Many years ago, I stood peering through a fence at the Long Beach Grand Prix. I was on my annual pilgrimage for racing T-shirts and soft tacos on the Friday practice day. As someone who doesn't do well in crowds, I headed to the furthest corner of the track. Aside from a couple of flag workers, I was the only person watching from the tucked-away, 90-degree right-hander.
Like every other corner, it had walls at the entry, apex and exit. About half the drivers took a perfect line, just missing the wall at all three points. The other half left a little extra room so they could powerslide through. But a rookie named Juan Pablo Montoya was ripping it like no other. Within a few laps, he had the rear tire just kissing the exit wall. As a cocky, one-year veteran of club racing, I thought: "If I ever get to run this track, I'll do it just like that guy." But even I didn't believe that, nearly 10 years later, I'd actually get that chance. Admittedly, I had to sneak through the back door.
In a strange role reversal, the hooligan time attack teams rode in on the coattails of the respected drifters. Formula D guys have been entertaining the crowds at Long Beach for the last couple of years and, for some unknown reason, they invited the Super Lap Battle time attack series to bring out their top teams for an exhibition. Seeing how the Super Lap Battle is hosted by SCC's parent company, I had the inside line on one of the 14 spots. It would only be for three short sessions over the weekend, but I was in.
All I had to do was find a car. The Hasport Integra fit the bill perfectly. First of all, it was completely sorted. My good friend Bernardo Martinez had been campaigning it for five years in the Honda Challenge series, finishing with a win at the nationals at Mid Ohio last year. Secondly, it was fast. Hasport bolted a supercharger to the H1 K24 motor and took the top spot in Unlimited FF at the 2007 Super Lap Battle finals. Perhaps most importantly, though, the car had been retired at the end of that year. The walls of Long Beach have destroyed plenty of fine automobiles. While balling up a future historic racing car might get me lynched by the Honda swap community, it wouldn't slow down the guys at Hasport. They'd take any salvageable parts and find a clever way to integrate them into their next project. That's just how they work.
A week before the event, Martinez and I shook the cobwebs from the car at Buttonwillow Raceway. I'd driven it once before for a previous article (G-Masters, August '07), so I knew it was easy to drive and that practice wasn't really necessary. But we wanted to dial in the suspension for the BFGoodrich R1s we'd be running at Long Beach. With most racing series having spec tires and Japanese time attack organizers declaring sticky R1s illegal, the Super Lap Battle series is one of the few competitions where they can be exploited.
Martinez wouldn't get out of the car. He ran for two full sessions and came back grinning both times. The Hytech-built K24 with a Jackson Racing supercharger and a new, smaller Pulley Boys pulley was making more power than ever. The data acquisition system wasn't recording lap times, but he was sure the car was breaking records. After drilling me on how quickly the revs build and how to read the sequential shift lights, Martinez sent me out.
I babied it for the warm-up lap, then buried the pedal for the first flyer. It was fast, real fast. And you know what they say... Winding up in fifth gear, the exhaust note went flat. I looked in the mirror and saw the smoke.