GST Motorsports, Subiefest 07

It all started about three weeks ago when we were all sitting around after work shooting the proverbial and having a drink when someone (perhaps even Greg) mentioned Subiefest was coming up soon and we should take one of the shop cars out. Now it’s been a badly kept secret that we have been building an 07 wide body for the street class time attacks. Even with the determined hardworking staff we employee there seemed to be no way to finish the car so it was race worthy until one of the mechanics (Tommy) said “What about the L?”

Ok, What about the L? Well the L was our first crack at building an Endurance car for the 25 Hours of Thunderhill. The platform for the L is simple it’s a 1996 Subaru Impreza L with AWD, a complete 06 STI drive train, and a pretty wicked Cosworth motor setup. So as you can tell the car was set up for an endurance race and not a time attack one. Thus the transformation from Endurance racer to Time Attack trim began.

Sixteen days later Tommy and I were loading the L onto our trailer to get the car to the Infineon Race Track for testing.

After a quick alignment by Mike Lock from Calculated Risk and Brian Lock from GOTO:Racing the fumes in the cabin indicated that either there was a problem with our exhaust or Brian had a serious death wish. It was the exhaust! Thankfully, one of our sponsors Stasis Engineering lent their facility to us so we could fabricate a new exhaust piece and continue our shakedown.

Once back on track Brian began to muscle around with the car. He soon realized that the car had intermittent steering problems and the car in general was handling poorly. Upon inspection we found a damaged strut so we made a phone call to our friends at KW Suspension who agreed to provide us an inspection and a rebuild as soon as we could get the suspension to them. Surprisingly, even after all of this the car was still turning very fast times so we were optimistic about the cars racing abilities for the Time Attack in Oregon and packed up for the day to head back to the shop.

 

We finally ironed out all the wrinkles and were feeling confident about the race ahead of us when David Thibert of TEC (Thibert Engineering Concepts) walked in saying that he thought the car was missing something and handed us 2 huge pieces of aluminum. David had built us side skirts complete with NACA ducts for the rear brakes/bearings. This would be one of many TEC work of arts we would have on the L (did anyone see the intake manifold?) With the side skirts installed the L was now ready!

5am rolled around all too quickly on Friday when the GST Motorsports caravan began the 12 hour drive to Portland, Oregon. As my luck would have it I began to notice that the brakes felt a little off and soon realized the trailer brakes were not working. This made for a somewhat interesting trip or as Freddie my passenger eloquently put it “oh bleep.” Other than that the drive went without incident.

The next day greeted us with rain and luckily for us we had been chatting with Phil Garbow of Element Tuning a few weeks ago who had mentioned it usually rains in Oregon so we brought with us a set of Hoosier rain tires. Too bad we forgot the wipers for the windshield “Doh!” Good thing for us there was plenty of donor Subaru’s on hand for us to pilfer from.

 

Even though the rain was pouring during our warm up on the track Brian was able to turn consistent 1:39’s while short shifting the car and learning the track. Next up was the first shootout round. We got one warm up lap and then a hot lap to score from, Brian turned a 1:40x which was good enough for a 2nd fast time of the round.

On to the qualifying round and as we rolled the car out to the grid we started to have fuel cut issues which led us to look for more gas (apparently PIR does not have any gas facilities, wtf!!!). It turned out we had more serious issues with the fueling than we thought and a serious stumble on the motor after 6,000 rpms. We made the necessary repairs and got the car running. Our strategy was to keep the rpms low and just try to make the cut. Luckily, Brian our seriously skilled driver managed to run a 1.38 while keeping the car under 6K which was the fastest time of the round.

We get the car back into the paddock and begin to trouble shoot our stumbling issues. First we change the plugs then we went through the fuel system. With only 50 minutes till the finals we really didn’t have the time to do too much so we decided to just run the car with the same not above 6,000 rpm strategy that we used during the previous run.

The rain stopped for about an hour when we got the call to go out on the track for the final shootout so since the track was drying fast we decided to switch to our dry tires, fresh Nitto NT01r’s. Brian reports during his warm up lap that the tire choice was the right one. Unfortunately a wet spot on the track led Brian to spin at turn one during his first hot lap but even with that mishap Brian ran a 1:39x, a 1.28x on the next lap, and a 1.26x on his final lap

 

We felt happy with the times and waited for the remaining competitors to run there laps. Next up was Navid Kahangi with the 06 STI widebody prepared by PDX Tuning. When we saw them warming up on there 315 series Hoosiers we started to worry and with just cause, Navid’s first lap was a 1.27x. It would seem though that we were not the only team fighting a couple of issues and PDX/Navid were basically working with a brand new car with no track time so to that end 1.27x was as fast as Navid could go for this day Now Phil in his Element Tuning/ World One Performance 06 STI was ready to race. He had been seriously fighting the weather with his RA1’s and the shear power of his car all day, but now the tables were turning with the track much drier than before. Phil’s first lap was a 1.27x. Ok so we like Phil but now he had us nervous, his next lap was a 1.25x (that’s it I am removing this damn Hydra from the race car, j/k!)

So there it is a long couple of weeks, a long drive, a ton of Subaru’s and a 2nd place in the Subiefest Pro Class Time Attack... What more could you ask for?

Everyone at GST Motorsports would like to thank everyone involved in putting on the event. We had a great time and enjoyed meeting and chatting with everyone. We promise to be back at Subiefest 3 with the L and our main Time Attack car as well.

We would also like to thank our sponsors and the individuals who helped us get to Oregon;

Nitto Tire http://www.nittotire.com
KW Suspension http://www.kw-suspension.com
VFiber http://www.vfiber.com
Subydude.com http://www.subydude.com
Element Tuning http://www.elementtuning.com
Whiteline http://www.globalperformanceparts.com
Calculated Risk http://www.calculatedrisk.com
GOTO:Racing http://www.gotoracing.com
034 Motorsports http://www.034motorsports.com
Stasis Engineering http://www.stasisengineering.com
TEC http://www.tecequipment.net

Freddie Supnet, Steve and Linda Lock, Neil Bliss, Bryan Medway, everyone that came with us from the caravan and lastly my wife Dionne for putting up with living with a ghost for 3 weeks I’ll not start preparing for the next event for at least a week honey I promise .

 

How about some in-car footage??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHTYcAK-BJI

Mike

 

Cool write-up.

 

Wow..... Insanity!! I have it looping here at work just for the sound. Soooooooooo jealous. Awesome work all around.

 

Very nice Mike! Great finish. The in-car footage is awesome. Good work GST.

 

great work Mike

in car footage was awesome

Congrats to you guys

 

dito.

 

awesome stuff guys

 

awesome write up and congrats on your position

 

nice writeup and cool video!

 

It was fun watching this car haul in the rain. Great job guys!

 

Great work Mike, Tommy, Mert, Greg, and not least Brian! That thing is a total beast.