World Time Attack Challenge!

Just this weekend past I took a flight down to Sydney to cover the World Time Attack Challenge. Having missed out on last years first annual event, I was very eager to make my way down this year! With cars from Japan such as the Pan Speed Rx-7 and Cyber Evo competing against Australian, New Zealand and American cars it made for a very exciting event!

The Sierra Sierra Evo driven by David Empringham put up a spectacular effort this year to the point where the Cyber Evo team were asking scrutineers to check if it was running nitrous.

Tarzan Yamada made another appearance this year to defend his title driving the Cyber Evo. This car looked fantastic all weekend.

The other favorite who also competed last year was the Pan Speed RX-7 driven by Kouta Sasaki. This car has to be hands down my favorite from the weekend. With such an aesthetic livery it is so easy to take photos of; I never had my camera away from it!

It especially looked amazing in the afternoon light!

The language barrier for the Japanese drivers proved difficult, however Sasaki-san still put in his best effort.

Most of the Japanese teams looked very relaxed during the weekend. For a competition that would provide so much stress they sure hid it well!

The HKS CT230r has to be one of my all time favorite cars. I was so excited to see it on the weekend even though it was only a display car.

One of the most talked about cars for this event would have to be the Mercury Motorsport R35.

I absolutely loved watching this thing power through the back straights on the edge of traction.

I still cannot believe that people have the money to take this $160,000 production car and turn it into a professional track car. That’s enough to give any driver sweaty hands!

This along with the GT Autogarage R35 made for an interesting pair. It was thrilling to watch these Australian built cars creep up on the Japanese favorites!

The Garage Revolution Rx-7 being one of these favorites put out some amazing times over the weekend.

At one point on Friday afternoon Mitsuhiro Kinoshita took the Rx-7 out for a flying lap and smashed the record before calmly coasting the car back into the pits.

It’s no surprise how popular this car is, just watching it fly past on the main straight leaves goose bumps on the back of your neck!

The Scorch Racing S15 was yet another stunning car sporting its Advan livery. It amazes me that as I am writing this the majority of these cars are probably well on their way back to Japan.

One of the most impressive drivers over the weekend was Warren Luff in the Prep’d Motorsport Lotus Exige GT3. With the advantage of such light weight this thing absolutely flew into every corner.

Just as incredible racing was to be seen in the lower classes. Here Rick Bates in the V-Sport Evo flies past Simon Podlewski in the Morpowa Racing 180sx

Greg Boyle was always easy to spot in the Autosport Engineering S15 with those bright orange lights.

Michael Hiscoe in his Evo was very easy to spot with his bright orange wheels and matching livery.

I loved watching James Anderson in the SX Developments S15 take up more and more of the track every time he went through corner 5.

Just as impressive was watching Luis Poblete fight for traction in the appropriately sponsored Drift Garage S13 through turn 7!

What other event other than WTAC would you see both an EG Civic and an Evo 5 running this much carbon and light weight as well as on street tires!

Towards Saturday afternoon I started making my way from the last corner through to the south-eastern side of the track and then on towards corner 1 & 2.

It was exciting to watch the Garage Revolution Rx-7 go hard under brakes at corner 7 before quickly powering out and up the hill.

On the outside of turn two there is the most insane looking off road track. I was adamant that this had to be for trail bikes until I spotted a sign saying Extreme 4wd Track!

Standing on top of the hill looking down at corner 1 & 2 gave a great perspective. It was especially stunning to watch Matt Close in the Chasers Motorworks Audi TT-RS rip down this straight after they had just laid down dust from a previous oil drop.

After spotting this I also made a mental note to not stick around once the sun went down!

The hill between corner 1 and 2 seemed to be undiscovered by spectators. Having spent the entire Saturday afternoon up there I would consider it one of the best corners to watch from!

Especially when the Pan Speed car came out!

I honestly cannot get sick of looking at the car.

Of course, the weekend eventually came to an end and named a winner.

As the winner was announced the entirety of the crowds from the weekend packed into the small stage area and listened eagerly. Tarzan Yamada in the Cyber Evo finished up in first place with a final time of 1:28.8510, a whole 3 tenths of a second faster than the Sierra Sierra Evo.

This was such an amazing weekend and I have plenty more photos to post including demo cars, drift cars as well as some cool cars I spotted over the weekend!

- Grant

Final Times:
1 Eiji “Tarzan” Yamada
CyberEvo Mitsubishi Evo 9
1:28.8510*

2 David Empringham
Sierra Sierra Mitsubishi Evo 8
1:29.0240

3 Mitsuhiro Kinoshita
Garage Revolution Mazda RX7
1:30.5010