For WORLD Racing, this year was all about their newest build. The 1994 Toyota Supra that Chris has been designing in his head for over 10 years. It started off with a 100% all-metal wide body hand built from scratch by Mark Delong. In order to achieve the proper look and demeanor of this so-called Ultimate Street Car, Chris took his time planning and plotting and close to 11 years later it is finally coming to life.
The Supra is powered by an authentic 5.7L Toyota 3UR-FE V-8 power plant. The 3UR-FE is commonly found in the Tundra trucks and Sequoia SUV’s and in this case the guys have built a custom billet crankshaft and opened it up a bit to a 6.2L! That’s 376 cubic inches of Toyota power and when paired with the all-new 76mm billet titanium mid-frame turbochargers from Turbonetics, this engine package will produce an estimated 2,500HP+ and rev to 10,000 RPM’s.
The Supra was not 100% complete but it was very still important to us that we showed up with a teaser of what was to come in the next couple of months with the Ultimate Street Car. In addition, having it featured at SEMA gives our partners a chance to sit in the car and enjoy some of the awesome technology that has gone into the project up to this point in the build.
Once again, Kris Carlson and his team at STACK stepped up to the plate for this project and came up with a complete integrated solution for the gauges, TPMS and their engineers are currently working on a custom 320MPH speedometer. Fast Eddy’s interior in Gardena did the awesome suede interior.
The Supra is definitely going to be a lot of fun. Stay tuned to Speedhunters for updates and build progress.
More Supra coverage on Speedhunters here
Need for Speed announces Chris Rado’s V8 Supra to be featured in Need for Speed – THE RUN. See Speedhunters post here
NASA Socal Event
November 5th & 6th, 2011
Buttonwillow Raceway Park
Rosamond, CA
First Place – NASA TTR 2:03.012
As Friday rolled around, “Cousin Rob” Cardona, Eric “El-Cobra” Plebani and Scott “The Chip-Keeper” Stanwood had already setup the pit/hospitality area out at Buttonwillow Raceway Park for the weekend’s upcoming NASA SoCal time trails while P-Wee and Kareem were still in Las Vegas loading the Supra on a flatbed and getting her home safely. Being logistically flexible is a prerequisite of any WORLD Racing team member…No sleep til’ Brooklyn…or uhm… Torrance!?
Since the teams last testing session, Scott has been knee-deep in the rear aerodynamics and implementing the new rear wing, an assortment of gurney flaps from ľ” – 2” and last but not least the extension of the rear deck lid wing. All of these changes have been made to assist with the lack of side-angle down force that Chris was able to get around some of the corners at the first couple of events. Hopefully these changes will help Chris with the drivability of Fwing 2.0 in the future.
Saturday morning during the 10:25am session, the plans were just to get the car out on track and see how the new rear aero was working and try to give Chris a few laps to get comfortable in the car before turning up the wick. All seemed to be working well and Chris looked anxious to get in the Fwing for the next session which was at 1:25pm. During the intermission Ron Mathis ran some tests and applied some small drops of oil to the rear wing to see how the air was reacting to the new wing setup. Once you get up to speed in the car and then come back to have a look at the patterns left by the oil you can better understand what the air was doing out on the track and adjust from there.
During the 1:25pm session, the track didn’t seem to be as sticky as the first session was and the tC was struggling a bit with wheel spin coming out of the corners. The new 2AR-FE engine package is currently producing well over 1,000 ft/lbs of torque and can be a bit of a beast to control at times but it sounded superb coming down the front straight. On his first lap, Chris was in tons of traffic and worked his way though all 9 cars on the first lap and ran a 2:03.012 lap. “The car feels like a Wild Animal” Chris said, as he started what would be his first clear lap of the day. As Chris hammered down the front straight we heard over the radio that the engine temp was climbing quickly, so Chris went on cool down and brought Fwing 2.0 back to the pits.
As the Fwing crept back in to the pits and the team had a chance to evaluate the situation with Gary “Kubinator” Kubo. From the data, it looked liked the head gasket may have failed but here Gary pulls the cylinder head just to be sure. With only two spare bullets unfortunately the boys decided to call it a day without even getting one clean lap. In the end Rado’s 2:03.012 winded up being fast enough for 1st Place in TTR at Buttonwillow Raceway Park in Configuration#1 CW for day #1 of the NASA Socal event.
Although a large portion of NASA racers participate in the rain, our FWD monsters don’t play so well in the water so with Sunday calling for 50% showers the team decided to hang out on the sidelines while the rain cleared. With Super Lap Battle coming up on Wednesday, the consensus was to swap the bullet and get prepared for a Tuesday test session prior to SLB.
NASA Socal final results here
Super Lap Battle Finals
November 8th – 9th, 2011
Buttonwillow Raceway Park
Rosamond, CA
First Place – New FWD track record 1:47.394
Super Lap Battle has always been one of the premier time attack events and for WORLD Racing the event always falls during one of the busiest times of year so preparation and planning is key. Since the 2AR-FE engine needed to be swapped the guys had to work through the night in order to have the car completed and ready to go for the first session of the day. Chris arrived at the track for the 7:45am drivers meeting excited for the day of testing and he was planning on leaning on the car a bit harder. The rear aerodynamics seemed to be planting the car to the track, which also gave Chris the confidence that he needed in his machine.
During the warm up lap of the first test session the Fwing sounded like a jet coming down the front straight away. The crew put a hot set of Continental gumballs on the tC. As Rado made his way around the track you could see the car was planted to the pavement but as he began the second lap the engine temperatures shot up to around 200 degrees which would prompt him to bring the Fwing back in to the pits for a further look.
After reviewing the data it looked like the team might have hurt a head gasket once again and the crew began to remove the cylinder head for a better look. This time the news from Gary wouldn’t be what the crew wanted to hear, but hey… that’s racing and this is why we love it.
Unfortunately Chris would only get 9 minutes of track time for 5 hours round trip of transit to and from the track. The crew would replace the bullet and have the Fwing ready for battle.
Bright and early the next morning the crew arrived at the track ready to wage war on the infamous configuration CW13 at Buttowillow Raceway Park. There was a nice turnout of FWD vehicles in attendance this year, in addition to a variety of some of the fastest RWD & AWD time attack machines on the planet.
On Chris’ first hot lap during the first session, Chris was able to click off a 1:55.198, which put it out front of any other FWD car at the track, but clearly it was nowhere near the cars potential. Chris mentioned that he had been trying to figure out what was so different about the way the front steering was working for him on the new car compared to the Fwing 1.0 setup.
During a short test drive in the pits while performing a GPS calibration test, engine tuner James Lin mentioned to Chris that he thought the car was lacking steering angle and that it could quite possibly be affecting the way the car was cornering.
Although the guys knew what had to be done to fix the problem, the changes that would need to take place in order to fix the steering would require the tC to come back to the shop, which wasn’t an option since GTA was only 3 days away.
For the second session of the day, it was time to put down a number but with only a few practice laps under his belt Chris would need to get after it in the session if he wanted to better his previous record. As the Team Need for Speed tC came down the straight away on his first hot lap he clocked a 1:47:394 but temperatures began to rise and half way around the track on the next lap his voice came over the team radio to report rising engine temps.
He shut it down to half speed and coasted around the track in to the pits ending the session for the team, but not before setting a new Unlimited FWD track record and securing the class win in the Team Need for Speed Scion tC!