GST Motorsports/GOTO:Racing claim first U-AWD Redline season opener - Subaru Enthusiasts Car Club of the Sierras

GST Mike · 2008-04-03, 09:55 PM

Back to Bumpywillow, Redline Time Attack Buttonwillow March 08

Every time we run at Buttonwillow I say I will never go back. It’s not just the track that spurs this statement, it’s more a combination of things. Let me explain further. Buttonwillow is a fairly desolate place, often with extreme temps and a tendency to have random dust storms, which no matter how you prepare for you can never escape. I don’t think I have had a Monday morning following a track event at this track without my eyes glowing like red hot pokers and my mouth dryer than the Sahara Desert.

The weekend started for us, as usual, finishing up the car on Friday morning and getting it ready for our partners GOTO:Racing to load it into the rig. With the car in the rig, Steve Lock of GOTO:Racing started his long boring drive down the I5 towards Buttonwillow, while the rest of us at GST Motorsports finished our normal days work of customer Subaru’s and Evo’s. For me, I still had another competitors car to tune for the event (LIC Motorsports, Street AWD Subaru STI).

The usual late night arrival at a less than downscale motel and the subsequent 4 hours of sleep followed (what kind of idiot rents a room in a place called Lost Hills anyway?)

With the rig all unloaded by our partners at GOTO:Racing the previous evening and the final touches put on the car by both the GOTO crew and GST’s lead techs Tommy Wu and Mert Solis, the car was ready for our first practice session.

With the car on track and sticking to our usual plan of running low boost and rpm’s during our initial setup practice runs, Brian settled into his groove running mid to low 1:52’s, stopping every 2-3 laps to give feedback and allow Tommy to make shock adjustments (did I mention this track is bumpy?).

Pretty much the whole day was spent making small tweaks to our suspension setup with Brian constantly giving feedback to his brother Chris and GST’s Tommy. With the setup finally where Brian wanted it, we decided on our plan for Sunday. We parked the car and primed for getting our food on which was served in plentiful supply by GOTO’s Linda Lock with some grilling assistance from her husband Steve (nothing like filet mignon on a cold dusty Buttonwillow night!)

As always, prior to calling it a night on the car and concentrating on required 12oz pain killers, the crew led by Tommy Wu and Mert Solis set about doing a nut and bolt on the car. Now typically, this is a fairly straight forward event with our only new addition to our prep list being a boost leak test which we figured would be done within an hour. As racing luck, we would have it, we could not have been more wrong. With the intake removed by chance, someone decided to spin the compressor wheel finding that we had prematurely demised our faithful Precision GT30r. The center cartridge was done with enough side shaft movement to port out the compressor housing for a 100mm wheel…

After a little deliberation, we remember that one of our crew members Felipe (Jose) was still to leave the Bay Area. A quick call to Felipe and my wife to meet him at the shop and we would have another turbo before midnight.

With that little issue handled, the beverage crew led by Jeff R decided it was time to get stuck into the beers to aid killing the time as well as the pain of being stuck staring at our now defunct race car.

No sooner had the beers started to take effect 11:30pm rolled around and so did our replacement turbo with Felipe. 45 minutes later a sleep deprived Tommy and Mert had our race car ready to roll for the now later this morning practice session.

7:30am and with the crew all armed with Mrs. Lock’s legendary GOTO muffins (I think this is the US’s version of a UK fry up and guaranteed to soak up the remains of any alcohol from the previous night, ok perhaps not for Jeff

) the crew set about the final changes to the car for early practice.

Our game plan for the morning practice session was simple, adjust the boost back to our normal NASA TTU settings (we ran the car in our NASA TTU setup with our capped WHP not able to exceed 440whp) and ramp the rpm’s up lap by lap. Unfortunately, we would not get in a hot lap during this session due to a black flag incident involving a American Iron Mustang shortening our session.

With Brian happy with the setup, we decided to skip the final morning practice and roll the dice in the first timed session. Knowing our competitor’s we’re running low 1:52’s we felt quiet confident that we had enough in the car to bring a good fight to the table.

The crew kept themselves entertained during this downtime chatting with our friends from Speed Element and a whole bunch of Norcalevo.net guys that had come down for the event while I split my time between BS’ing with everyone and checking in on the LIC Motorsports (awesome job in your first event guys!, 3rd place in street AWD) street AWD car that I had tuned prior to leaving for the event. Greg Simpson, our lead sales associate busied himself chatting with all the vendors while looking for the next greatest things to pimp to the masses of likewise speed junkies we sell to and work with.

With the car gridded in 3rd for the first time session, the crew moved to the wall while Tommy chatted with Brian over the radio. Brian’s first lap was a low 1:51, fastest of the weekend so far, and then his second lap was a mid 1:50. At this point everyone was happy as we still weren’t running full tilt which we had planned for the final session. As Brian disappeared out of view on his 3rd and final lap, the call we all hate to hear over the radio got relayed to us from Tommy, “The car’s broke”

As the crew eagerly awaited the cars return to the pits, we got to watch the car limping round the track. My first thought was at least the motors still running; can’t be that bad.

With the car back at the rig, Tommy and Mert hurried to get the car in the air. From the reports over the radio it sounded like either an axle or rear diff; less than a minute later it was determined to be a rear diff. We packed axles but had no rear diff. Typically you would think no big deal there has to be plenty of Subaru’s around with a R180 in them which was the case, however, not with a Cusco diff in them.

As we deliberated over our issue, a big red easy button went off in my head; well at least the big red ESX Subaru parked next to ours did anyway. There was a Cusco rear diff in the ESX WCGT car which was having some fueling issues and was parked awaiting transportation home. With only an hour or so to fix, Tommy took charge of The L while Mert took charge of the ESX. With help from Felipe, Jeff R and Greg, the swap was completed in less than 20 minutes – Outstanding job btw guys!

During this time, Tyler McQuarrie, our close competitor, came over to chat with Brian remarking on how he through Brian had it in the bag and that he had nothing for us in the second session and that he could not see going faster than his already impressive low 1:51 in the C-West – Brian Crower S2000.

With our car fixed, ready and grided up 1st the crew felt confident that perhaps now might be that all elusive overall win we had missing out on several times. Brian’s first lap was a low 1:50 with Tylers being a mid 1:51. Brians second lap was a high 1:49 then something happened… Yup we now know we should never listen to a competitor. Tyler ran an awesome high 1:48 (I’ll give Tyler one thing, we have made a lot of fun of Brian over this in the past couple of days!). Tommy got on the radio and told Brian Tyler’s time and Brian responded immediately picking up over 4 tenths in the first 3rd of the track now we have a race!

As Brian gave his all and then some in the final lap, he caught a little too much berm existing the bus stop and our final lap was over in a climatic spin… It would seem Tyler was also on a burner with the previous RWD record looking to fall, we all cheered him on knowing our own chances were dust but it would seem Tyler would be impeded by another car on his 3rd and final lap.

So that’s it in a nut shell, we claimed 1st in Unlimited AWD and second overall

As always, a great event put on by Nik and Chris at Redline. We learned a lot – pack more spares (seems this one always comes up perhaps we need to build the L’s evil twin for parts scavenging), keep Jeff away from beer, Freddie can sleep anywhere and none I repeat none of us will ever play poker with Tyler!

Thanks goes to the incredible team and family of GOTO:Racing for their generous hospitality as always, all the people that came up to support and help us – Jeff R, Freddie, Hugo (the camera man), Suzanne, Felipe and the many others.

A special thanks goes to our sponsors for their continued support. Without your generosity, we would never be able to make these events,

Cosworth
GOTO:Racing
Hydra Nemisis
Subydude.com
Whiteline
Precision Turbo and Engine
VFiber
Endless USA

JonnydaJibba · 2008-04-03, 10:44 PM

That's awesome. Nice write up.

Libila · 2008-04-04, 12:49 AM

Congrats guys!

sybir · 2008-04-04, 06:44 AM

Mike, awesome news

When you're finding those kinds of failure points, it means you're really pushing the envelope of the platform, good work!

Nick Koan · 2008-04-04, 08:41 AM

Awesome!

sperry · 2008-04-04, 09:07 AM

Nice work Mike!

GST Mike · 2008-04-04, 09:09 PM

have a couple of snippets of in-car from this past weekend our main video will be up on our media player over the weekend but until then everyone can enjoy these,

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ci-GcFJrW2M

How about a new line out of the esses...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NY5RoB20luQ

Mike

sperry · 2008-04-05, 09:58 AM

Whoa. Great lap, right up until that curb.

And the guys running that NSX owe Brian a beer for not ruining their day.

MattR · 2008-04-05, 06:04 PM

That NSX needed to do something, what was he waiting for? Damn that car is insane.

AtomicLabMonkey · 2008-04-17, 04:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GST Mike

Every time we run at Buttonwillow I say I will never go back. It’s not just the track that spurs this statement, it’s more a combination of things. Let me explain further. Buttonwillow is a fairly desolate place, often with extreme temps and a tendency to have random dust storms, which no matter how you prepare for you can never escape. I don’t think I have had a Monday morning following a track event at this track without my eyes glowing like red hot pokers and my mouth dryer than the Sahara Desert.

Good ole' Buttonwillow. Gotta love the valley...

2008-04-03, 09:55 PM	#1
GST Mike EJ22 Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Hayward, CA Posts: 191 Car: Zee L Load, Efficiency, MAP etc etc etc	GST Motorsports/GOTO:Racing claim first U-AWD Redline season opener Back to Bumpywillow, Redline Time Attack Buttonwillow March 08 Every time we run at Buttonwillow I say I will never go back. It’s not just the track that spurs this statement, it’s more a combination of things. Let me explain further. Buttonwillow is a fairly desolate place, often with extreme temps and a tendency to have random dust storms, which no matter how you prepare for you can never escape. I don’t think I have had a Monday morning following a track event at this track without my eyes glowing like red hot pokers and my mouth dryer than the Sahara Desert. The weekend started for us, as usual, finishing up the car on Friday morning and getting it ready for our partners GOTO:Racing to load it into the rig. With the car in the rig, Steve Lock of GOTO:Racing started his long boring drive down the I5 towards Buttonwillow, while the rest of us at GST Motorsports finished our normal days work of customer Subaru’s and Evo’s. For me, I still had another competitors car to tune for the event (LIC Motorsports, Street AWD Subaru STI). The usual late night arrival at a less than downscale motel and the subsequent 4 hours of sleep followed (what kind of idiot rents a room in a place called Lost Hills anyway?) With the rig all unloaded by our partners at GOTO:Racing the previous evening and the final touches put on the car by both the GOTO crew and GST’s lead techs Tommy Wu and Mert Solis, the car was ready for our first practice session. With the car on track and sticking to our usual plan of running low boost and rpm’s during our initial setup practice runs, Brian settled into his groove running mid to low 1:52’s, stopping every 2-3 laps to give feedback and allow Tommy to make shock adjustments (did I mention this track is bumpy?). Pretty much the whole day was spent making small tweaks to our suspension setup with Brian constantly giving feedback to his brother Chris and GST’s Tommy. With the setup finally where Brian wanted it, we decided on our plan for Sunday. We parked the car and primed for getting our food on which was served in plentiful supply by GOTO’s Linda Lock with some grilling assistance from her husband Steve (nothing like filet mignon on a cold dusty Buttonwillow night!) As always, prior to calling it a night on the car and concentrating on required 12oz pain killers, the crew led by Tommy Wu and Mert Solis set about doing a nut and bolt on the car. Now typically, this is a fairly straight forward event with our only new addition to our prep list being a boost leak test which we figured would be done within an hour. As racing luck, we would have it, we could not have been more wrong. With the intake removed by chance, someone decided to spin the compressor wheel finding that we had prematurely demised our faithful Precision GT30r. The center cartridge was done with enough side shaft movement to port out the compressor housing for a 100mm wheel… After a little deliberation, we remember that one of our crew members Felipe (Jose) was still to leave the Bay Area. A quick call to Felipe and my wife to meet him at the shop and we would have another turbo before midnight. With that little issue handled, the beverage crew led by Jeff R decided it was time to get stuck into the beers to aid killing the time as well as the pain of being stuck staring at our now defunct race car. No sooner had the beers started to take effect 11:30pm rolled around and so did our replacement turbo with Felipe. 45 minutes later a sleep deprived Tommy and Mert had our race car ready to roll for the now later this morning practice session. 7:30am and with the crew all armed with Mrs. Lock’s legendary GOTO muffins (I think this is the US’s version of a UK fry up and guaranteed to soak up the remains of any alcohol from the previous night, ok perhaps not for Jeff ) the crew set about the final changes to the car for early practice. Our game plan for the morning practice session was simple, adjust the boost back to our normal NASA TTU settings (we ran the car in our NASA TTU setup with our capped WHP not able to exceed 440whp) and ramp the rpm’s up lap by lap. Unfortunately, we would not get in a hot lap during this session due to a black flag incident involving a American Iron Mustang shortening our session. With Brian happy with the setup, we decided to skip the final morning practice and roll the dice in the first timed session. Knowing our competitor’s we’re running low 1:52’s we felt quiet confident that we had enough in the car to bring a good fight to the table. The crew kept themselves entertained during this downtime chatting with our friends from Speed Element and a whole bunch of Norcalevo.net guys that had come down for the event while I split my time between BS’ing with everyone and checking in on the LIC Motorsports (awesome job in your first event guys!, 3rd place in street AWD) street AWD car that I had tuned prior to leaving for the event. Greg Simpson, our lead sales associate busied himself chatting with all the vendors while looking for the next greatest things to pimp to the masses of likewise speed junkies we sell to and work with. With the car gridded in 3rd for the first time session, the crew moved to the wall while Tommy chatted with Brian over the radio. Brian’s first lap was a low 1:51, fastest of the weekend so far, and then his second lap was a mid 1:50. At this point everyone was happy as we still weren’t running full tilt which we had planned for the final session. As Brian disappeared out of view on his 3rd and final lap, the call we all hate to hear over the radio got relayed to us from Tommy, “The car’s broke” As the crew eagerly awaited the cars return to the pits, we got to watch the car limping round the track. My first thought was at least the motors still running; can’t be that bad. With the car back at the rig, Tommy and Mert hurried to get the car in the air. From the reports over the radio it sounded like either an axle or rear diff; less than a minute later it was determined to be a rear diff. We packed axles but had no rear diff. Typically you would think no big deal there has to be plenty of Subaru’s around with a R180 in them which was the case, however, not with a Cusco diff in them. As we deliberated over our issue, a big red easy button went off in my head; well at least the big red ESX Subaru parked next to ours did anyway. There was a Cusco rear diff in the ESX WCGT car which was having some fueling issues and was parked awaiting transportation home. With only an hour or so to fix, Tommy took charge of The L while Mert took charge of the ESX. With help from Felipe, Jeff R and Greg, the swap was completed in less than 20 minutes – Outstanding job btw guys! During this time, Tyler McQuarrie, our close competitor, came over to chat with Brian remarking on how he through Brian had it in the bag and that he had nothing for us in the second session and that he could not see going faster than his already impressive low 1:51 in the C-West – Brian Crower S2000. With our car fixed, ready and grided up 1st the crew felt confident that perhaps now might be that all elusive overall win we had missing out on several times. Brian’s first lap was a low 1:50 with Tylers being a mid 1:51. Brians second lap was a high 1:49 then something happened… Yup we now know we should never listen to a competitor. Tyler ran an awesome high 1:48 (I’ll give Tyler one thing, we have made a lot of fun of Brian over this in the past couple of days!). Tommy got on the radio and told Brian Tyler’s time and Brian responded immediately picking up over 4 tenths in the first 3rd of the track now we have a race! As Brian gave his all and then some in the final lap, he caught a little too much berm existing the bus stop and our final lap was over in a climatic spin… It would seem Tyler was also on a burner with the previous RWD record looking to fall, we all cheered him on knowing our own chances were dust but it would seem Tyler would be impeded by another car on his 3rd and final lap. So that’s it in a nut shell, we claimed 1st in Unlimited AWD and second overall As always, a great event put on by Nik and Chris at Redline. We learned a lot – pack more spares (seems this one always comes up perhaps we need to build the L’s evil twin for parts scavenging), keep Jeff away from beer, Freddie can sleep anywhere and none I repeat none of us will ever play poker with Tyler! Thanks goes to the incredible team and family of GOTO:Racing for their generous hospitality as always, all the people that came up to support and help us – Jeff R, Freddie, Hugo (the camera man), Suzanne, Felipe and the many others. A special thanks goes to our sponsors for their continued support. Without your generosity, we would never be able to make these events, Cosworth GOTO:Racing Hydra Nemisis Subydude.com Whiteline Precision Turbo and Engine VFiber Endless USA

2008-04-03, 10:44 PM	#2
JonnydaJibba EJ207 Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Reno/Sparks, Nevada Posts: 3,482 Car: 2000 2.5RS Class: RestNPeace Master Slurper.	That's awesome. Nice write up. __________________ "Why do chicks tell you to call and then not answer....so gay." "Cuz girls are fags I dunno"

2008-04-04, 06:44 AM	#4
sybir The Don Real Name: Aaron Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Sacramento Posts: 3,097 Car: '97 Legacy / '05 FXT Class: low	Mike, awesome news When you're finding those kinds of failure points, it means you're really pushing the envelope of the platform, good work! __________________ Tact is for people who aren't witty enough to be sarcastic.

2008-04-04, 08:41 AM	#5
Nick Koan JDM Cowboy Real Name: Nick Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Somewhere Posts: 8,642 Car: 2015 Mazda 3	Awesome! __________________ While a standard engine is powered by a belt connected to the crankshaft, a turbo engine runs on its own exhaust steam, making it more energy efficient. -- CNN

2008-04-04, 09:07 AM	#6
sperry The Doink Real Name: Scott Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 20,335 Car: '09 OBXT, '02 WRX, '96 Miata Class: PDX/TT-6 The way out is through	Nice work Mike! __________________ Is you is, or is you ain't, my con-stit-u-ints?

2008-04-04, 12:49 AM	#3
Libila EJ205 Real Name: Tim Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Reno, NV Posts: 1,384 Car: '94 L	Congrats guys!

2008-04-04, 09:09 PM	#7
GST Mike EJ22 Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Hayward, CA Posts: 191 Car: Zee L Load, Efficiency, MAP etc etc etc	have a couple of snippets of in-car from this past weekend our main video will be up on our media player over the weekend but until then everyone can enjoy these, http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ci-GcFJrW2M How about a new line out of the esses... http://youtube.com/watch?v=NY5RoB20luQ Mike

2008-04-05, 09:58 AM	#8
sperry The Doink Real Name: Scott Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 20,335 Car: '09 OBXT, '02 WRX, '96 Miata Class: PDX/TT-6 The way out is through	Whoa. Great lap, right up until that curb. And the guys running that NSX owe Brian a beer for not ruining their day. __________________ Is you is, or is you ain't, my con-stit-u-ints?

2008-04-05, 06:04 PM	#9
MattR El Matador Real Name: Matt Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Reno, NV Posts: 10,660 Car: 2012 Toyota Tacoma Class: ?	That NSX needed to do something, what was he waiting for? Damn that car is insane. __________________ "Dallas..We have a problem.”

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