Haltech World Cup Finals @ MIR - Pics

[Goodspeed]

So yesterday I made the trip over to Murr-lin' Int'l Raceway for the 18th running of the Haltech World Cup Finals. Basically, its a 3-day drag racing fest that pits the top racers from various sanctioning bodies against each other - roughly 500 racers in 11 classes in all. People and cars come from all over the US, Caribbean/SA, Europe, Australia/NZ, Middle East, etc. Sunday was the finale and it was jam-packed, but I managed to snap a few decent pics through the crowds. Of particular note are the insane, tiny, drag-Corollas - predominantly from Puerto Rico - that were always a trip to see slide and jitter down the track towards 7-second passes.

Yeah, kinda 2JZ-biased, but enjoy











The Titan Motorsports team out of Orlando, FL. and their 6-second Solara. I was hoping to see the 6-sec "Copper car", their famous drag Supra that they've campaigned in some fashion since about 2000. However, that cars' team and driver were in Bahrain to support a tube-frame Supra they built for Ebrahim Kanoo, the president of Toyota Bahrain. Just the other day, it became the quickest/fastest import ever, running a 6.15 @ 230.2.

Video of the pass

The incredible build can be seen here:

http://www.speedhunters.com/?s=titan+supra


















There were a lot of breakages throughout the day, leading to dropped fluids here and there. The clean-up crew was always running around, speeding up and down the track on their ATV's to check on conditions, and bringing their tractor out to sweep the surface and apply traction compound. I always had my finger on the trigger for the next pass after their work, b/c I knew this could result:







By the end of this pass, the Swift Racing IS300 had passed this Camaro on its way to a low 7 second pass.









Best I could do getting a 230mph car in frame at the far end of the track:



Awesome color on this car shone well in the evening light - the temps dropped precipitously after this shot, so I packed it up and headed home. All of my pics can be seen here.

[fiveoh2go]

What kinda undercarriage carnage did the Reef Blue notch incur after that wheel standing pass?

[BLAIR]

Awesome pics and good hanging out w you there!

[Goodspeed]

Blair - you too man, did you get any shots from the post-sundown races? I know thats when you get to see the cars shoot lots of fire :lol:

What kinda undercarriage carnage did the Reef Blue notch incur after that wheel standing pass?

None that I saw, he stayed in it and completed the pass. However, this white car did the same thing earlier in the day and broke something pretty good, they were shut down for maybe 20 minutes afterwards.