time attack. Things didn’t quite to go as planned here, either — this time for reasons Tage explained best: “The TA was the biggest letdown for me out of the entire event. I went out on track and as soon as I punched the gas for my first hot lap I realized I forgot to turn on the nitrous bottle!” As serious a boo-boo as this might be, it’s easy to forgive Tage when you factor in the fact that he and his wife Adina run NASA AZ (a top motorsports sanctioning body in the nation) and that this same weekend at Firebird is their biggest event of the year. The lack of NOS meant the Hasport EG could only muster a 1:06.905, having run in the mid 1:05s in previous years. But the biggest setback of the weekend was still to come for Tage and his Hasport-sponsored Civic, a fiery nightmare you can read about on page 56.