Sport Compact Car's Ultimate Street Car Challenge

As many of you now know, My car was the winner in the 2004 Ultimate Street Car Challenge. I must say that this was the easiest race event I have ever attended. Everyone friendly, everyone helped the other teams and had a great time. We relaxed, had a great time and only got dirty when we wanted to. I met some very talented tuners and no less than 200 very nice people.

My team and myself arrived at 7:15am at the K&N Engineering facility in Riverside CA on June 3rd, 2004 to embark on an adventure that we will not soon forget. We pulled in, everyone had their duties in hand and proceeded to do the final detail on the car. Twenty minutes later, we unloaded a virtually spotless car off the trailer and parked it where we were instructed. Once checked in and unloaded, we visited with everyone who was not too busy and tried to get a feel of how the day would wrap up. Matt’s Supra parked next to our trailer. The car looked good, clean and ready to compete. Same story with the Skyline. At this point, I figured I was in for a 5th place finish right after the Skyline, supra, Sparco and Buschur Evo VIII cars.

About 9:00am, the drivers meeting was called. They explained how the event would run and announced the points that had already been won for base price. I ended up with 2nd place against the turbo Miata. At that point, they announced that they were ready to start the competition with the dyno. I quickly offered to run first since I was 100% ready and wanted a chance at the coolest air to put down my numbers. To my surprise, I put down 441hp, 448tq. This would ultimately get me a solid just better than mid pack after the skyline, supra and to my surprise, the HPA R32 Volkswagen! I scored 2nd place in the overall power under the curve, second only to the Supra.

At this point, I realized that I had overlooked a very stock looking car that had some serious engineering talent behind it. Since this whole competition was a good portion about the driver, I decided to just leave the car alone and not touch it. I had completed tuning earlier that week and made myself a deal to not touch it for the whole event. I chased down granny and the guy doing drivability evaluations. After these evaluations, the car show judges checked out the car and ranked it high. Needless to say, I was very pleased as I felt all the other cars attending were nearly equal in the show. The day unfolded with no unusual activity, everything going as planned we had a drivers meeting and were updated on the current points spread. Fuel economy wrapped up the day and we proceeded to top off the tank and seal the fuel caps. Roughly 71 miles later, I turned in a solid 43mpg. My next nearest competitor was around 30mpg. The Miata should have won, we are all scratching our heads as to why he did not…

Friday, we met at the drag strip at LACR and started the drivers meeting about 9am. We were explained the details and had a couple of practice launches to test everything. Drag race shook down with me being in mid pack for the ¼ ET and I did exceptionally well in the 20-100mph. ET’s were about 1 second slow per the fastest car that was on his home track. I guess the testing equipment does not measure the distance exactly with just the radar gun. *shrug* I will sort that out in the next couple of weeks at the local track. Braking test, 60-0 I scored 99.29’. I am still waiting to see if this is a Sport Compact Car record or not. They think it’s tied with a viper they tested, or very close. We will see.

At this point, we review scores again. Everyone, including me, was totally stumped by the numbers thus far. We eat lunch and head to The Streets at Willow Springs. 1.021 on the skid pad leaves me with an acceptable place in the rankings. We then finish the road course and gross display of Horsepower.

Points are scored, event is over, we take our last photos and head to the awards banquet. Most of you have already seen the individual place results, I have decided to remove them as of now. You'll have to wait for the Nov-Jan issue to see them again.

Okay, so I am sure you are all now asking.. Where does this leave you overall? Since I really do not like to toot my own horn, I will quote Josh (SCC guy in charge of organizing this). I quote Josh: "Just so you guys know, you got your asses kicked by a home built 13 year old car. Brad could have gone home and not finished after LACR and still won the contest."

I was awarded 1200 points total for this event. From my understanding this is the highest number of points accumulated by one car in this contest thus far. 2nd place was 238pts shy of my score. 2nd through 6th place was very close in points. Needless to say, the road course competition was very fierce!

Thank you to all of those of you who have helped. I hope I do not miss anyone, if I have, please let me know so that I can correct it ASAP:

My team:
Sam Anderson
Casey Rayman
Elizabeth Bedell (my wife)

Below you will find before photos, photos of the building process, as well as some after photos, and some fun pictures from the actual competition itself. I would like to extend a special thanks to my sponsors who played an invaluable role in helping me win the competition.