June 9, 2009

High Rollin' Heavy Hitters

There are quite a few prominent clubs here in sunny Queensland Australia, but only a few stand tall above the rest in terms of a car roster. In that select few are the two rival clubs of Most Wanted and High Rollers; both of which have the pleasure of saying they have some of the toughest cars wearing their insignia. But, as of late, Club High Rollers (CHR) has been on the uprise, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to one of their famous Dyno Days.


Now, I say 'famous' as it is a well known fact that big numbers are always produced and for this day, some of the biggest and baddest cars turned out to show what they were all about. They say it is all about having the connections, and being good friends with some of the High Rollers members definitely has its benefits in terms of access to out-right car porn. The Dyno Day was held at the infamous Aussie GTR tuner Godzilla Motor sport which plays host to not only the second fastest GTR in the world (which runs a 7.84sec pass) but also the fastest low mount twin turbo GTR in Australia with a 9.8sec pass. And, of course, Godzilla Motorsport is now home to the mentalist RH9 R34 GTR which not only ran a 9.73sec pass in street trim, but managed to push out 1250awhp on C16 race fuel, that is just over 1400hp at the engine, and close to 1200hp on pump fuel. So to say Godzilla Motorsport (GM) know what they are doing is an understatement.

Upon arrival to GM with the train of CHR cars behind me, it was obvious by the idols of each car that today was going to be something special, with all kinds of GTRs, a Supra, Evo's and some older Datsuns waiting to slowly creep into the quite steep entrance. Straight away, the first entrant was strapping onto the Dyno getting ready to punch out some numbers, and this would be the layout for the next few hours; chatting about all things cars and sussing out everyone's rides in between each set up.

When you first set your eyes upon the club cars in attendance, there are some that just make you gasp starting with a 'F' and ending with an 'arrrrrkkkkk'. The standouts were Adam's 'FATGTR' R32 rolling on some super stretched Work Meister's and supporting a T51r and full Tomei 2.7l stroker kit. The noise of the T51r spooling is easily up there with one of the worlds best car noises. The 'RH9' R34 with those awfully expensive 20x10" GTC's (which would probably cost somewhere around $9000AUD)but the car that stole my heart was easily matched by Justin's gorgeous R32 'DARE YA', wearing a deep dark blue paint matched with some dead sexy SSR Type C's. Not only does it look good, but it also managed to push out 498rwhp. Stay tuned for an upcoming feature on it. A special mention must go to Tess with the '080OST' R32 GTS supporting a full dog engagement gear box and helical cut gears. The noise it made was about as good as it gets, and the clunking through gears was euphoria to my ears. Also, being a car driven by a girl, 505rwhp is pretty intense. Who said women can't drive?

As with every dyno day there were some cars everyone was itching to see run, and cars that were expecting some quite ridiculous numbers. Those cars were Adam's pearl silver R32 GTR 'FATGTR', Mick's 'DRAGER' Supra and Paul's silver R32 GTR 'TWO.06L', but unfortunately the crazy RH9 was not going to be running due to it being too powerful for the dyno too handle, and the 7sec GM R32 was without an engine. Oh well, maybe next time. In saying this however, Adam, Mick and Paul did not disappoint, with Adam pushing out 720rwhp in FATGTR, which was his biggest power reading to date and puts him oh so close to that fabled 1000hp. Mick, even with a bad tune, managed to churn out 652rwhp and almost pull the wall down upon hitting boost; tugging so hard that the exhaust was actually sparking on the dyno rollers. Paul with his brand new high mount set up managed a quite insane 698awhp, technically taking out top honors, but it was all about the readings so FATGTR managed to snatch the title.

As much as these three took the lime light away from the others, big numbers were produced all day with the lowest reading being 292awhp from Jason's Evo. Some would argue, though, that in technical terms Chloe produced the lowest reading with 329rwhp. But in saying that, for the lowest reading to be basically 400hp at the engine, it really shows that the quality of cars is phenomenal. I will definitely be covering all of CHR's events in the coming months, as with cars like this they are proving themselves to be the ones to beat and it will only get better. Watch this space...

Special thanks to Jay and Justin for the invite.






June 4, 2009

Sprints Baby

Down here in Aus, the time attack scene is relatively small compared to the likes of Japan, Europe and the USA. Despite this, it is slowly growing, and one of the most popular events here in Queensland is the Sprint days held once or twice a month. We only get the use of two tracks, that being Queensland Raceway and Lakeside, with our third, Morgan Park, being a good two to three hour trip out of Brisbane. The event we attended today was the Wednesday Afternoon Sprints or WAS. Sprint days are open to the general public to watch and, if you hold the correct license, to have a go around the track in your car.
With the weather preparing to deter are efforts of watching some of the fastest cars around, we decided to head out anyway. Upon arrival, God decided he wanted to play and let the sun shine on what was a fantastic day for racing. Sprints bring out all types of cars ranging from inexperienced drivers in underpowered FWD's all the way up fully race prepped, stripped, caged and sponsored race cars out for testing, with a few luxury baller rides thrown into the mix. Queensland Raceway or QR is a very basic track with a few different layouts to change things up, however the bonus is that almost everything can be seen from the pit wall, which makes it great to watch. Now let's talk about what you want to hear about...cars.



One car that seems to be out in a utterly dominating fashion at the Sprint days is of course the Porsche's, with this day being no different having a 996 GT3 running straight through twin pipes and rolling on Michelin Porsche Cup Car slicks, a 997 GT3RS, which was setting the quickest times of the day and proving that Porsche knows what they are doing. But our pick was definitely the 996 GT2, which was hitting some phenomenal numbers down the main and back straights and leaving absolutely everything for dead, when it go to them. Proving there is no replacement for...forced induction?


Some more likely sprint heroes showed up as well including a multitude of WRX's, Evolutions and Sti's. There was also two Lotus Exiges on the day with one being an absolutely stunning Pearl Red Exige S and the other being a privately backed Exige racer, the Exige S was a fantastic car to look at but was a bit weak on the ears going round the track, with the Celica 2ZZ being a little less exciting than we expected...oh well was probably a hell of a lot of fun to drive.

Every sprint day there are some oddballs that turn out, and WAS was really no different with the likes of two RX8, one supporting some lovely PMU Brakes but with horrendus chrome wheels. A couple of drift cars came out to show that they can drive in straight lines (which didn't really happen) with the purple 180 playing host to the worlds largest and most unnecessary screamer pipe. Also two John Cooper Works Mini Cooper S's showed up posting some surprisingly quick lap times and the weirdest entrant being a purple Datsun 1200 Ute carrying a SR20DET from a Silvia and actually holding it's own against its competitors. There were many other cars, some worth mentioning which we didn't get pics of such as a Red Evo 9 with carbon fibre everywhere and some porn as hell Advans under its guards, but also some cars that I am glad did not waste my memory card space.