Trust 0-400m Sprint Race @ Ryogasaki
June 3rd 2006
Since the purchase of our import shop car, a 1995 Mustang GT, we have been steadily doing modifications and tuning to see what can be made to our late model 302 injected power plant. All of the mods have been showing some pleasant responses, but we have been unable to get any actual track testing out of the machine.
Luckily, on Saturday the 3rd of June 2006, we were invited to the 0-400 m sprint race held at the old Ryogasaki air strip in Ibaraki-ken. This event was being solely sponsored by Trust of Japan and was considered to be round 1 of the 0-400 m summer sprint race series.
In attendance, there were just over 140 vehicles on hand with vehicles ranging from Honda Civic’s all the way up to the top dog Nissan Skylines. As for us, we were the only import entry, so let it be told that the attention was all over our machine from the start of the day.
The actual first set of preliminary runs were to determine the base times. Up first were the Honda’s Civics and Integra’s. Some were real quick in the low to high 13 second range. Naturally the quicker ones were all running on the can (nitrous), so this was acceptable for Japanese standards. After the FF cars finished up, some of the quicker FR cars made there passes. One of the FR cars that really caught our attention was this R34 sedan running a complete RB26 power train. The car was fitted with a single turbo and several other go fast goodies. With the M&T ET streets on all four corners, the R34 sedan mustered a mad wheel spinning 10.70 second pass.
With our car in and ready to stage, we ran into some traction problems off the line. This turned into some very unbearable wheel spin and caused the car to bog down come second gear. Overall, it was a very unpleasant way to start, but none the less, a feel was made for the car and that’s very important for us.
Shortly after our pass, there was a rather large accident with one of following competitors. He was driving a late model FC3S, with a load of modifications done. The car had a great launch, and passed the 60 foot mark with out an issue, but at roughly the 330 foot mark, the car had some type of engine failure, which immediately caused an under-hood fire. The car halted to a stop, but at this time, most of the damage was done and the car continued to burn. Now unfortunately, there were no fire relief vehicles on location, so they were called in from the local town. And well, once they arrive the car was already at a total loss. On the other hand, the driver only had minor injuries and was able to walk away, so this was good.
From this point, the event was put on hold and an early lunch break was called. Soon after lunch, a drivers meeting was called, in which they informed us that the event was to be postponed for the rest of the day.
All in all, we were happy to be apart of this on going all domestic racing series and we look forward to future events when developed. A special thanks goes out to D. Carbonere for the invite.
Cheers,
Adam @ FEAST AE/RS of Japan
Some images from the event.
