Adam's NSX made its long-awaited track debut. The team took an early trip out to a track in Arizona for some shakedown runs and then headed out to Ennis for some competition. In its first appearance to the public, the Nitto-sponsored NSX tore an 8.48 at 163 mph. Later, in the semis, Saruwatari was able to best his time with an 8.30 at 166 mph. Unfortunately, this e.t. was not enough to beat out Simrock, who ran a 7.99 in Ben Ma's Focus. As good as this debut is, there is a lot of untapped potential still in the Acura.
Hot Rod XVIWhen the word around town was the Quick class twin, Hot Rod XVI, was to be an all front-drive category, our first thoughts were that this was going to a class for Hondas. Little did we know there were two SR20-powered Nissans who refused to allow this to happen, which were Backyard Production's 200SX and the AEBS Sentra. These two Nissans not only posted competitive times, their trap speeds were on par with some of the fastest Hondas. We are looking at war in the Hot Rod Class-are Hondas on borrowed time?
On the Honda side of the quarter, the finals had a long time friendship/rivalry with Lisa Kubo running Kenny Tran. The Nitto-sponsored Civic piloted by Kubo nabbed the number one qualifying spot in the first qualifying round. The last round of qualifying on Saturday was Tran's final chance to take the top qualifying spot. Tran shut the car down early and still stole the number one spot with a 9.68. With Tran the favorite in the finals, axle problems arose at the line, handing the hard-charging Lisa Kubo Racing team victory.
Lisa Kubo Racing has been trying to solve an ongoing tire shake problem in first gear. Gary Kubo was able to solve the problem and run fast and consistently throughout the day, which gave the team the first place victory and a highly coveted Wally.
ModifiedThe Modified class was short of a full field so the end result became a shootout between Craig Paisley and Christian Rado. Rado had his hands full trying to keep the car together. A few days before the race, his Toyo Tire-sponsored Integra was at Harv St. Mary's dyno, but a cracked cylinder head brought the fine-tuning session to a halt. Rado, always working every possibility, decided to ship the car to Ennis and swap the head in Texas. This was not an R&R, as the Rado team needed to machine the head and use spacers to get it back to life on the Integra. Cheating the odds, the car was up and running right before the last round of qualifying. Paisley, on the other hand, was ready to rumble.
While waiting on TRD to complete the Tundra V8 engine for his new Pro truck, Paisley decided to run the TRD-sponsored Supra for the rest of the season. The car qualified in the number one spot with an 8.8 and won the event with an 8.62.
Street VIIIA full field for the street class was on hand in Texas with the Street class king, Ari Yallon, in the number one spot. Not only was the competition close in this class, it was also dominated by Mazdas, leaving only two qualifying spots open for non-Mazda vehicles.
Considering most of the cars were tagged as "Ari's Gang," boasting the RX-7.com logo, it became an all out war to take down the king. In the end Yallon's GReddy-sponsored RX-7 and Steven Kan's RX-7 faced off in the finals. Kan was able to run a quick time, considering this class is required to run radials and an exhaust, but his 11.40 was not enough to take down Yallon's 10.97 at 137.71 mph.