Monday, June 22, 2009 (Joliet, IL) – Competing in their first Redline Time Attack at Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, IL on June 21st, TiC completely dominated the Street class in both All Wheel Drive categories and overall Street class with an almost four second lead over the 2nd place overall Street class competitor.
Running the same 2004 WRX that recently placed First in Class and Fourth Overall at The Tire Rack’s One Lap of America, TiC has quickly become a team to watch in performance driving by consistently surprising event spectators, and competitors time and again.
Team member, and TiC Co-founder, Tony Barber had this to say, “The car is very well set up with a nice balance between power and handling. We know there’s some more time in it with a few small changes. Right now the biggest thing is tires.”
The car, as it competed on Sunday, was running the same Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star Spec tires that were used for the One Lap event with the general consensus being they were worn out.
Team driver Tony Weisenhahn told us the by the afternoon session the tires were feeling a bit on the weak side and gave up a lot of grip in the corners. Tony W. also stated, “One of the things we have to do before the next event is work on the brakes some more. I know that with some better brakes that can handle the heat we can get another 50 feet into the corner before we have to slow down.”
Team member and the other TiC Co-founder, Clint Boggess, had this to say on the subject. “We’re looking at a new setup on the brakes right now. As the car stands they are phenomenal before they overheat. We need to figure out a good combination that will take the heat, yet still offer a very nice balance. Something similar to what we have now, only more ‘whoa’ overall.”
When asked about future plans for the series Tony B. and Tony W. informed us that originally TiC had only planned on attending a few of the events, but after the showing yesterday that has changed and indicated they will try to make it to all the Redline Time Attack east coast events for the season.
When asked about current classing plans Tony Barber responded, “We talked about moving up a class, but after some discussion with the rest of the team we’ve decided to stick with Street class this season, and apply what we’ve learned for next year.”
“We like to move in baby steps.” Said Tony Weisenhahn. “We work with what we know, and use it as a learning experience to move forward. Right now, we have a few things to sort out before moving to the next class; biggest thing being the brakes followed by fine tuning the engine management and power output. We’ve already started talking with our tuner, Jorge Carrillo of P&L Motorsports, about what we would like to do, and they had some great input going forward. We’ll be working with them to make the power and tuning changes quickly so we can have the new system working in time for the event at the end of July. Once we have that figured out we need to look at the aero treatment of the car. As for the suspension, we’ve been pretty happy with it. We may change spring rates when going to a stickier tire, but we’ll need to test that. As it is, the new AST dampers are working great and we’ll probably stick with them for a while.”
For those not aware, TiC cracked a rear damper during the second to last event during One Lap. They knew they couldn’t get them fixed in time for this event so when Clint wasn’t looking the two Tony’s jacked up Clint’s own personal car, and “borrowed” the AST based dampers with TiC’s valving specification. Clint wasn’t too pleased.
When pressed for further developments Clint said, “Well, we’ve been thinking quite a bit about the aero. After all, we’re out there running in what appears to be a mostly stock car. We know a front splitter is going to help overall corner grip and speed, but Tony W. informed me yesterday that we have to do at least a splitter and rear wing at the same time. Right now the car is so incredibly balanced that doing just a splitter for now is going to hurt our performance. So, we’ll be spending some time soon looking at rear wing setup along with the splitter to see if we can come up with a setup that keeps the balance, but improves grip.”
Tony Barber made some closing comments on the entire effort by the TiC team.
“It’s been a lot of fun and very interesting. We keep surprising people at these events, and what’s even more surprising is that there’s really nothing special or exotic about the car. Most of the critical parts on the car are the exact same thing that we sell every day. We don’t do anything special for the cars we race as we have that much faith in the parts we sell.”
Set up for the TiC car, while extensive isn’t anything exotic or unachievable by the normal person as you can tell from the list below.
2004 Subaru WRX
• 2.5 liter short block with CP forged pistons, ACL race bearings, and STi cams
• P&L Motorsports GT30 rotated mount turbo
• Spearco top mount intercooler
• TiC Air/Oil separator
• STi control arms
• Whiteline Plus forward control arm front bushings
• Whiteline forward control arm rear bushings
• Group N engine and transmission mounts
• Kartboy shifter stay bushings
• TiC shifter bushings
• TiC tranny Xmember bushings
• PPG straight cut 1 and 2 and helical cut 3 and 4 transmission
• PPG front LSD
• Cusco rear diff
• TiC hardened R160 ring and pinion
• Kartboy outrigger bushings
• MSI rear subframe• Kartboy endlinks
• Whiteline front and rear anti-roll bars
• Whiteline roll center adjustment kit
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