National Supra Meet - TX2K2

Next to run was SW in his bad-to-the-bone Supra. His first lap was a blistering 48.468 seconds. The second was uncharacteristically slow (for SW) as he tripped the timer at 49.157 seconds. It was obvious SW had a problem. The third lap was never completed as SW pulled off before the finish with a severely damaged tire carcass.

"I felt a pretty bad vibration on the second lap," he says. "I just didn't want to keep pushing that hard when I knew the tire was on its way out. It just wasn't worth the risk."

With SW out of the overall picture despite having posted the fastest lap of the day (48.138), Baritchi was handed the win. Shane Duvall finished the event in second place with an average of 49.954 and Jay Brown rounded up the top three with a time of 56.229. The unlucky SW finished the day in fourth place with an official DNF on his last lap.

Andi Baritchi was ecstatic with his first place result. "CTC only installed the HKS single turbo system a couple of weeks ago. I'm still getting used to all that extra power," he comments. "I guess I could've pushed harder if I had installed autocross tires, but I decided to run my normal daily driver rubber, I'm sure that slowed me down a lot on a technical track like this one. Still, it's good to grab first place at the end of the day."

Day Three- The drag stripDay three's drag race action took place at the River City Raceway near San Antonio, so most of the Supra crowd made the 175-mile drive from Houston early on Sunday morning. The pit area was packed with high-horsepower Supras of every vintage, so it was obviously going to be a good day's racing.

Up until the lunch break, it was every man for himself as the entrants were given unlimited runs to dial in their cars. The real competition started in the afternoon with each driver allowed two qualifying passes to establish the pecking order for the eliminations.

The cars were divided up into three classes. Class one was for stock twin turbo cars only with no power adders allowed. Class two allowed the use of nitrous with stock turbos or a single-turbo conversion without the laughing gas. Class three was run what ya' brung; no holds barred, unlimited modifications.

The crowd was treated to some excellent racing action and after the preliminary rounds, everybody was trackside to witness the finals.

In the stock class, John Hein was the victor over Mark Mitias by a narrow margin: Hein posted a 12.343 at 115.23 mph against Mitias' 12.852 at 116.82 mph.

Class two saw a much-anticipated battle between Augie Hidalgo in his CTC-prepared Supra against Joe Calabrasi from Houston. Calabrisi jumped the gun and triggered a red light on his way to a 10.885@133.65mph. Hidalgo took a gift-wrapped final round win and cruised through the beams with a 11.533 at 137.02 mph. Hidalgo was having a great day at the races; "I ran a personal best of 10.7 seconds earlier in the day so I was already very happy. The track was really hooking up good all day. I backed out of it in the final when I saw Joe had red-lighted. It looks like the margaritas are on me tonight"

While Augie started celebrating, the indomitable SW and Stacey Barnett lined up for the unlimited class final. Both drivers launched hard and both drivers had problems finding the gears. Barnett tripped the beams with a 13.795 at 62.31 mph after having major problems engaging third gear. SW blasted down the track, missed fourth gear and still managed to run a 10.592 at 119.36 mph. Despite the problems, SW was a happy camper: "It wasn't the fastest ever final, but I managed to grab a win so I'm happy." SW also ran the quickest and fastest pass of the day in his Supra in one of the preliminary rounds. How about a 9.8 at 154 mph-not bad for a daily-driven car.

At the end of the day, everybody went home happy. Not only was the 2002 Supra meet a huge success in attendance, it was also a lot of fun to watch these potent cars doing what they do best-haulin' ass.

Props must go to Peter Blach for handling the organizational duties so well. The whole event ran as smoothly as a Swiss watch-not an easy feat with three different events taking place at different locations over a three-day period. Final word goes to Blach; "This event was a huge success and I have a long list of sponsors to thank for making it possible. MVP Motorsports, my corporate sponsor, was on call 24/7 during the meet. Dusty Womack of MVP, you did one hell of a job. I would also like to thank Powerhouse Racing, RPS Performance Products, Wheel Kinetics, Jay Marks Toyota, Protech, Suprasport.com, Sound Performance, TurboImports and Elite Motorsports as well as Titan Motorsports, Blitz, and HKS."