I gotta say, I'm very impressed that *anyone* is attempting to run an STI in that series. Right now it's sort of a "knife to a gunfight" situation... it's going to take a ton of work to make the necessary power out of a 2.5L 4-banger to match a racebred Viper or Vette. But it looks like the rest of the car is there: handling, reliability, braking, etc.
From what I've gathered the car is running a GT35R turbo on a built motor.... something that a ton of people are running on the street. Which means two things: a) they've got their own development program funded by idiots like us that spend a ton of money on our own cars trying stuff out
, and b) since they're basically running a "streetable" motor right now, changes are there are some gains yet to be made at the expense of reliability and streetability.
Unfortunately, I don't know the WC-GT rules, so I'm not sure what their options are for power adders. Perhaps WI might help, but they're already running the spec 104 octane fuel, so I'm not sure how much there is to gain there. A bigger turbo and more boost is always an option, but then you have to think about anti-lag to combat the slow spool... which may or may not be legal in the series. Hopefully the smart people working on the car will be able to come up with something!
Bottom line is: Gary did a great job getting an STI into World Challenge, and finished the race placing higher than he qualified. You can't ask for anything more than that considering the stage of development of the car. Congrats Gary!
