First of all, a BIG BIG THANKS to Jason Heffner for building me this car. It is simply amazing. :cheers
Another BIG BIG THANKS to my friend, Gary Javo, for driving the car... his skills are unmatched :cheers
Texas, it was great meeting you and your family at the event. Your car looked beautiful and sounded great. Look forward to seeing you in the spring breaking that 200! :biggrin
DBK and Bony had their special spies setup in the tall trees taking spy photos and had the information before we did :willy
All in all, it was a great event.
Like John has mentioned, the GT community was represented very well with many beautiful cars and some great runs. I can tell you that NOTHING sounded as good as these GTs at full throttle crossing the mile. I had my trailer set up at the end of the mile and it was the best seat in the house. Imagine the best Winston Cup car at 200 wound out and then make it better and that is what we had the pleasure of listening to. :thumbsup
I am putting together a complete story of the event with Gary Javo and hope to post it up this week with some killer vids and pictures displaying the event but for now I will put in a few more details...
our first run as a shakedown pass (we missed the drive through on the track so did not know what to expect) was a 215 mph run... plenty of room to shut down with the GT's awesome brakes so turn it up a little :biggrin
By the time we were able to run again it was late afternoon... 222.24 MPH!!! :banana
time to turn it up some more and get ready for a first morning run.
Having the car on the starting line 2nd the next morning, we ended up having to wait for the fog to lift it was so humid... but 15 degrees cooler!
Gary launched the car perfectly and this was the PASS! The car turned up with the cooler weather came alive... maybe too much... with the wet track the car broke lose in second gear and drifted onto a painted stripe which sent the car out of control and into the weeds. Thankfully, Gary kept his cool and was able to save the car becoming the most expensive lawnmower in history... pulling the car back onto the track we checked it out at the trailer with absolutely no damage.
We cleaned it back up and decided to make another shakedown pass on low boost to see if everything felt ok and ripped off a second 222 mph run.... shakedown pass :willy
Knowing that the GT was ok we focused the rest of the afternoon on Gary's car as he had been busy driving mine. We had some issues with his brakes and ended up trying to sort them out for the rest of the afternoon and were not able to make another run.
All in all it was a great event and we showed what the GT is capable of, in my mind the most amazing car ever built. Of the three cars that broke 220 mph, one was a full viper race car purpose built for land speed racing, one was a Supra with a chute, roll cage, and slightly gutted interior,
and then there was our street twin turbo GT :biggrin :biggrin
Kudos to the other cars for some amazing runs..
Definitely amazing for the GT community!
As far as the 190 mph restriction, I spoke with the organizers of the event at length who worked with Ford and Rousch last year. Basically they have a special waiver for the GT which absolves themselves and Ford which allows us to race. The GT, having the highest crush rating for a production car, is awarded this special waiver...
Having a rally at the spring event would be awesome... bring lots of painters tape because the racestrip has lotsa rocks
Look for a full post focused on the event later in the week and great meeting some of the other GT owners.
Loved the Gulf GT40 original replica... stunning!!!