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!
The time is finally here! We apologize for the long wait but your 86CUP and Maxxis tire contingency and championship prize details for 2026 have been finalized!
Maxxis joins as the title sponsor for the North American 86CUP time attack series for 2026! Maxxis will provide Maxxis RC-1, VR-1 or VR2 tires as part of their 2026 86CUP Tire Contingency and the 2026 86CUP Championship Podium Prizes.
Maxxis Tires and the 86CUP will provide a discount code to registered 86CUP participants to purchase Maxxis RC-1, VR-1 or VR2 tire products ONLY.
ALL 86CUP competition classes are eligible for the Maxxis Championship Prizes and Maxxis 86CUP Tire Contingency.
For full details please head to over to the contingencies and sponsors tab under “Driver Resources” on our website at https://86cup.us/sponsors/ for full details.
We’re excited for you all to earn some Maxxis tires out there on track!
With this we are ready to truly get the season in full swing.
Round 1 came and went super quick and we’re already almost at March if you can believe it!
Round 2 of the 2026 86Cup presented by Maxxis Tires, sees us head east out into the center of the desert. Desert Center that is, and visit Chuckwalla Valley Raceway on Saturday, March 14th.
This 2.68 mile track may not seem like much on paper but when you’re out there, you’ll find that this track rewards those that are brave enough to really keep their average speed up and utilize the berms to their advantage.
However you don’t want to stay too glued to those berms for too long as the runoff at the edge of the track is usually a steep descent leading to bent wheels and busted subframes, if not worse.
Registration appears to be waitlisted as of this announcement but if you want to join the waitlist, do so ASAP and be sure to put down “86Cup competitor”. Speed Ventures will do what they can to squeeze in as many competition folks as possible at the last second.
As of writing this announcement, there are 17 folks signed up for 86Cup which is awesome to see!
Cabins at Chuckwalla have been sold out for this weekend for months, so best to look elsewhere in the locale for your lodging needs. Otherwise camping is a great way to wake up close to the track! It might be kind of chilly however…
The 86Cup driver registration form link will be up on our home page here about a week before the event. So be sure to fill that out so your times can count and you can potentially get award(s) at the end of it all!
We hope to see you all at Round 2! But if not, hopefully you all can make it out to Sin City with us in April. See ya when we see ya!
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 new season is finally upon us! We are less than one week for Round 1!!
Round 1 sees us kick the season off at the newly-refreshed Streets of Willow at the Willow Springs compound. Tire walls, tire stacks, guardrails, berms and extra runoff will pose a new challenge even to those that have several events here under their belt.
Event registration for this round is basically sold out. We’ll be with our friends at Speed Ventures for the entirety of the 2026 86Cup season, so that makes it easy for you to follow along!
The 86Cup Driver Registration Form is already out as we’re less than a week away, you can find it HERE or on the homepage of our 86Cup website, updated for 2026!
If you’re attending Round 1, be sure to stick around until the end of the event as we’ll be hosting awards same day for the first time in forever for 86Cup!
We hope to see you at Round 1, but if not, there are plenty of chances to catch us for the rest of the year.
New year, new look. We’re ready to bring back the party on track to the 86 and BRZ crowd on track in 2026!!
2026 86Cup will feature potentially ELEVEN rounds! At the moment, we have 9 rounds confirmed, 1 of which will feature our frenemies to the north in NorCal 86Challenge bringing the fight to hallowed grounds at Buttonwillow Classic 13CW in September.
The schedule also sees the 86Cup community make another trek out of state to Nevada at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Outside Road Course on Saturday, April 18th. We hope to see a bunch of our southwestern friends who usually don’t get to make it out to California events join us here. LVMS ORC is an extremely challenging track to nail down perfectly right, throwing even the most experienced 86Cup drivers in for a loop.
Registration for ALL events confirmed so far for 2026 on this schedule posted above will be with our good friends in Speed Ventures, who for some reason still put up with our shenanigans after all these years.
Registration for 2026 86Cup Round 1 on February 21st at Streets of Willow CW is now currently open to the public. There are several competitions occurring this day while also being a very beginner-friendly track so we recommend you sign up now before it’s too late!
Also, we should note that cabins for the weekend of March 14th at Chuckwalla are currently sold out. We always try our best to release the schedule as soon as possible for this possibility but much like tracking your cars, there is ALWAYS someone faster. Chuckwalla cabins for the weekend of November 21st and 22nd for some of our final rounds are still wide open at the time of writing this post. We still recommend reserving a cabin as soon as possible if you’d like to stay at the track. They’re really nice and it’s super convenient to just wake up at the track day of! You may look into renting a cabin HERE.
That’s it for our announcements for 2026 at the moment! We should have some very exciting news coming up shortly in regards to sponsors and rules in the coming weeks! The 86Cup admins are also planning our 2025 Awards Celebration as well, so look forward to that as well.
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!
As you all can assume, it’s about that time of year where the admins, and our (potential) drivers look towards the next season to build their 86 or BRZ into the best build for the upcoming season.
Will we be back in 2026? -Hell yeah we will!
Will there be several rounds on the schedule in 2026? -Definitely!
Will there be some friendly fightin…err…competition with 86Challenge in 2026? -Possibly, most definitely. We may even throw in some random collaborations with folks as well in the greater community, you will just have to see.
That all being said, we want to give you all a heads up that there will be some pretty big changes coming in 2026 so we please ask that you hold off on your builds until the 2026 season is more clearer. Hopefully we can provide an annoucement as soon as after Round 10 has concluded next week but hope to do it before the Christmas break and definitely before the New Year has started.
You all can expect some rules changes (potentially). Stock class will probably remain the closest in form to its current iteration so if you’re aiming for that class, you should be good. The motive for that class has always been the “least amount of mods to (regularly) take your car to the track and have a fun time”.
We’re toying with the idea of a “warm up” round in late January/early February if we think folks would be interested in an exhibition, non-points paying round. It would not count for 86Cup points but it’s a good way for everyone involved to get into the swing of things.
Nonetheless, we ask that you all hold off on buying tires and other mods if you’re specifically aiming for a certain class to be in for 2026!
Please hold any and all questions until we’ve released 2026 information. All questions until then will be ignored until the announcement is made, thank you!
