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Redline TimeAttack: Brian Lock Race Recap and Next Round Info
Continuing the updates from the Redline TimeAttack series, Cobb Motorsports’ pro driver Brian Lock has written up his race recap over on the COBB Tuning blog including how the guys were dealing with those pesky eletrical problems until the last minute.
Just when I thought COBB Motorsports was cursed with the worst bad luck on the planet (I could write a book on missed deadlines from vendors over the past two months), it got worse. The most random, confusing, undiagnosable limp mode was rearing its ugly head all day Sunday at the track. After pulling all-nighters, driving all around California to find a new motor for the GT-R, and just busting butt all week to get the GT-R repaired after the failure at Buttonwillow, to have the car possibly not finish the New Jersey event was almost more than I could bare. I saw the long faces in the paddock showing the disappointment in the prospect that we might not finish.
There’s also a nice onboard video of a lap of the New Jersey Motorsports Park with Brian driving to checkout below. Click over to the COBB Tuning blog at the link below to read up on the whole recap.
Redline TimeAttack: Round 3 This Weekend
On the subject of the Redline TimeAttack series, round three is coming up soon in Las Vegas. This should be a great one for GT-R fans as COBB are bound to putup a fight to make it back to back wins and it looks like quite a few NAGTROC members will be in attendance as well.
It’s on at Las Vegas Speedway from the 23rd – 25th of April and the organizers have announced a few new pricing plans for those wishing to take part and get their own car on the track from as little as $100 (if you sign up online for Friday). Las Vegas Speedway track time for $100!?! That even includes driver instruction and lap timing. Sweet deal. Head on over to their website for more information and to signup.
Link: COBB Tuning Blog
Link: RedLine TimeAttack Website
Top Racing HK Report from R35 Street Battle at ZIC in China
The 27th and 28th of March was a big weekend for the GT-Rs around Hong Kong and China. For the first time ever, the R35 Street Battle was held at the Zhuhai International Circuit (ZIC) on the 29th and organized by the Hyper Zpeed Magazine. Many GT-Rs turned up for the event to see how fast they were able to go. Although there was a small drama on Saturday, one of the GT-Rs was severely damaged during practice, the race course was required to shut off for a while for clean up. It was a great day with nice sunshine, with an air temperature of 20 degrees and overall, it was proved to be an enjoyable event run smoothly.
Top Racing GT-R Professional Workshop also attended the event with their customers and became the spot light of the day. Since Top Racing had experience at Zhuhai International Circuit from previous trackdays, the track’s layout was well known to them. Since it was technically a Street Battle, Top Racing brought their street demo car up to ZIC to conduct the speed trial. This street spec car was able to manage a respectable 1:46.28 lap time and also set the highest top speed for the day of 244km/h at the end of the main straight. To top it off, on the very same night at the after battle dinner party, Top Racing GTR Professional Workshop won the Most Fashionable award, Quickest Lap Record award and the 2009 Media Best Tuner Gold award for their street demo car.
The Top Racing street demo car was equipped with the Willall Racing WR35MTT turbo setup which runs 1.1 bar of boost, HKS Hipermax III ZIC spec suspension, Tanabe sway bar, SSP radiator, Trust oil coolers for the engine and transmission, HKS Superior Spec R, Trust Intake Suction kit, HKS GT600 Kit, COBB Tuning AccessPORT, Dixcel R15 brake pads and SP FSC brake rotors. Also, in the transmission department it was equipped with the Dodson Motorsport mechanical circlips and FWD gear lock to ensure durability, as well as Willall Racing WR35CP clutch packs to ensure good bite while shifting gears.
What is special about this time out is a newly in-house designed aero kit which borrows concepts from the Nissan FIA GT1 spec race car. Not only does it give the GT-R a new aggressive look, but it could also decrease the engine oil, transmission oil and water temperature dramatically. This aero kit completely solves the usual temperature issues and allows the driver to drive their GT-R on the race track at full pace with peace of mind. The aero kit is made out of light weight, rigid dry carbon, and provides ducting to cool the front brakes down which helps solve the problem of brake over-heating. The new aero front bumper is also designed to give greater down-force and provide greater stability at high speed, add that to the fact that it reduces weight and you can see how it can improve handling. The kit reduces weight by 5kg in the hood, 5kg in the front bumper and under panels, 2.5kg in the rear bumper and 2.5kg in the rear trunk lid.
The Director of HKS product strategy management, Suguru Kobayashi, was also there on the day as a spectator, he was astonished with the cooling ability of this new aero kit and admired the quality and design. He is greatly interested in the aero kit, and in discussions with Top Racing, has requested a set for testing on the HKS R35 demo car.
Unfortunately, Top Racing’s race ready R35 “TR35” was unable to attend this event. The TR35 GT-R features an even more aggressive aero kit which provides for even wider front wheels. We are all anxious to see how well the TR35 will perform with the wide body kit on the race track.
So it was an enjoyable weekend at ZIC, everyone from Top Racing and their clients had fun and enjoyed the thrill of high speed on the race track, they are all looking forward to hitting the track again very soon.
Top Racing Hong Kong would like to take this opportunity to give a special thanks to the following:
- Weave Carbon Series
- HKS
- Dodson Motorsport
- TRUST
- TANABE Japan
- Willall Racing
- TOYO
Link: Top Racing GT-R Professional Workshop Hong Kong
Redline Time Attack 2010: Season Opener This Weekend at Buttonwillow Raceway
Redline Time Attack is back and this year is promising to be better than ever. Round 1 is this weekend at Buttonwillow Raceway and along with the time attack events there’s also a two day Battle of the Bands, Miss Redline Spokes Model Search as well as Show N Shine, video games and beer garden.
Most interesting to us of course are the GT-R’s that will be attending and competing in the event. Here’s Cobb’s GT-R that is now fully decked out and ready for Brian Lock to take the pilots seat.
The latest upgrades to the Cobb Motorsports GT-R include fitting an all new AIT carbon wide body kit and the OS Giken TCD spec rear LSD. The LSD upgrade has done wonders for the driveability of the car:
“My first impression was “WOW!” What a difference the TCD LSD made! As I started my first hot laps I could feel the difference in the rear of the car. Now the chassis just seemed to hunch down in the back and squirt out of the corners with no rear inside wheel spin at all. Plus it was much easier to use the throttle to help steer the car out of the corners. With the inside wheel spin gone, I could easily modulate rear slip angle with my right foot, encouraging corner exit rotation by feeding in just a bit more throttle.”
– Brian Lock, for COBB Motorsports
They took the car out to Cali Speedway to gather test data, the video and MoTeC data logs you can check out over on their blog. The bottom line is the car is way more controllable at the corner exit which is going to help them turn some even more respectable laptimes.
Good luck to Brian and Cobb for this weekend and all the other teams competing. We’ll be keeping a close eye on things and be posting up results as we hear them.
For more information or to read the full press release, hit up the giant red read more link below….
Thanks to Brandon from WebRidesTV and Gary from Cobb Tuning for the input and help on this.
Link: RedlineTimeAttack Website
Link: Cobb Tuning Blog
HiOctane’s Mental Time Attack R34 GT-R Prepping for World Time Attack Challenge
I’ve always had a fascination with this car since I first checked it out at Superlap 2009 back in March last year. Maybe it harkens back to my black R34 GT-R or maybe it’s the absolute raw focus and single mindedness of this build. It’s probably both mixed in with the fact that it’s happening in Australia versus somewhere in Japan where you’d normally see a R34 this insane.
This year the Superlap event has gone global and taken new form as the World Time Attack Challenge and Hi Octane are getting the car ready with some interesting updates to improve grip in the corners.
With thanks to Aeromotions and The Tuners Group, they’ve upgraded to an active rear wing that gives them more downforce in the turns but less drag down the straights. They’ve also updated the front aero with a rather impressive (and by that I mean massive) looking splitter.
Other changes to the suspension will hopefully make the car a little easier to control especially now that it’s making even more power even earlier due to an E85 tune.
The World Time Attack Challenge has attracted competitors from as far away as the US and Japan this year so there’s going to be some stiff competition. For GT-R fans this will be the horse to back I’m betting. Can it slay the finely tuned Evos of the world though? We’ll see this coming May…
For now I highly recommend you turn your speakers up and listen to this crazy RB26 as it preps for the coming events in the video below…
Link: Aeromotions Wing Data @ The Tuners Group
Link: World Time Attack Challenge Website
Cobb Tuning Announce Redline Time Attack Series Entry for 2010 Season
The Redline Time Attack series kicks off in March on the 26th at Buttonwillow in California and Cobb Tuning have announced their three car entry for the season. Most exciting to GT-R fans is that Cobb’s GT-R will be there and that they have wrangled pro driver Brian Lock into the Cobb R35 GT-R.
GTRBlog readers will know Brian as the pilot of the GOTO:Racing über GT-R. He will race the 2010 Cobb Tuning GT-R in the Modified class.
“Everyone at COBB Tuning is fired up about our return to racingâ€, said Gary Sheehan, Director of Marketing. “Our company is made up of auto enthusiasts that love power, speed and competition! We are putting a lot of effort into Redline Time Attack this year as we think it is THE place to show off our passion as tuners, fabricators and racers. We are really looking forward to meeting up and spending time with fellow enthusiasts at these exciting events all over the country.â€
Quite a few changes to the Redline Time Attack series this year including the addition of Sebring and Infineon Raceway to the competition. Ten rounds in total there’s sure to be a lot of solid competitors.
Can’t wait to check it out!
Link: Cobb Tuning Announcement
COBB Tuning AccessPORT Powering the GOTO:Racing Time Attack GT-R
Earlier this month, the Cobb Tuning team put together this rundown of the features of the Cobb AccessPORT ECU reflashing tool for the Nissan GT-R. They’ve chosen to focus on how the top level time attack team, GOTO:Racing use it on their ~800hp GT-R to get the best results out of the GT-R with minimal level of fuss.
The Cobb AccessPORT still stands as one of the best bang for your buck modifications anyone can do to their GT-R and this video highlights a couple of the features you may not of known it had.
On the topic of the AccessPORT for the GT-R, Cobb Tuning have also now released a version for the East Asian and Japanese markets. Preloaded with the latest 2.0 version of the Cobb Tuning default maps, it’s available now. This brings the total global markets supported by the AccessPORT up to:
- Australia
- East Asia
- Europe
- Gulf
- Japan
- South Africa
- United States
Cobb don’t stop there though, one final AccessPORT related announcement was made recently, regarding the AccessTUNER Pro software compatible with the Nissan GT-R. The latest release of the software, version 1.8.1.2, contains updates that will allow tuners to utilise the Proportional Gain Boost Control logic, as seen in the canned 2.0 maps. It’s also available now and supports all of the above listed regions.
Source: Cobb Tuning
Yokohama Superlap 2009: Nissan GT-R Photo Gallery
This Sunday was the second annual Superlap Time Attack event at Oran Park Raceway outside Sydney Australia. Some seriously modified cars were in attendance with some pretty serious drivers behind the wheels.
It was a GT-R fest all round with many examples in attendance from R32 Skyline GT-Rs all the way up to the R35 GT-R from RGM Racing driven by Russ Newman.
On the topic of the RGM Racing R35, they’re running a little different to the setup from Superlap 2008. The car was prepped for tarmac rally events and indeed it will be entering into Targa Tasmania but really, such modifications barely change it from standard specification. Including a roll cage, timing gear, fire extinguisher, racing seats and harnesses the car cannot stray far from standard weight due to the class rules. What did change were the wheels and tires.
This year they ran the 19″ Volk TE37 wheels wrapped in Toyo Proxes R888 tires. The choice of going with 19″ wheels was made due to difficulty of fitting 400mm rotors (a common upgrade on the R35) under 18″ wheels while giving options for R-Compound tires that a 20″ wheel currently doesn’t.
Unfortunately the combination didn’t work to the GT-Rs advantage and seemed to work against the cars weight and cornering forces resulting in an abundance of oversteer and lack of grip on corner exit. Understeer was reduced but you can see in the photo gallery that the soft sidewalls were pushed to their limit. Russel reported the entire feel of the setup to be slippery compared to the standard OEM delivered Dunlop 20″ DSST 600 street tires.
Wanting to save his OEM rubber for Targa Tamania coming up in late April, Russ was content to run lower times and have a great day doing it managing a 1:18.769 a full 1.6 seconds slower than last years best time on 1:17.1 with a standard car on Dunlop tires.
Another exciting event this weekend was the debut of the Advan/Hi Octane Racing Time Attack R34 GT-R. A serious weapon that will likely represent Australia at an international level of time attack motor racing. This full ground up prepared R34 GT-R has just about every dream component that the best of Japan and Australia’s RB and GT-R engineering minds can come up with. Even in it’s incomplete state, the car ran second fastest on the day running deep into the 1:13s suffering with some serious grip issues. We’ll be making a separate article on this one in the next week or so.
Thanks to the organisers of Superlap for the great event, Yokohama and the other Superlap sponsors and RGM Racing for the access and information on the R35 GT-R.
We have a truck load of GT-R photos from the day so hit up the Read More link and check them out…
Link: Superlap Official Website
Link: Superlap related articles on GTRBlog.com
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