Welcome back everyone!

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!

Cheers!

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