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SF NEWS (10-06-2011):
The 4th Annual Airwerks by BorgWarner Outlaw Street FWD Shootout and 3rd Annual All Motor Street Shootout held at Englishtown, NJ took place this past Sat. & Sun., October 1 & 2, 2011.
We made the 2,850 mile trek with both our Turbo Outlaw and All Motor Street cars driven by Kevin Kempf and Joel Sipes respectively to represent for the West Coast at the East Coast Shootout!
All Motor Street Recap:
We decided to test a new hood scoop for the #1 qualifier, and it ended up hurting power so we removed it. Due to oil downs and noise curfew, the #2 qualifier never took place on Saturday. This left us badly needing the last chance qualifier on Sunday morning to dial in the tune with the scoop removed. The car ended up snapping an axle on the line and never made another qualifying pass. Luckily fellow racer and event coordinator Jake Gavio had on hand a spare set of axles that he was kind enough to let us run and continue competing.
So with only 1 qualifying pass the Sipes Brothers all motor K-series Civic qualified #4 out of 16 with a 10.41 @ 129.6mph.
Running with a best guess tune, Joel was able to win the 1st elimination round against Marc Podkowic of Florida with another 10.41 @ 129.2mph to Marc’s 10.55 @ 129.6mph.
Changes were made to richen up the tune as it had run lean – unfortunately air conditions changed drastically while waiting in the staging lanes and Joel was eliminated in the 2nd elimination round running a new personal best of 10.31 @ 129.5mph with the car running extremely lean & down on power to Jake Gavio’s 10.19 @ 133.8mph pass.
Not the showing we had hoped for, but we feel certain the car was capable of running in the teens as well if it wasn’t for the lean condition. Our 60ft times were the amongst if not the best in the class but the car was down on power and we weren’t able to put together the whole package this time around. We plan on posting a new best ET & MPH in a few weeks here though!
Outlaw Street FWD Recap:
We went into the event needing to dial the car in with a few recent untested changes to the cooling system, turbocharger, and fuel. Our strategy was to keep the tune real soft and go rounds to collect data and get it dialed back in with the new changes, getting slightly more aggressive with each pass.
For the 1st qualifier, we made an 1/8th mile hit for some data and let off, 9.84 @ 105mph on the brakes just to get on the board.
After datalogs verified that everything was working well, we decided to leave the tune mild and go ahead and make a full pass for our 2nd qualifier, which resulted in a new personal best 60ft time of 1.46 seconds and an 8.87 @ 171.6mph which was enough to secure the #1 qualifying position as well as low ET and high mph. The 3rd qualifier never happened due to time constraints.
Sunday morning came and we had a bye run 1st round. 2nd round eliminations resulted in another great 1.47 second 60ft time and a new personal best 1/8th mile time of 5.83 @ 138.97mph when mechanical issues prevented the shifter from throwing properly and damaged the 4th gear dogs, and we coasted to a 9.39 @ 118mph which was enough to beat our competitors 9.39 @ 162.5mph thanks largely to Kevin cutting a great light.
We had to perform a rush transmission swap to make the call for the semi-final round, which we were able to accomplish in a mere 38 minutes! At this point the event was being severely rushed to try and complete the race before curfew. The car that ran our lane previous to us trailed water onto the track and it wasn’t caught by anyone. This resulted in massive tire shake and an appalling 1.66 second 60ft time. Thankfully Kevin was able to drive through it and posted a 9.03 @ 173.03mph to take the win and move into the finals.
We were instructed to hot lap the car and return directly to the lanes for the final. Facing subpar track conditions and a heat soaked racecar, Kevin cut another good light (.098) and despite several issues with the run posted low ET and high mph of the event with an 8.87 @ 174.87mph to take the win over Rick Everly’s 9.14 @ 159.7mph!
The event was a massive success, with a great turnout of spectators and racers. Thanks once again to all of you that have given us your support and helped us to make this event and all of you who stopped by to visit and check us out.
The next event for us is the World Cup Finals in Mechanicsville, MD where we expect to run a new best ET and trapspeed to finish this year with a bang. See you all there!
