Round 7 of the 2025 Racetreads GT Radial 86Cup restores order to the Force with us FINALLY doing 13CW at Buttonwillow Raceway this season.
It’s kind of weird how the calendars all work out isn’t it?
On Saturday October 18th, we’ll see just how fast some of you are and see if you’re ready to join the “Sub 2 club”.
Track day registration for this round will be through Speed Ventures.
Also, ALL Speed Ventures events are open for registration for the rest of the year!!! That means Round 7 here as well as Rounds 8 and 9 for Chuckwalla are NOW open. Don’t sleep on it and get some vital track time for our championship run before December!
Need tires before the event? Purchase through our Racetreads 86Cup member link to receive a small discount on your order or simply enter ” 86CUP “ into the promo code area when checking out! (All GT Radial tires used for redemption need to be purchased through Racetreads regardless)
Hope you all had a lovely summer break. Did anyone else get super bored (towards the end) trying to figure out what to do with their lives?
Hopefully you all spent some quality time doing non-car related things for once in our lengthy season.
There were a lot of things going on for Round 6 of the Racetreads SoCal 86Cup. First off, it was a joint round with our frenemies to the north in 86 Challenge, provided not only camaraderie but also a good challenge to take home bragging rights of which group has the fastest drivers between NorCal vs. SoCal.
Second, we threw everyone in for a loop by running 25CCW at Buttonwillow Raceway Park! If you’ve never done this configuration before, this layout has you head straight into Star Mazda after the “esses” and then has you skip Bus Stop out of Riverside heading at 100+ towards Grapevine where there’s a hump and compression smack dab in the middle of your (lengthy) braking zone. While we all know these 86/BRZs are not that fast, this track layout surely tested a lot of folks’ confidence with high speed sweepers and heavy braking zones we don’t normally get to try out during 13CW days.
Luckily the weather wasn’t too bad. The heat still reminded us that it exists but nobody seemed to be dying or camping in the air conditioned control tower at BRP getting yelled at by the loudspeaker for the diner.
That being said, let’s dive into it!
STOCK Class
If there was any class that highlighted the NorCal vs SoCal battle for 86Cup this past weekend, it’s surely Stock class. Taking home the W and being the first to put a Stock class “record” on our records page for FA24 Stock Class cars, is Dennis Feng in his 2022 Subaru BRZ. We’re sure he spent countless hours on the sim in preparation for the event. Dennis laid down a 2:06.844 before the 1.5 second Stock class time penalty was assessed for his second generation car.
Hot on his bumper was none other than our own resident hotshot, Luke Daley in his 2024 Subaru BRZ putting down a 2:07.156 before time penalties were assessed. It looks like as far as 86Cup competition goes, Luke and Dennis are now 1-1 in the tally column. Perhaps Luke should show up to a random NorCal round, perhaps at a track he’s already done to see what’s up in this fight for Stock-ish supremacy…
Last on the podium, but certainly not least by any means, especially after an engine rebuild, is Saurabh in his 2023 Toyota GR86! After adjustment, Saurabh put down a 2:10.930* which was three seconds faster than the nearest Stock class competitions for 86Cup this round.
STREET Class
The party class is here to stay, and forcing us once again to utilize a second results sheet for our (social) media posting.
Still being fueled by plot armor, we have Ethan Lawrie in his 2024 Trueno Edition GR86 putting down a 2:07.418. Ethan’s time was the fastest time amongst any 86Cup competitor for this round, only bested by the CSG entry in the Exhibition class.
Right behind Ethan in second place is none other than Bobby Tisher who has made tremendous strides over the past year in his performance and is always a threat to take home a podium, or a win in his 2023 Subaru BRZ. Bobby put down a time of 2:08.148.
In third place we have Greg Balos who has been gathering seat time like Pokemon cards it seems and the results here definitely show it! Greg lays down a 2:08.622 which is good enough to snipe away the last podium spot from our NorCal friend Tor and his GR86.
Honorable mention for this class is Ty Dagdagan who miraculously nearly did a sub-2:09 lap in his first gen FR-S. And of course his actual time is 2:09.186, of course there would be an 86 reference in there. If you haven’t seen Ty’s incredible driving from this past round, we highly recommend checking it out!
MODIFIED Class
The ghost town class finally had a gaggle of BRZs in the mix to fill it’s ranks! Miles Kodama takes home the bragging rights for NorCal in our 86Cup Mod Class in his 2017 Subaru BRZ laying down a 2:09.602. We’re pretty sure he only went this fast because his exhaust was disconnecting from the chat…
In second place we have a SoCal resident in Garrett Wilson making a rare appearance outside of Chuckwalla to come party with us at Buttonwillow! In his BRZ tS, Garrett lays down a 2:11.029 on Kumho Ecsta V730s.
Wrapping up the podium, we have Brian Kao in his 2024 Subaru BRZ on GT Radial SX2s coming up just behind Garrett’s best time with a 2:11.246.
We’re not sure when the next time we’ll have this many folks in Mod class so rejoice in this now folks!
UNLIMITED Class
For Unlimited class, we only had three competitors this round so this makes for a short but sweet wrap up. In Mod we had three 2024 BRZs, in Unlimited we had three 2023 GR86s. This social media admin’s head hurts making sure everyone’s vehicle was correct and checking it 86 times over…
In first we have Johnny Hu in his GR86 putting down a 2:10.210 after adjustments on Kumho Ecsta V730. Johnny joins us from NorCal so it looks like NorCal takes the overall W for most class wins this joint round.
Just ever so close behind Johnny we have Joseph Alfonso on Nankang CR-S. Coming back from a short hiatus, we’re happy to see Joseph back out there!
Lastly, we have Terry Mai in their awesome wrapped GR86 on Continental ECS02 who managed to put down a 2:13.890 after adjustments to wrap up the 86Cup competitors for this round.
EXHIBITION Class
For a shop team that has “counterspace” in their name, the CounterSpace Garage team sure do spend a lot of time flying out there on the track instead of wiping down counters sitting around. Speaking of flying, did anyone catch them looking fly and blinged out with their custom hotboi CSG Spec 17×10 Titan7 wheels? There must have been some secret metallurgy in those wheels as their resident Stig managed to pull off a sub-2 for the event! An absolute killer time of 1:59.630 was put down before they called it a day halfway into it. What a mic drop exit!
And with that, that wraps up all of the joint rounds we have for the year with our friends 86 Challenge. Hopefully if you came out and chatted with them, you picked up on some speed secrets to help you out on track. Or at the very least came out with some new friends and/or build ideas. If you’re from NorCal and filled out an 86Cup driver registration form, thank you for participating!
Up next is Round 7, which takes place right back at Buttonwillow. Luckily, there’s no monkey wrench this time around as we’ll be doing 13CW for the first time this year! That sounds very weird to say but it’s just the way the cookie crumbled schedule-wise this year. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Round 7, along with the doubleheader weekend of Rounds 8 and 9 all take place with Speed Ventures as the organizer. SV just announced that ALL of their dates for the rest of the year are now onsale!!!
If you’re even remotely thinking of joining us for Chuckwalla in November, you should 100% sign up before it’s too late. This weekend fills up every single year and there’s always a group of folks on the outside looking in, so get ahead of it! Also cabins are already sold out for Nov. 7th and 8th so best to look elsewhere or ask a buddy if they have a cabin for lodging.
Back to Round 7, the event flyer and details will be posted tomorrow but you can head to SV’s website to register ASAP. We hope to see you out for our first 13CW event of the year!
If you’re thinking of participating in our final round for the 2025 season at Buttonwillow 13CW in December with OnGrid, early bird pricing ends TOMORROW at 11:59pm PST
After that, pricing will go up by $40 until about a month or so before the event, so save some funds!
A few things to note if you’ve never run with OnGrid before:
1. They do require vinyl/magnetic numbers to be run even for “HPDE”. We think a good majority of us are safe but for those who run classic tape you have some options. OnGrid sells vinyls for $25, you should be able to buy them at the track as well if need be.
Or if there’s enough interest, we could possibly start a group buy for some simple vinyl numbers.
If you want to get ahead of the curve, you can sign up on Hagerty/MotorsportReg. It may ask you for a “experience/club referral”. You’re more than welcome to put “86Cup” in this field and ask for our email if you don’t have any other references.
Round 6 of the 2025 Racetreads.com GT Radial 86Cup has us try out a rarely seen configuration (to us anyway) at Buttonwillow with Speed Ventures on an equally just as rare SUNDAY 86Cup date.
On Sunday, September 14th, we’ll be trying out the 25CCW configuration which sends you full speed from Riverside to Grapevine after skipping the bus stop section.
This is also a joint day with our NorCal frenemies in 86Challenge so it’s surely to be an action packed day!
Track day registration is already live via Speed Ventures so sign up now to not miss out!
This day not only has us and 86Challenge, but a couple of other time attack orgs in the SV family are running this day so be sure to sign up SOONER rather than later!
The last event before our summer break! Despite the rather elevated temperatures compared to most of the events in the first half of the year, we still had a bunch of our regulars come on out to play. We even had some new faces join the fold, which always seems to happen at Willow Springs, so welcome aboard!
Running the results, it’s obvious that the session to take home the W was in the first competition session of the day. A few of you, however, managed to sneak in your PB for the day in some of the later sessions which is interesting to see.
Despite everything above and below, we actually managed to bust out a GT Radial tent as a necessary for this Round’s heatwave and it DIDN’T fly away! That’s a W in our book despite being totally unprepared otherwise.
STOCK Class
At this point in the season, it almost feels like Luke is getting away with highway robbery in the points standings for this class. Luke adds another W on his resume for the season with his time at Round 5.
Chasing behind him in the points and for this round is none other than Sean Irwin. Laying everything out on the line, Sean unfortunately comes up almost half a second short to Luke’s best for this day.
Keeping things in the family is Scott Irwin who claims the final podium spot for the Stock class gang.
Honorable mentions for this round include Sam Nunez in his beautiful Hakone Edition GR86 and Celeste Alvarez also in a 2025 Toyota GR86, competing in their first 86Cup event. It’s always nice to see new faces having a good time!
STREET Class
Even without some of its regulars, the Street class party was still partying on for Round 5!
Ethan Lawrie continues to abuse plot armor in his Trueno Edition GR86, absolutely decimating the other Street class competition by nearly two seconds compared to most of the field.
Brian Guan, a definitely worthy opponent, set his sights on challenging that plot armor in his first gen BRZ. Unfortunately, as we all know, plot armor always prevails, and after everything was said and done for Round 5, Brian comes up with a time of 1:28.689 for his second place endeavors.
Coming off of some stints of #86cupsecretseattime is Greg Balos who lays down a 1:29.236 to take home the final podium spot in Street class in his 2022 Subaru BRZ. Aside from the secret seat time, we’ve seen Greg slowly but surely creep up the rankings over the last several months.
MODIFIED Class (insert gif of tumbleweed rolling here)
UNLIMITED Class
Mother nature’s heat was no match to the heat that Jared Ramirez brought to Round 5, smashing through the previous 86Cup Unlimited class record! Jared after a brief hiatus and some choice mods, puts down a 1:24.015 in his 2022 Toyota GR86 to continue to assert his dominance in Unlimited class.
Tim Chan follows behind in his 2014 Subaru BRZ laying down a 1:27.816 for the day.
Lastly, we have Damon Estrada joining us as another new face to the 86Cup family in his 2015 Scion FR-S! Damon managed to put down a 1:32.752 for his time before packing it up and heading home.
Thank you all to everyone who came out to Round 5 and braved the typical heat (and wind) that Willow Springs provides! It’s looking like this was (one of?) the last event at the facility before they get to work on some renovations as you may have seen in our group chat, so we’re excited to see what that looks like in the coming months.
For now, we have a TWO AND A HALF month hiatus until our next 86Cup round.
This would surely be the time to finally perform any “deferred” maintenance you’ve been dreading. If you need any helping sourcing things for your maintenance needs or modification endeavors, look no further than our sponsor CounterSpace Garage to get you situated!
Even if they don’t have it listed on their website, they have an extensive backcatalog and access to numerous brands, OEM Subaru/Toyota parts, etc. etc. So hit them up!
Given that we’re 5 events into our 10 round season, you may also be looking to get some new tires for the remainder of the season. That being said, our friends at Racetreads can surely help with that. If you use 86Cup’s ambassador link, you also get a small discount on your order: www.racetreads.com
This is also your friendly reminder that any GT Radial SX2s you plan on using for 86Cup (contingencies) needs to be purchased via Racetreads after February 2025.
That all being said, have a happy summer break! Round 6 is on a SUNDAY, September 14th. We’ll be running with Speed Ventures and it’ll be a joint round with our NorCal friends again 86 Challenge. We chose the Sunday date from this SV weekend because we’ll be getting to run a very rare (to those outside of Cal Club/SCCA days at least) 25 CCW configuration.
This will surely be challenging as you’re going to skip the famous bus stop section completely and go full steam from Riverside all the way to Grapevine. We would place some good money someone will probably blow through the braking zone at least once.
Round 6 event flyer and details will be posted as soon as possible. See you then!
Round 5 of the 2025 Racetreads.com GT Radial 86Cup has us visit an old friend, the proving grounds for many of us who begun our tracking journey in SoCal.
Streets of Willow is on the board and if not the heat then the CCW configuration turn 1 entry will surely cook your brakes, so hit up our sponsors CounterSpace Garage and prepare accordingly!
This will be our last track day before a pretty lengthy 2.5 month break for us here at 86Cup over the course of the summer so grab those crucial points before each class makes a run for the championship!
Track day registration for this round will be with Speed Ventures.
Round 4 saw the SoCal gang pack up their bags and head up north on Mother’s Day weekend to beautiful wine country in Sonoma, California.
It seems however that we may have brought with us our stereotypical desert weather as a heat wave consumed all of us on the way up and on Saturday during our Round 4 festivities (sorry NorCal friends!). Even with the hot ambient temperatures midday, that didn’t stop the actual heat and by that we mean record breaking laps!
The last time the 86Cup crew visited Sonoma was back in 2023. Since then Sonoma has had a repave so it seems that points to how fast everyone was this past weekend.
That being said, there were timing/transponder issues all weekend it seems so this is more or less the “preliminary” results and we did our best to sift through everything we had available to determine these times. If there’s no objections, then we’ll send it as is for final results on our socials.
For our NorCal friends, 86Cup only counts sessions 2-4 and no bonus (unless otherwise stated by admins explicitly to everyone prior to the event) for your reference. So for everyone here, your best time here may differ from your best time for 86Challenge.
STOCK Class
Stock class was the true battle of SoCal vs NorCal for our joint challenge it seems as Luke Daley and Dennis Feng duked it out in their 2nd gen BRZs for supremacy at the end of it all.
Luke won the dogfight and is the only SoCal class winner for the event with a 1:56.061* after adjustments for the Stock class time penalty. His actual lap of 1:54.561 breaks the previous FA24 86Cup Stock class record held under current ruling! Nicely done Luke.
Dennis threw down a very respectable lap as well coming in right behind Luke by less than 3 tenths with a 1:56.301* after the Stock Class time penalty was assessed.
Rounding out the class in the final spot, we have John Rice claiming his first podium of the year! John puts down a very respectable 2:04 for his very first foray with the behemoth that is Sonoma Raceway. An otherwise daunting track with it’s drastic elevation changes, walls and intense braking zones.
STREET Class
In Street class, we have Bobby Tisher taking home the final spot in the podium gang. Bobby lays down a very respectable 1:55.512 on the final time charts for the day for us which is less than half a second behind the second place finisher. We’ve been saying it since basically Round 2 this year, Bobby is the one to watch in 2025!
Brian Armstrong claims the second place spot in his 2022 BRZ with a 1:55.217 in the second session for Saturday.
Haowei Wu takes the top spot atop the podium in the SoCal vs NorCal Street class battle with a record-breaking 1:53.007 in his 2022 Toyota GR86. Looks like he wasn’t going to let Luke take away his former FA24 86Cup stock class record without taking another 86Cup record with him. Nicely done sir.
MODIFIED Class
Brian Kao is the lone soul for Mod Class this round. That being said, despite flying solo, he was definitely flying breaking the former 86Cup Mod class record with a 1:57.540 in his 2024 Subaru BRZ.
UNLIMITED Class
Unlimited is typically the next class that gets filled up just as much as Street but we had only two souls play around in Unlimited for this round.
In second place, we have SoCal regular Jeff Flogerzi in his 2013 Scion FR-S put down a 1:53.976 while playing with some new Toyo Proxes RRs.
For first place, there’s a reason this guy is THE BOSS (for multiple reasons, iykyk). First goes to Joe McGuigan in a K-swapped 2017 Toyota 86 putting down a blistering fast 1:47.643 on Bridgestone RE71RS. We have no other words for this, we’re pretty speechless.
And that concludes Round 4 at Sonoma and our first joint round with 86 Challenge for the year. We hope everyone that got to experience Sonoma for the first time had an absolute blast. Is this now your favorite track in California? We wouldn’t be shocked if you said it was.
We shot some photos of everyone during Round 4 and we’ll look to get those edited and shared with you all within the next week or two.
We have one more round until we take a bit of a summer break as we’re certain things are going to be hottttt. Round 5 will take place at Streets of Willow on June 28th with Speed Ventures and we will be running the CCW configuration if we’re not mistaken.
Hopefully you can bear one more round and some heat before we take a nice break. Streets dates usually sell out, but at the moment it seems like the day is still relatively wide open for signups so don’t sleep on it! Huge shout out to the 6 folks who already signed up for Round 5.
2025 Racetreads.com GT Radial 86Cup Rd. 3 – The Circuit at Buttonwillow – Event ResultsRound 3 was a stark reminder to everyone in our community that it ain’t always sunshine and rainbows in a time attack event. And that ultimately, at the end of it, a lot of it just comes down to pure luck.Drivers battled the elements dealing with suboptimal conditions all day. While we don’t count the first session of the HPDE day, drivers got to learn the new track at Buttonwillow at a relatively slow pace as the rain was coming down full bore early in the morning.
The track was full wet, then half wet, then dry/steamy, then full wet for half the track, and every combination in-between throughout the rest of the day for everyone in 86Cup. Not to mention lightning and then huge gusts of wind that blew tumbleweeds that would try to kill you entering turn 5, then try to finish the job again as you came by on the front straight.
It was definitely hard to put down a proper flying lap. Towards the end of the day, it seemed like everyone just decided to full send in the rain and put down the fastest lap that they could as time ran out overall.
Being this is a new track for us, there were several “records” recorded amongst the 86Cup gang and those laps have now been updated on our website for your viewing pleasure. Send us a photo if you print it out and hang it on your fridge for your mom to see.
STOCK Class
The Luke Daley show is in full effect for the 86Cup Stock class with another W added to his column. After the 1.5 second penalty is assessed for Gen 2 cars, he comes home with a 2:06.479*.
Sean Irwin falls closely behind in second place with a 2:06.936. Can Sean make a comeback in the rest of his season to go back-to-back Stock class championships? Only time will tell…
Eric Robi takes home the final spot on the podium in what is probably the last event for ‘ole red, laying down a 2:08.296* after time adjustment. Based on the group chat, it seems like he got his money’s worth out of his rotors.
Honorable mention goes out to William being the lone Gen 1 car in the class this round, putting down a 2:09.267. This lap will go into the records page but it will be exciting to see if someone can break it the next time around for 86Cup.
STREET Class
The party class strikes again, though this time the admins didn’t have to go into the double digits for the results positions which probably hasn’t happened in a bit.
Bobby Tisher comes up with a massive W in the rain! If we’re not mistaken, this is his first win in 86Cup? At least for Street class that is for sure. Congratulations on the top spot Bobby! It’s been awesome seeing you get faster year after year and especially in 2025 in particular you’ve been blazing a trail!
That being said, Ethan Lawrie comes nipping at his heels. Remember when we said time attack is sometimes just about pure luck at the end of it all? Well, Ethan comes up just 0.050 seconds behind Bobby to take second place. As many of us have experienced over the years, Ethan is probably analyzing that lap trying to see where they lost that time.
With rain, mud, lightning, and luck all thrown into the mix, we have Matt Woolsey taking home the final podium spot with a 2:05.345 in his 2023 Toyota GR86. Matt lead the charge for what is otherwise an extremely intense Street class midpack battle looking at the time charts. Everyone from 3rd to 7th was separated by less than half a second. Some Gen 1 cars thrown into the mix there too, suggesting some of the Gen 2 drivers need to go a little bit faster possibly.
MOD Class
Looks like the rain scared off any Mod class friends we were going to make this Round. No one wanted to be the first to claim a “record” lap? Guess we’ll have to wait until next year.
UNLIMITED Class
Is anybody going to stop this man? Jared Ramirez is on a terror in his 2022 Toyota GR86, seemingly in a league of his own setting the only sub-2 lap for the class this round.
Speaking of sub-2, Jeff Flogerzi gets ever so close to such. He sets the non-86Cup specific FA20 NA overall lap record based on our data. He laid down a 2:00.997 at the end of it all. So looks like there’s still about a full second to look for out there. Sounds like it’ll be doable on a completely dry event.
Tim Chan, also in a first gen car, comes home with 3rd place for Unlimited class in his 2014 Subaru BRZ. He put down a 2:02.743 on Kumho Ecsta V730s.
EXHIBITION Class
Exhibition class finally saw two challengers in the running. Our dear friends and sponsors, CounterSpace Garage managed to put down a 2:01.109 in their Silver Bullet 2022 Toyota GR86. They take home the “win” for the class, despite battling the drastic weather changes all day.
Shining Wolf Motorsports is the other contender for the class, with their 2020 Subaru BRZ, they managed to lay down a 2:06.105 lap on GT Radial SX2 RS tires. It’s nice to see that team back in action, having been dormant since a Global Time Attack event in 2021.
And with that, that’s a wrap on Round 3! Thank you to everyone who came out to the event. It seems like a lot of you changed your minds about the track after finally getting to see and drive it yourself for once, even with all of the weather.
Sidenote, did anyone catch the double rainbows at the end of the day? It was a nice touch to end what otherwise was a great day.
Our next round, Round 4, is coming up super fast! Round 4 sees us head up north to visit this wonderful track called Sonoma Raceway. If you haven’t been to it, we highly recommend you come join us!
Once you visit and drive this track, other tracks will pale in comparison. Round 4 will also be a joint event with our NorCal buddies 86 Challenge so there will surely be some fierce competition with folks who may call this their home track.
Registration for the track day portion will be via Speed SF Track Events, so a bit of a change of pace from the usual SV days. The SpeedSF guys run a top notch ship and a lot of them are 86Cup/86Challenge alum so they are all too familiar with our shenanigans.
Round 4 flyer and event details will be posted tomorrow. Hope to see you there!
We’ve been waiting on this for a while, and the 86Cup admins are pleased to announce that along with our Racetreads sponsorship for the series, we are NOW #RaceTreadsAmbassadors !!
The best part of this you ask? You, your mom, your mom’s friends, your dog (if they drive something with tires), your coworkers, etc. etc. can now directly support the series!
How, you ask? By purchasing tires which you were going to do ANYWAY for not only the series but also normal life. Not just GT Radials but ANY tires from the website are eligible from golf cart tires, trailer tires, race tires and much, much more.
All you have to do is use the code “86cup” and/or our website link here or the QR code and we’ll get a little kickback from every sale!
These funds will go directly back into the series to hopefully use for more fun stuff like stickers, maybe merch, fixing go karts, non-driving events, and more.
Feel free to share this out to ANYONE you think needs tires. The more funds we get, obviously the more fun we get to have!
Thank you again Racetreads, let’s make this year great everyone!
86Cup: 86/BRZ Time Attack Series 