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.
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!
Round 2 was a fun day with absolutely fantastic weather! It was definitely a nice break from the bipolar weather SoCal has been seeing recently, especially with the rain last week.
The 86Cup community fire is burning bright only two rounds in as we had 20+ drivers join us for both rounds so far! For this particular round, we had 27 drivers after everything was said and done.
STOCK Class
It seems we have a return to form for Luke Daley. Two rounds in and two wins/records broken! What a feat. Luke lays down a blistering fast 2:07.074(* after time penalty assessed) in his 2024 Subaru BRZ to take home the top prize for Round 2 at Chuckwalla
Chasing after him is last year’s Stock class champion, Sean Irwin. Who comes home nearly a second behind to take second place.
Lastly for this class, we have Harry Galbraith in a 2019 Toyota 86. As we mentioned in the last round’s writeup, we’ve been seeing Harry move up and up the timecharts over the years and it’s awesome to see him grab another podium here. Nicely done!
STREET Class
Ethan Lawrie claims another victory this round but also claims a record for Street Class. We saw the speed developing last year when he joined us briefly and we’re keeping the magnifying glass close on him this year!
86Cup veteran Brian Guan joins us for this round. Brian rocked a 2:04.824 at the end of Saturday’s adventures.
Speaking of developing speed, Bobby Tisher comes home with another podium as well. It’s been great to see Bobby rise over the years through his participation with 86Cup. That’s ultimately what this community is all about!
MODIFIED Class
Still the loneliest class in 86Cup it seems…
BUT, we had Garrett Wilson join us for Chuckwalla festivities.
Despite the record breaking lap times, lengthy class lists, etc. at the end of the day we’re in it for the fun and the community and that’s what’s ultimately important. Hope you can join us for more rounds Garrett, and don’t be scared, we’re friendly!
UNLIMITED Class
In Unlimited class we had the usual suspects but also some new faces! Both literally and figuratively.
Jonathan Geisinger takes home the final podium spot for Round 2, just getting oh so close to the magical sub-2 at Chuckwalla.
No stranger to 86Cup but making the jump to Unlimited finally, we have Jeff Flogerzi taking home second by laying down a 1:59.349 in his first gen.
And with the top spot, 86Cup’s resident fast man at the top, we have Jared Ramirez taking home pole with a 1:57.542 for the class. This man is on a rocket ship and he is not to be threatened with!
EXHIBITION Class
Last, but certainly not least, we have our sponsor, CounterSpace Garage in their 2022 Toyota GR86 shop car for Exhibition class sporting some new mods for to test out. Looks like things panned out for them as they bring home a 1:56.410 for the day.
Event results will be posted shortly to our website. Points standings will be updated soon, we’re currently just figuring out the best way to display them to you all!
Next up is Round 3 where we FINALLY get to tackle “The Circuit” at Buttonwillow! We’ll be there Saturday, April 26th with Speed Ventures. Event poster flyer and details to come tomorrow.
Reminder we also have our 2024 Awards Ceremony coming up on Sunday, March 30th at the K1 Circuit in Winchester. We hope you all can make it out! Even if you’re not driving the karts, or won an award last year, or even drove with us last year, we hope you can come on through and just hang!
Also coming up at the end of this month is the final days for contingency forms with Racetreads/GT Radial. The deadline is March 31st. Do not wait, do it NOW before you forget!
86Cup’s tire contingency program and championship cash prizes have returned for 2025 with a new look!
Race Treads (Racetreads.com) will be organizing the GT Radial Tire Contingency Redemption and Championship Prizes for 2025.
If you’re participating in GT Radial Stock or GT Radial Street Class you have the chance to take home up to a $1000 prize for earning the top spot at the end of the year!
For those looking to participate in the GT Radial Tire Contingency Program, for every ten (10) championship points earned on GT Radials, you are eligible for one (1) free tire. There is a maximum redemption of eight (8) tires for the 2025 season.
Race Treads can only assure the sizes of SX2 tires in 215/45R17, 225/45R17, or 245/40R17 at any given time but any SX2, SX2 RS or HPY qualify for contingency claims.
Requirements that span across both programs: – Fender, quarter panel and windshield decals will need to be run at every event for those registered in the programs. All decals will be provided at no cost to competitors. Specific guidelines in the graphics below.
– Purchase GT Radial SX2 or SX2 RS tires exclusively through Racetreads.com after February 15th, 2025. GT Radial tires that are previous 86Cup redemptions or were purchased before the aforementioned date but after January 1st, 2023 are still eligible to be used for competition for the 2025 season. Proof of purchase will be required.
– Compete EXCLUSIVELY on GT Radial SX2 or SX2 RS tires for events in the 2025 Racetreads.com 86Cup region and class that you registered for.
It is imperative that you have reviewed all of the details shown in the photos below for the complete details on 2025 programs from Race Treads/GT Radial.
Registration for any and all programs is due by March 31st, 2025. You must submit THIS form to the organizers by this deadline in order to be accepted.
***SPECIAL NOTE*** For any competitors looking to claim tires for the 2024 season tire contingency, please continue to reach out to the established points of contact for previous seasons, thank you.
Round 2 of the 2025 Racetreads GT Radial 86Cup takes us to the desert to visit Chuckwalla Valley Raceway on Saturday, March 15th.
Registration for the track day portion will be via Speed Ventures. The 86Cup Driver Registration Form for this round will open a week before the event.
Cabins are sold out for this weekend so either bunk up with someone who has one or look to amenities in the nearby area.
We don’t get to go out to Chuckwalla too often in the year so now’s the time to get some practice for the later rounds here, even if we’re going the opposite direction.
86Cup: 86/BRZ Time Attack Series 