Yesterday, tuners from all the over the United States (and the world) descended upon California's Buttonwillow Raceway for the annual Super Lap Battle (formerly known as time attack). As you might expect, the Lancer Evolution dominated the event in both attendance and lap times. In fact, it was almost easier to count the cars that WEREN'T Evos. The weather was abnormally warm for November with sunny skies and temps in the upper 70's which may have had an effect on lap times. Besides the tuner cars from the United States, these events always have a handful of cars shipped over Japan specifically to run at Buttonwillow, this year was no exception.
HKS pulled no punches, bringing out the famous CT230R Evolution and it's pilot Nobuteru Taniguchi. The CT230R is well known both inside and outside of Japan, where earlier this year, it car set the record at Tsukuba Circuit with a 53 second lap time. Besides Tsukuba, HKS campaigned the car at tracks all over Japan, kicking ass and taking names, for lack of a better word. Recently, Buttonwillow has become the Tsukuba of the United States, so naturally HKS felt the need to leave its mark at the dusty track in Kern County.
I'm not going to post the results, I'll leave that for the official site, but I will say that the Taniguchi and the CT230R were fast. Fast, as in it looked like they weren't even trying.
As I posted about a few weeks ago, 5Zigen USA was on hand with its spanking-new Civic Type R sedan from Japan. Super GT driver Ryo Michigami was again in charge of piloting the car around Buttonwillow. This car was at SEMA last week, I wonder how many people thought it was just a US-spec Civic Si sedan without giving it a second look?
Like I said, the Evo turnout was huge. Here are a few of the Evo's in that were competing-
It's been interesting to watch Evasive's Evo uhhh... "evolve" over the past year or so. It looked great out on the track. The Evasive S2000 was competing as well.
The Bay Area's Speed Element was out with their own Garage HRS equipped Evo.
AMS gets the biggest wing award.
Honda specialists A&J Racing brought their S2000 and turbocharged Fit.
There were four S15 Silvias, which is quite a few considering the car was never sold in the US.
Tein's RB26 powered S15 piloted by Kobayashi-san of MCR in Japan.
Though outnumbered by Evo's, the Impreza camp was well represented.
The lone Skyline at the event, XS Engineering's BNR32.
One look at JIC/Hankook Tire's pit set-up shows just how big time trial events are becoming in the United States.
With another Time Attack in the books, HKS has raised the bar for tuners both in the US and in Japan. Time will tell if the CT230R will have any competition-from either side of the Pacific.
Take a look at the complete photo gallery here .
i'm having a hard time finding results, where are they posted?
Posted by: Kent Sabo | November 09, 2007 at 05:41 PM