So, here we are, just a few days away from leaving for the 4th race of the series, held at Mid-Ohio. Something tells me that God, or maybe it's just the Weather Channel, is not on our side.



Now look at this and consider that our race is scheduled on Saturday, May 20th, and we are the only all-wheel-drive car entered into the race. My current emotional state is mixture of wanting to cry while at the same time wanting to laugh.

I have talked to a-many people about this and all have promised to privately conduct a rain dance for our cause. If you can, please join us in doing the same.


O Poseidon hear our cry
The Godzilla loves to swim
And your mood seems rather fine
But your scheduled rest on fateful day
Is most inopportune for our plan
So may we suggest
You kindly rest another day
And thunder with all your rage
Just this one time
For all to see your might and glory
And let Godzilla do its thing

We did a quick edit of the in-car footage we got from the Willow Springs test day with Buddy Club. It's a single flying lap, with a time of 1:28.

Launch in external player

On May 2nd, we went out to Willow Springs Raceway for Buddy Club's 2nd Annual Media Day - an opportunity for the company to showcase its new ATCC (Asian Touring Car Championship) Honda RSX race car piloted by Jun San Chen - the head of Buddy Club and also a long-time veteran and multiple Championship-winning ATCC driver.

Buddy Club is not as widely known in the United States just yet, but it has an incredible industry-leading presence in Asia - especially Taiwan and Japan. They primarily make aftermarket parts for Honda and Acura vehicles, but also step out of that realm every so often. This is a true motorsports driven company, with an array of race cars from small Honda cars such as the Integra Type R and the RSX to 4-door sedans such as the Toyota Chaser... and what a looker that one is.

They product line has a wide range including: body kits, wheels, exhausts, suspension parts, wings, seats, miscellaneous racing accessories, and some electronic gizmos.

We recently dynoed Buddy Club's Racing Spec Condenser - an electrical grounding system with a battery current and voltage stabilization control unit. I have to maintain anonymity of the race car, but it showed a 3% increase in torque throughout the rev-range that is used on the track (3500 RPM and on). The driver of the race car was taken by complete surprise that such an electronic gadget could do this, as we ran multiple dyno runs with the same, consistent results. We disconnected the condenser, and it was back to previous torque curve, reconnect it, and it jumps back around 3%. The driver was a bit more than excited as he thought he had done most of the tricks for horsepower including expensive processes such as polishing the gears to aid reduce loss of power due to friction.

I had previous experience with a good grounding system during the days of tracking the Nissan 350Z and recall the positive results I saw on the dyno just with the ground wires, but this technology is taking that one step further, by increasing and stabilizing the voltage to eliminate any inconsistencies in the supplied voltage as is usual even with brand new cars' electronic systems.

Something that we also use on our race car are the Buddy Club aluminum lug nuts - they're so light, that when I was first handed a pile of them, as an expectation, I tensed my hand to recieve the weight, and once they were put in my hand, my hand jerked up and almost spilled them. Lightweight is the best thing we look for in motorsports. With less weight, the car can accelerate, brake, and corner better as well as consume less fuel, put many of its components under less stress, and allow the tires to last longer. Lightweight is the true golden bullet in racing. Of course, it always has to be balanced with reliability - oftentimes, the weight gets taken out of the wrong places of the race car that cause much larger problems. But with lighter lug nuts, you can't go wrong, it's a no brainer for us. In all, we probably saved over 2 pounds when you consider all 4 corners of the car - and that's unsprung weight. That almost makes up for the weight we've gained by going to a wider wheel to accomodate the 305/35/18 Toyo tire.

Anyway... back to the test day at Willow Springs. We had a nice chunk of track time to help us sort the car out for the upcoming World Challenge race at Mid-Ohio (May 20th - be there!). Mike Kojima, an engineer at NISMO USA, was kind enough to help us in the suspension setup. With a few clicks on the shocks, a few pounds on the tires, and a minor adjustment to the swaybar per his recommendation, the car felt like a completely different animal - and a great one at that. The behavior went from huge plowing characteristic with an enormous understeer to an almost-neutral balance at all segements of the corner - turn-in, mid, and exit. Thank you Mike!!

Unfortunately, Mike Kojima was involved in a race incident this past weekend at Willow Springs, which has landed him in a hospital with a few broken bones in his back. He is going to make a full recovery, and appears to be doing a lot of sleeping on morphine. The young stallion that he is, I am sure he will be better than before when he comes out.

We finished the day off with a photoshoot of the race cars, including our very own Skyline GT-R, and I was greatful for Jun San Chen to consider me among the ranks of the championship-winning ranks of Buddy Club factory drivers to attend the event on behalf of Buddy Club.

So, check it out: Buddy Club - US Website

Looking at the weather forecast for Lexington, Ohio, where the Mid-Ohio track is located, it appears that there is nothing but rain for the next 10 days. We are racing on the 11th day from now, so if you can, please, get up and do a quick rain dance for us, to ensure that we can show 'em what a GT-R can really do in the rain.

We're leaving this coming weekend, and we can't help but feel good about the promise of rain, and the condition of the race car.

We left St. Petersburg on Sunday to arrive in Los Angeles 46 hours later. Thursday was already load-in day at the convention center.

The format for this venue was rather.. unique - the entire World Challenge GT paddock was inside the convention hall nearby the loading dock and only 6 race rigs were allowed to be parked at the loading dock outside. Luckily, ours was one of them.


During the first practice, I experienced what felt like a slipping clutch, which was odd as our Tilton carbon clutch was brand new since the St. Petersburg race. The crew looked over the clutch and cleaned any debris and fluids out of the housing, but the 2nd practice the following day proved to show the same problem. It was a broken left rear axle. With that fixed and continual setup adjustments, we prepared for the qualifying session on Sunday morning.

On the first hot lap, I am going around 140 mph into the braking zone for turn 2. I press the brake pedal down, and all of the sudden I feel an incredible lockup, with white smoke from burning tires everywhere. The ABS failed. As ABS is part of the GT-R's 4wd system, I had never driven the car without it, and not having it here was a complete surprise. That one braking zone toasted the tires to show metal around the flat spots. I barely made any laps in qualifying and with the problem worsening, was forced to brake earlier and softer.

We qualifying 24th. The race was the last of the day, after Champ Car, and to our surprise, an incredible amount of spectators were still all around the grand stands, ready to watch World Challenge. Apparently, hardly anyone left after the Champ Car race at 3 pm as the public awaited our race to begin at 4 pm.

With our past track record with World Challenge of not finishing either of the first 2 races, my objective was clear - finish the race and nurse any possible technical difficulties we may have.

During the warm-up lap, I hear Sean over the radio - "Take it easy on the standing start." And so with 5 seconds to go before green, I revved a bit less than at St. Petersburg and slipped the clutch a bit more. The all-wheel-drive launch gave me 7 positions at St. Pete. Here, I gained 4 positions going into the first turn. Nissan Skyline GT-R - The beauty of all-wheel-drive.

During the first part of the first lap before the back straight, I gained a few more positions in the traffic, but once the back straightaway came, I knew what awaited me, just like every straightaway at Sebring and St. Pete - the other cars blew by us.

As the race progressed, we again had not a single full course yellow... a true surprise for World Challenge. I was slowly but surely picking up pace through the race, as this was my first real opportunity to get to know the track and push the car.

When the leaders came around to lap me, their gain at the straightaways was absurd - the power those cars put down. We are the heaviest and down by 150 wheel horse power compared to the competition.

I finished the race in 17th place, ahead of the factory sponsored WRX STi, which is most comparable in trim to our car.





Tamura-san, aka Mr. GT-R, aka product planner of the R34 Skyline GT-R at Nissan, attended the event between meetings at Nissan in Gardena, and was present for the entire race. I am sure he flew home with a smile on his face - having seen the GT-R made of his own work and sweat compete in a race series in the United States.

The Grand Prix of St. Pete was our 2nd race of the season. Since we are from Los Angeles, we spent the two weeks after Sebring leading up to St. Pete in Florida, in the Ft. Lauterdale area working on the car.

The race weekend was definately interesting as we were sharing the track with the Indy Racing League. This was my first ever street course, and what an experience it is to race around regular streets right next to the water - ignoring those street lights and double yellow lines.

We continued to experience various small issues with the car - but never the same one! This lead to us missing the first practice session. This only left us with one practice before qualifying. We were making some radical changes to the suspension setup, as there is no such things as a baseline for an R34 GT-R for St. Pete, or even a street course, period.

Chip Van Vurst of fdiesel.com continued to assist us on the setup front.

When the time came for qualifying, I still barely knew the track, and with an incident to get the session going that caused the red flag, lady luck did not shine on us.



During the parade lap, I saw a big puff of black smoke - Johnny Mowlem's Aston Martin DBRS9 caught on fire, which I later learned was caused by a faulty fuel line that went through the cockpit. After about 10 more minutes of waiting, this prompted the SCCA officials to redo the parade lap, and then we were ready to go for green. The starting position was near the back of the pack, but I knew it wasn't going to be the case for long with the standing start. I revved the engine to 7000rpm and dumped the clutch, with just a little bit of slip, propelling the car by at least 6 cars on the right side runoff of the front straightaway. I kept steady and let the obviously faster cars go by without a fight - with as much power as we are down, our priority right then was to simply finish. On lap 2, a few Vipers got in a jumble at turn 9 - gaining me 5 more positions. At that point, I was near the top 10 in running order and was gaining 2 seconds per lap and getting settled in with the new setup adjustments we had made before the race.

But then... the engine just died on lap 4 and luckily I found a safe place to pull in behind the concrete. I got out of the car and was greeted by the smiles of the safety workers that had just helped me push the car off of the track, and a couple of waters for me to gulp down.

I popped the hood and found a loose intake hose and the situation appeared positive. With some work and help from the corner workers and the fire fighters, we were able to get the car started again, but it was only minutes before the end of the race and SCCA radioed them that it was too late to get back out.

As unfortunate as this outcome was, our team learned a tremendous amount and are looking for the Long Beach race, coming up in only 1 week.

With only days to go until the April 1st race on the streets of St. Petersburg, the race report for the AutomotiveForums.com Nissan Skyline GT-R at Sebring is here.

We ventured to Roebling Road in Savannah, Georgia on the Friday before the race week for a final shakedown of the car before our first race in World Challenge.

With no issues, we rolled off with the 75ft race support rig containing the spare car and an uncountable amount of spare parts.

Upon arrival at Sebring, we had a test day on Tuesday, followed by an official SCCA practice on Wednesday, with qualifying following on Thursday, and the race itself in mid-afternoon on Friday.

As expected, everything went wrong with the car the first time I took it out on the track on Tuesday, and the entire team scrambled to resolve all the issues one at a time before qualifying on Thursday. Sean Morris, our crew chief, did an incredible job troubleshooting the major issues before qualifying. The entire crew - Josh, Victor, Merritt, and Sean barely got any sleep the entire week leading up to the race, opting to stay in our team truck (we have beds) rather than going back to 2 hotel rooms we had booked for the event at a Woman Athletes' College Dormatory. All the problems gave us incredibly little track time during the practice days to setup the car, as we had no baseline to go off of for a track as rough as Sebring. We qualified 25th with a 2:17.2 time.



The pre-race ceremony is not for the feint-hearted. As a first time driver in a series of this caliber, my entire body was imploding. As the red lights turned on, signaling a countdown for the standing start and all 32 cars began to rev their engines, I did my best to keep my heartbeat low and my body relaxed. The Viper in front of me seemed so close, I actually did not wish to risk rear-ending it off of the launch, since the GT-R is All-Wheel-Drive. We had practiced standing starts and I had it down to a science, but once the lights went off, I wanted to stay on the safe side for our debut standing start and slipped the clutch a bit more than usual, causing the car to bog off of the line. With our starting position being so far in the back, this strategy also made sense - I wanted to keep my nose clean in the beginning when so many crashes take place. Sure enough, plenty of cars went off and crashed out very early on. I also got hit by a Porsche going into turn one, or should we say he "leaned" on me. Our car is so many hundreds of pounds heavier, that I barely felt the nudge - it was more a sound than a physical jerk.

Once the dust cleared, I settled into a good mental zone and kept running consistent times through the race. Our car is down by such an ungodly amount of power compared with the Corvette, Viper, and CTS-V, even though we are heaviest, that it made no sense to go 10/10s. The objective was to finish the race. The power difference was so great that I recall a red Viper spinning out 2-3 times in front of me, and everytime he came back into the rear view mirror like a bullet. That was rather amusing, actually. Also, when I talk of the acceleration deficit, I mean 100% full throttle acceleration from the same speed on the straights.

On lap 12-13, I reported white smoke creeping through the passenger (left) window into the cockpit back to my crew chief. Everything still felt just fine on the car, so I was hoping that maybe it was just some marbles caught on fire inside the wheel well. We quickly got black flagged over the radio and I pitted. As soon as I came to a stop, Sean and Josh went to the left side of the car, followed by Sean running back to the wall and grabbing a fire extinguisher. You had to see him throw that pin like a champ. He quickly extinguished the fire around the downpipe - one of our oil supply lines failed and began to dribble oil onto the downpipe, causing the oil to smoke while the car was in motion. As soon as I pitted, with lack of strong breeze, the oil caught fire. And it was just a small dribble, no major failure and nor has this ever happened before on a GT-R race car in all of racing in Japan or the drag racing here in the US. But this is how it goes in racing - we are writing new records for parts that fail - which had never done so before in over a decade of racing.


All in all, our debut race went extremely well - the interest in this car was phenomenal - hundreds of people stopped by our paddock to let us know that they came out to Sebring for the sole purpose of seeing the GT-R race.



We also made numerous friends and I want to especially thank Randy Pobst and Chip Van Vurst for all of their help. Randy - you are what young drivers such as myself aspire to be both in and out of the cockpit. Chip - thank you for taking us under your wing and bending over backwards to accomodate for us. I am sorry the Potato Chip is serving its nickname permanently now. Everyone - visit http://www.fdiesel.com for your Ford diesel truck needs. Chip and Matt have dozens to choose from in Ft. Lauderdale.

Oh, and check us out in AutoWeek!

Well well well!

It is now 1 month away from our debut race with World Challenge GT in Sebring, Florida. Every member on the team has shown at least a small amount of the "freakin' out" factor" - and me probably the highest. It's time to step up our game and make sure we can be as prepared as humanly possible.

I won't mention any names, but I have realized how difficult relying on other entities can sometimes be - nearly everything that cannot be late usually ends up being late. I am sure there is some kind of "law" for this phenomenon.

I went back home to Lexington, KY for Christmas and New Year's to spend with my family and got a chance to catch up with plenty of my high school friends, lovers, and others.

Then I was off to Detroit for the auto show, and it was certainly a memorable week - I can tell you that some of those magazine editors and manufacturer execs know how to party better than half the rock stars out there.

Dave Pankew and I got a chance to interview one of the designers of the Infiniti Coupe concept that was on display - an very beautiful, balanced car.

I finally saw the interview I did with Speed Channel's Redline segment back at Buttonwillow during the time attack. There is certainly an odd feeling associated with various people telling me that they saw me on TV 'just the other day.' I had no idea that many people watch Speed channel for non-NASCAR content.

The 2nd car arrived shortly after Detroit Auto Show from Japan. This one belonged to Advan Orque's team, with the highest accomplishment of placing 2nd during the Suzuka 1000km in 2003.

As I had never been on the Sebring track before, I will be leaving early to get track time with Panoz Racing School and Skip Barber. The reality of the situation still has not hit me completely as I seem to be so involved at the smallest levels of operations from day to day. Soon enough, we will be racing the legendary GT-R against all those factory backed race teams - Porsche 911 GT3, Dodge Viper Comp. Coupe, Corvette Z06, and even Aston Martin DBRS9.

I have been keeping regular contact with Mr. Tamura and it looks like our schedules will allow us to meet again soon in New York.

I hope as many people as possible can join us at Sebring for support!