The end of July marked a big milestone for my Skunk2-powered Civic Type R. After more than a year of work and some minor setbacks (most of which were from life’s ups and downs, not issues with the car for once) we finally got in some much needed track time and testing.
This is the second year that Super Street magazine has held its FF Battle. Super Street was nice enough to invite Sportcar Motion back for the event this year. Last year Loi Song went out there with the Integra Type R, dominated, and went home with a First Place win. What makes this event so unique is that it’s a select group of real, street-driven cars that you can actually relate to. And what really made it fun is that General Tires sponsored the entire event, providing tires to everyone. No fancy R compound tires either, just good quality everyday all-season tires that your mom would buy. That made it really interesting as no one had an advantage on track due to tires. What made this year different from last year’s is that they added a drag racing portion to the challenge. We were all looking forward to this part of the event but, unfortunately, due to scheduling it had to be cancelled. The event was then based off of dyno day and a day out on the track. There was an interesting collection of nine cars selected to compete in the battle this year. This wasn’t your average group of cars either.
With our schedules being pretty tight in July, we only had a week to get the car ready for battle. The car was currently set up for the track on a nice set of Toyo R-888s. Since we were going to be running new tires supplied by General Tire, we needed to make some minor adjustments to the setup. First stop was up to Skunk 2 to pick up some additional parts. The front and rear camber kits were no-brainiers, so I chose the tried and true Pro Series kits from Skunk2. I have been using Skunk 2 camber kits for a long time; this kit was just a replacement to my old, corroded, four-year-old kit that has been banged around for years on the track with no problems. Next we needed to be sure that the car was going to stop on a dime. Hawk blue brake pads were installed all around. Fresh fluids are always a must, too! Motul brake fluid was changed out along with Mobil 1 motor oil.
Tires were in high demand so they were last to arrive. Being short on time, we threw the un-mounted tires in the truck and headed out at 5a.m. on Thursday to Raceline for the dyno challenge. Despite some minor hiccups with the brand-new dyno, the car did great. After our turn on the dyno we headed next door to Temple City Auto Repair to mount the new tires and get the car on the alignment machine to get everything dialed in. Since tire sizing was limited, I added a fresh set of rims along with the new General Tires. The car was ready to go!
After a nice dinner with General Tires, we woke bright and early to head out to California Speedway for the track portion of the battle. Since I haven’t been feeling 100 percent lately due to a car accident, we asked our good friends Tim Kuo and Skunk2 sister company KraftWerks’ Oscar Jackson Jr. to come out and pilot my car for the event. Junior arrived with his dad, Oscar Jackson Sr., to help out in the pits and set up the car. This was an interesting task for these guys as neither of them had driven a right-hand-drive car before. I have been driving right-hand-drive for many years now and tend to forget how crazy it is the first time out, relearning the maneuvering and blind spots. Due to the limited sizing of tires, we ended up having some minor issues with the tires and had to end the day early as they were unsafe to go out for the last session of the day. Nonetheless, they both did a great job out there!
After loading up the car we picked up a fresh set of General Tires from their warehouse for the next day’s track event and headed over to Skunk 2 with Oscar Jr. and Sr. to make some adjustments to the alignment. Finally, the car was all ready to go out to track day number two. We went out early to the track and shaved the tires to try to get a little better performance out of them. After some group photos for FF Battle, we were back out on the track! The adjustments made possible by Oscar Sr. proved to have shaved some seconds off of our lap times. Since we learned last-minute that the second day’s times would not count for the FF Battle, we changed out our tires back to the usual Toyo R-888s for the rest of the day.
We learned a lot about what the car needs for next time and had a great time out there. Thanks again to Skunk 2 and Kraftwerks USA for the support with this event. Be sure to pick up a copy of Super Street magazine when the article comes out! Next up will be Super Lap Battle in November!
Morgan Jade
