Bittersweet for the 86Cup gang as this is our last event before a lengthy but well-deserved summer break! We had a bunch of folks experience Laguna Seca for the first time and a few veterans pop in to tackle their former personal bests.
Sadly, we had no folks in Unlimited class. It seems all of them were playing a bit further up north getting out of the 86Cup kiddie pool. Nonetheless there were some fierce battles between everyone who showed up!
So many upsets and PBs hit in 86Cup Competition Session 3 that the admins basically wanted to chuck their laptop across the garage! We’re kidding, we actually love to see this, but it just means you could go faster in the colder morning sessions.
Round 5 Class Winners are as follows:
Stock – Sean Irwin Street – Adam Johnston Modified – Bobby Tisher Unlimited – 😦
Bobby claims another $100 from the folks at OS Giken for being the fastest Modified class lap of the day. Both Bobby and Joseph have now won this award twice. Who’s going to be the first to get it three times this year?? Only time will tell.
Thank you all who came out to Laguna Seca with us. We hope you had fun! Enjoy some rest during your summer break but also get those cars prepped, the heat will surely crank up competition wise in the latter half of the year.
We may get together for a bbq/party over the break but we also hope you can join us at the K1 Circuit later this month for our 2025 awards celebration! It doesn’t matter if you won an award or even participated in 2025, it is open to anyone who wants to attend. DM us if you’re interested.
Thank you to Maxxis Tires for their support in presenting the series and providing the awesome tires for our competitors to smash through their personal bests. Thank you to CounterSpace Garage for the technical support but also the CSG Spec brake pads that won every single class this 86Cup round. Lastly, thank you OS Giken for providing for the Fastest Lap of the Day award and support of the series as well.
With all of that, have a nice summer! See you in September!
After a couple of roadtrip events, the 86Cup community had a small homecoming for Round 4. Making way to some action at Willow Springs International Raceway before it goes through a “reimagining” and the potential to never run the classic, one-way CW layout ever again going into turn 8 at over 115 mph.
Despite the heat, and the anxiety of the high risk of “Big Willow”, we still had a great showing for Round 4. Though it seems all of the 86Cup partygoers were partying it up in Stock class. Which is totally fine, as it’s arguably our favorite class! (sorry Street/Mod/Unlimited)
Round 4 Class Winners are as follows: Stock – Sean Irwin Street – Phuoc Hai Tran Modified – Joseph Alfonso Unlimited – Stephen Ellis
Joseph is the first person this year to win the OS Giken $100 Modified class fastest lap award twice this year. We’re sure he’ll be racking up a few more given that he had the 2nd fastest lap out of all of the 86Cup competitors during the competition sessions.
With that, we are nearing ever closer to our well-deserved summer break! We do have one last round to squeeze in and it’s a good one! Round 5 will take place at Laguna Seca Raceway on Saturday, May 30th. Live out your video game dreams of sending it through the corkscrew (hopefully on track). At the time of this post, Saturday is already supposedly sold out so join the waitlist if you haven’t yet and hope to get in! If you do join the waitlist with Speed Ventures, be sure to state that you’re an 86Cup competitor.
Thank you again to our sponsor Maxxis Tires for allowing us to present this series to you all. CounterSpace Garage for their parts support but also helping the community go faster with their vast knowledge of the 86/BRZ platform. And lastly a thank you to OS Giken for allowing us to provide the 86Cup “Fastest Lap” challenge prize to you all. This season has ramped up rather quickly and we couldn’t do it without them or you all in the community wanting such!
We’ll see you in Monterey in just a few weeks, but if not, we’ll see you after the summer break!
P.S. Speaking of summer break, we’re aware we still need to wrap up 2025 properly so look for some news soon on an Awards party/gathering soon for you all to properly close out that awesome year with us!
High stakes with high rewards for Round 3 as the 86Cup gang traveled out to Sin City to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Outside Road Course.
You guys came out in full force which was awesome to see! We were also joined by a lot of new friends and some Vegas locals. We welcome you all, and hope you had a ton of fun playing with us in the Vegas heat. Perhaps you’ll join us for some CA events but if not, we hope to see you as soon as next year!
Round 3 Class Winners are as follows: Stock – Ryan Robinson Street – Eric Robi Modified – Will Wattanawongkiri Unlimited – Jared Ramirez
Bobby Tisher claims the OS Giken $100 Modified class fastest lap bounty for Round 3! If we never see Bobby again, then he definitely took that $100 after Lotus of Siam and gambled it away to win big…
Round 4 is up next and coming QUICK! Round 4 will take place at Willow Springs International Raceway (aka Big Willow). If you’ve never been to Big Willow, or even if you have, this is probably one of your last chances to drive the track in its current configuration as the track will undergo a “reimaging” in the near future. Hopefully this leads to new layouts!
As always, a massive thank you to our sponsors Maxxis Tires, CounterSpace Garage, and OS Giken for supporting the series and allowing us to support roadtrip events such as this outside of California. Hopefully we’ll be able to venture out to farther events some day. We want to also give a massive thank you to Speed Ventures for hosting us and putting up with our shenanigans as always. We wouldn’t want it any other way for our track organizer
We hope to see you all at Round 4 at Big Willow, but if not, we’ll catch up soon!
Drivers faced near triple digit temperatures all day long even BEFORE the HPDE registration tables opened at 6:45am. Despite that, we still had double digit attendance which is awesome to see!
The Gen 1 FA20 gang asserted their dominance this weekend taking half the 86Cup class wins, super exciting to see. And both winners in a Gen 1 did such despite battling car issues that took them out for a portion or even the rest of the day.
Round 2 Class Winners are as follows: Stock – Ryan Ching Street – Brian Guan Modified – Joseph Alfonso Unlimited – Stephen Ellis
Joseph is also the first participant this year to claim the OS Giken $100 bounty for the fastest (Modified class) lap time of the day! So he’ll be getting a crispy $100 bill to use towards Vegas…however he sees fit
Speaking of Vegas, Round 3 takes place Saturday 4/18 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Outside Road Course (try saying that ten times real fast)! Registration for the track day portion is up and 86Cup already has double digit participants which is exciting! Sounds like we’ll have some folks from the greater Southwest join us and hope you can too!
Until then thank you to our sponsors Maxxis Tires, CounterSpace Garage and OS Giken for their support and allowing us to continue this series. And thank you to Speed Ventures for hosting a tightly organized day despite the heat. Hope to see everyone real soon!
Drivers faced a new layout change with the Turn 9B chicane bypass and longer skidpad. General consensus was that it was something different and therefore somewhat exciting! You not only had to really trail brake at the end of the back straight after the bowl, but you also had to not scrub as much time on the “long form” skidpad where basically half your lap could be thrown away.
We had more than 5 newcomers join the #86Cup ranks which is always exciting to see!
Round 1 Class Winners are as follows: Stock – Ryan Robinson Street – Phuoc Hai Tran Modified – Kevin Liu Unlimited – Matt Rojana
Round 2 will take place on Saturday 3/14 at Chuckwalla. It’s already waitlisted it seems so hope to see you there! And if you didn’t sign up, best to get ahead and sign up for Round 3 in Vegas! Every round is with Speed Ventures this year so we can’t be too hard to miss!
Thank you to all that came out for this event! We hope to see you soon!
The final results post is always bittersweet as this obviously means that the year is over. We want to emphasize how awesome this season was as a whole so we’ll leave our parting words here at the top of this post before getting into the nitty gritty, which is not our usual.
(Southern) California is blessed to have a track season with great weather basically all year-round with the exception of some summer months which is basically unheard of elsewhere in the country.
The final results post is the culmination of YOUR driving and skill progress through several track dates across this wonderful state over the course of this year. It’s very fitting that we close out this season with a return to arguably the birthplace of North American time attack, Buttonwillow 13CW, for the final round of this great time trial series. We hope that your times show for everything you’ve learned so far.
Points will be updated shortly on the website. As mentioned before, our first place winners in each class have more or less been decided a couple rounds ago but a few classes came down to the absolute final session(s) for Round 10, so hope you clawed your way to the top 2 or 3!
And with that…let’s dive into it one last time!
STOCK Class
Stock class was rather quiet this round. Usually there’s a few folks that join the fray but for the final round we had only 4 brave souls come through. Scott Irwin starts off the podium with a 2:08.998* in his 2023 Toyota GR86. Respectable given the stock class limitations.
Fresh off the plane from a stint in Europe where he may or may not have been scouted by Formula 1 teams or Misha at the Nurburgring, we have Sean Irwin coming in second place for Round 10. Seemingly the only SoCal challenger to Mr. First Place, Luke Daley, Sean was just half a second behind Luke at the end of the day. Sean seems to be so fast that the jet lag is still trying to catch up to him.
Last but certainly not l(e)ast, we have Master Luke himself. Putting on an absolute masterclass all year in what a stock 86/BRZ is capable of. Luke closes out the season with a 2:07.395* once timing closed for 86Cup scoring.
Honorable mention goes out to Philip Fernandez who joined us for this last round of 86Cup in his new to him 2025 Toyota GR86! This was his first track day in the car and his first 86Cup round ever, so we look forward to having you join us again in the hopefully near future!
STREET Class
The party class showed up again one last time for 2025. With 8 drivers in the Street class mix, there were sure to be some battles. Street class also had a multi-person tie in the points standings for the last podium spot coming down to Round 10 so it literally comes down to this! Hopefully the timesheets reflect the points you need to succeed and claim bragging rights in this otherwise dogfight of a class!
The plot armor prevails once again and with his Trueno Edition GR86, Ethan Lawrie goes on to win this round for 86Cup with a blistering fast 2:01.148. We should mention that Ethan also joined the ranks of OnGrid’s Time Attack Sport+ class and with that time stood above the rest of the competition there. Double Ws for the weekend is always a good thing. This may have been one of the last times we see Ethan (in 86Cup at least) as he’s clearly too fast for us, and just a rare anomaly of a comet in the 86Cup ranks, so please let’s give him a digital round of applause!
With position 2 on the podium, we’re left scratching our heads a bit at this one. The only logical explanation is that you FA24 kiddos were asleep at the wheel at Buttonwillow. Phuoc Hai Tran in his 2014 Scion FR-S managed a time of 2:05.016 once the Buttonwillow dust settled for the day. Obviously as this paragraph mentions, it was good enough to beat the rest of Street class (after Ethan of course) but also beat Phuoc Hai’s own personal PB at 13CW which is amazing to see. With this stellar performance, we believe this really shakes things up in the Street class latter half podium battle.
MODIFIED Class
In Modified class we had one lone ranger with Toshihiro Nakamae joining us again after his Chuckwalla adventures in his 2024 Toyota GR86. While no points were earned due to him joining us late in the season, a W is still a W and is a reminder you have to show up, in order to win. We think some bald guy said something like it doesn’t matter if it’s a second or a minute, winning is winning or whatever.
UNLIMITED Class
This was a rather exciting class to follow throughout the day. We had some new/old faces join us for Unlimited Class.
To start us off for this round, Oren Holzman claims the top spot for the class on Nankang CR-S in his 2014 Scion FR-S with a time of 1:58.293. Good enough for the second fastest time of the day from 86Cup results.
Bartek Barakonskk was the next person to follow in the class, nearly going sub-2 in 86Cup scored sessions with a 2:00.199 in his 2013 Scion FR-S on Yokohama A052.
In third, we finally have the first person to score points for this round in Fast Frank in his 2025 Toyota GR86, nailing down a 2:01.763 on Bridgestone RE71RS. It seems Frank is slowly but surely returning to 86Cup form and we’re excited to see what he does with the car in 2026!
EXHIBITION Class
Finally, we have the gang from CounterSpace Garage. Not sure if they passed around their 2022 Toyota GR86 like Pokemon cards on a school playground this round but we do know that their resident Stig did wheel it at some point!
All we know is that they managed to put down a 1:56.290 before heading home early for the day and leaving us with some delicious sweets. Thank you for your support all year long guys!
And with that, that’s a wrap! Championship podiums will be announced shortly. Some 2026 details will trickle in soon, so stay tuned here, or on our socials, or our website at 86cup.us for updates!
Happy Holidays, and (early) Happy New Year to everyone!
This will be a dual post since the doubleheader weekend features a lot of the same drivers (and also similar times).
First off, we want to thank everyone that came out to our 86Cup doubleheader weekend at Chuckwalla! This is always our favorite time of year where the competition is heating up championship-wise but also because we’ve buddied up with each other over the course of several rounds.
Which makes it the perfect venue for our annual 86Cup Chuckwalla potluck/barbecue! Long bois and burgers were had courtesy of our friends at CounterSpace Garage. Thank you to everyone who brought something to the potluck or just showed up! We hope everyone who checked in to the barbecue had a great time!
Weather was wet-ish for most of Saturday. Despite that, the results sheet showed it was definitely PB weather as most folks went faster Saturday for Round 8 vs Sunday. Not sure if the hotter weather or the stomachs full of Costco hot dogs had to do with such slowdown in times.
We were joined by 86Cup tenured veteran and champion Kevin Schweigert. Making his return to 86Cup and SoCal for the first time this year it was awesome to have him back! He definitely came through and cleaned house which we’ll go on to explain.
ROUND 8 – Saturday STOCK Class No secret here, Luke is the top dog for this class this year. Round 8 was no different with Luke absolutely killing it time-wise being nearly 3 seconds ahead of the closest competitor. His unadjusted time of 2:06.266 is also good enough to earn him a class record for Stock class for FA24 cars. Congratulations Luke! Post the lap!
Next up we have Scott Irwin feelin’ free again after this doubleheader weekend. It might be due to the fact he no longer has a passenger weight ballast every single round nowadays. Scott manages to pull off a 2:10.781* after his time was adjusted for the FA24 time penalty.
Lastly we have Stephen Krug completing the Stock class podium for Round 8 at Chuckwalla.
STREET Class The party started in the paddock and then moved to the cabins Saturday night it seemed as Stock class had multiple dogfights happening all at once!
Kevin comes through and takes the Street class win for this round (technically) and also takes the Street class Chuckwalla CW record with his time of 2:02.401. There’s more fire here than the barbecue later in the night.
Ethan Lawrie takes home second place for this round, coming ever so close to Kevin with a 2:03.036 for his efforts on Saturday.
Rounding out the podium we have Mr. Eric Robi showing that he’s fully acclimated to Eyesight and whatever knick knacks are standard in the 2025 Toyota GR86s with his own personal 2025 GR86 laying down a respectable 2:04.632 for Saturday. Nicely done!
MODIFIED Class Chuckwalla always brings out some Mod class folks to the fray and this weekend was no different.
Brian Guan put on his big boy pants with some Falken RT660+ on his 2016 Subaru BRZ, moving from his usual Street class rankings to Mod class for this round. Due to the class change, he scores no points but he laid down a blistering fast 2:03.399. Well done good sir.
Garrett Wilson in his 2024 Subaru BRZ tS falls in line just a second behind Brian for Saturday after the on track action came to a close. The 10 points he earned here will definitely pad the enormous lead he already had in the points standings.
Coming in third for Mod class we have Toshihiro Nakamae in his 2024 Toyota GR86 putting down a time of 2:09.009 for the day.
UNLIMITED Class Claiming the top step for Unlimited on Saturday was Mike Fink in his 2014 Scion FR-S. Mike put down a 1:58.738 on Toyo Proxes RRs.
Isamu Kakitani claims second place for Saturday with his time of 2:01.223 on Yokohama A052.
Joseph Alfonso closes out the podium in his 2023 Toyota GR86 putting down a time of 2:01.623 coming ever so close to Isamu.
EXHIBITION Class Fresh from SEMA, our friends and sponsors at CounterSpace Garage put their 2022 Toyota GR86 into the fray with the 86Cup folk. With fresh aero courtesy of SARD, with the Stig’s rusty cousin they managed to sub-2 for the day with a tiem of 1:59.960. Well done gents!
ROUND 9 – Sunday STOCK Class Not letting the heat or the hot dogs from the potluck drag him down, Luke Daley claims the top spot again for Stock class for Round 9 on this doubleheader weekend. Saturday was definitely the top time as Luke manages to only pull off a 2:08.607* after the time penalty was assessed for FA24 cars.
Scott Irwin also follows in Luke’s footsteps coming in second again at Chuckwalla behind Luke. Scott manages to do a 2:11.036* after the time penalty was assessed.
Coming out of retirement and knocking the dust off is Matt Thai. Some say he was joyriding Luke’s BRZ at some point in the day. Matt manages to do a 2:15.472* before the weekend wraps up. Thanks for joining us Matt, come back soon!
STREET Class Kevin Schweigert also claims the top spot two days in a row, nabbing the victory for Round 9 with a 2:02.629 in his 2023 Toyota GR86.
Ethan Lawrie again coming ever so close to besting Kevin with a time of 2:03.064 in his Trueno Edition GR86.
Bobby Tisher joins the podium party for Round 9, besting Eric Robi by two tenths to claim the last spot with his 2023 Subaru BRZ.
MODIFIED Class Garrett Wilson gets the W for Sunday in his 2024 Subaru BRZ with a time of 2:05.896.
Oscar Zhu joins us for the first time this year in his 2022 Subaru BRZ. Oscar managed to put down a time of 2:13.355 for his foray with the 86Cup gang. Oscar, if you see this, we hope you join us for more rounds in the future!
For Sunday, Toshihiro Nakamae claims the final spot on the podium in Mod class in his 2024 Toyota GR86. It looks like he was ultimately having issues as Toshihiro only manages to put down a time of 2:21.041 at the end of it all.
UNLIMITED Class Isamu Kakitani narrowly edges out Jonathan Geisinger for the top spot in Unlimited for Round 9! Isamu put down a 2:01.922 for Sunday and Jonathan laid out a 2:01.940.
Joseph Alfonso claims the final spot on the podium for Round 9. Unfortunately, it looks like he was also having vehicle issues as he only managed to put down times in the practice session and not any 86Cup eligible counting sessions for Sunday.
And that is a wrap for Chuckwalla!
Thank you again to everyone who came out! If you made it this far in reading this, thank you for taking the time to read double the results for this awesome doubleheader weekend!
We’ll obviously look to add a Chuckwalla doubleheader weekend on our calendar again for next year. You’ll just have to stay tuned!
Tomorrow, we also have a small announcement regarding the 2026 season so stay tuned for that as well.
Points standings on the website will be updated to reflect Rounds 8 and 9 shortly, most definitely before Round 10. If you’re looking to redeem points for your tire contingency with Racetreads, please let an 86Cup admin know and we’ll help you out accordingly.
Reminder, Round 10 is in 10 short days! The season is almost over! It is with OnGrid. For 86Cup participation, all you need is a transponder and an 86Cup Driver Registration form which will be released on our website a week before the event start. We hope to see you all there for one last hurrah for 2025!
Can you believe that 86Cup has not visited the classic Buttonwillow Raceway Park Race #13 in a clockwise configuration in over a year and a half?!?
We know, it definitely seems crazy to think about but we haven’t been here since April 2024. It’s weird thinking about how the scheduling books went that way.
Nonetheless we shook off the rust this past Saturday and ran this classic time attack configuration. It was great to see a healthy amount of competitors, both new and old come join us for what was otherwise a day of beautiful weather at the track!
STOCK Class
(puts on beanie and baggy clothes) He can’t keep getting away with this!!
This is what we say to ourselves as once again Mr. Luke Daley comes out on top for the SoCal 86Cup GT Radial Stock class. It seems that Luke has become well adjusted to his 2024 BRZ and is tearing up the track any chance he gets with us.
Right behind him less than half a second away, we have Mr. Sonny Watanasirisuk, ironically in Luke’s BRZ, getting his first test of the oh so sweet FA24 motor and the Gen 2 86/BRZ platform in general. Hopefully this won’t be Sonny’s last foray (in a Gen 2 car), we miss you!
Claiming the last podium spot is Scott Irwin who without his usual posse seems to be returning back to form now that the car can actually rest in-between sessions.
Lastly, we want to recognize this person’s efforts for taking on the otherwise seemingly terrifying Buttonwillow Raceway Park Classic track, Celeste Alvarez! Celeste joined us earlier this year back in June in her 2025 Toyota GR86. While she didn’t run a transponder for this event, we still want to recognize her for taking her GR86 to the track and coming out to learn Buttonwillow! We’re sure you’re in good hands and hope to see you more in the future!
STREET Class
If this is usually the “party class” then for this particular round, the folks in Street class were finally sent to detention for goofing around. It seems our mainstays for this group all had miscellaneous issues at some point in the day. Some worse than others, but we’re glad everyone is okay and we were all able to drive home safely, even if egos were bruised a tad.
If Luke is the king of Stock class, then Ethan is the king of Street class for the 2025 season. It feels like every round he attends, he’s on the top of the podium, and usually breaking (or getting close to) a record for his efforts each round. While no records were broken this time, Ethan does go home with a blazing fast 2:04.067 for Round 7 at Buttonwillow.
In second place, we’re not sure if he just capitalized on the faults of his cohorts and/or he finally got used to the new build, but Eric Robi takes home the next available podium spot in his 2025 Toyota GR86.
Next up, another Trueno edition GR86 claims the other odd position on the podium. Ryan Robinson laid down a 2:07.365 to claim the final spot. It’s been nice keeping up with Ryan and his adventures and nice to see some hard work on track finally pay off with a podium.
MODIFIED Class
(tumbleweeds starting to pile up)
UNLIMITED Class
Fresh from their Gridlife fortes being shown to audiences on the opposite side of the country (and globe?), we have Jared Ramirez reminding everyone that there ain’t no rest for the wicked as he lays the foundation for the 86Cup records page for FA24 cars in Unlimited class. Jared was the only one who managed to “sub 2” on Saturday before having a wild go in the later sessions in the day. Hopefully this round gives Jared some great seat time before tussling with the folks at Global Time Attack at Finals in the first week of November. Good luck Jared!
In second place, and no stranger to this place. In ever pursuit of the magical sub-2 club, we have Jeff Flogerzi in his FA24-swapped 2013 Scion FR-S. Jeff has been chiseling away at his times for what seems like forever but we’re sure once he crosses that threshold, it will taste ever so sweet to see the time he’s been waiting for on the stopwatch.
For third place we have Keith Wong in his 2016 Scion FR-S, laying down a 2:03.890 on Yokohama A052s for the day.
While Keith has joined us in previous years for 86Cup, this is his first round of 2025 so he gets zero points awarded. So a friendly reminder that if you join 86Cup for the first time in a calendar year or simply switch classes after the September round, you’re awarded zero points for your new class as if you had not participated anyway in order to not affect any championship battles that may be taking place.
And that’s a wrap for Round 7!!
Thank you to EVERYONE that came out for some 13CW action at Buttonwillow. Like we said earlier, we haven’t ran it in a while, so we’re glad we got to see y’all run it again. We’ll be running it back again for our final round of the year in December with OnGrid, so sign up now if you haven’t!
Speaking of which, Rounds 8 and 9 of the 2025 Racetreads GT Radial 86Cup season will be taking place at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway November 22nd and 23rd with Speed Ventures. If you have not signed up yet, you better to do so expeditiously!
This weekend sells out every single year and we’re sure this year will be no different. Saturday is already looking pretty full so you may have to resort to being waitlisted for Saturday and sign up for Sunday. On that same note, the cabins at Chuckwalla are sold out so please look to find residence in Palm Springs/etc. if you’re looking to come out for these rounds.
We’ll be releasing the round flyer for this round tomorrow, so stay tuned!
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!
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!
86Cup: 86/BRZ Time Attack Series 