It’s long name can be reduced to alphabet soup only car guys and girls might be equipped to decode, but Global Time Attack‘s annual Super Lap Battle at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, remains an unfiltered, full-strength, fan-friendly title fight for the heavyweights in time-attack competition. Rivaled only by the annual World Time Attack Challenge competition in Sydney, Australia, Super Lap Battle invites the world’s top time-attackers in four classes to an internationally recognized circuit (with world-class facilities) to set and reset radial-tire, production-body world records on a stage that gives their achievements relevance to racing fans against World Challenge, IMSA and even Formula 1 best efforts. International travel at this year’s event was stemmed yet again by pandemic conditions, but even so fans and racers in some classes came out in record numbers to compete. GTA’s decision to combine their time-attack competition with competition heats of Gridlife’s Gridlife Touring Cup (GLTC) wheel-to-wheel racing certainly added to that achievement, as did their collaboration with car-show purveyors Just/Vibes and TX’s Lone Star Drift. The Unlimited Class benchmark was set this time around by Kyle Schick in the no. 23 Nissan GTR of Lyfe Motorsports, with […]
Fun fact: Before and after she finished on the podium in at Global Time Attack‘s Super Lap Battle competition at COTA in Austin, TX, Mary Valdez drove her FK8 Honda Civic Type R 1,800 miles exactly as you see it here, to and from her New Jersey home. If that doesn’t rank her as “legit” in today’s age of street-class cars that are almost always trailered to and from the track, I don’t know what would. In an instance of more synchronicities than I could’ve imagined, I had the unique pleasure of shooting Mary and her car on the cold track of the U.S.’s only current Formula 1-certified facility (and where I shot my first IMSA race, a few years ago), for the car’s title sponsor and a favorite product-photography client of mine: Acuity Instruments. For starters, the car’s stunning retro livery was designed by my good bru and fellow motorsports shooter, Rob Wilkinson. As much as I admire Mary’s drive (literally and figuratively) I really dig her car. In addition to lots of Acuity parts, it’s got bits from my hometown friend Pat Linn’s PRL Motorsports, and wheels from Eddie Lee’s Titan 7 — some truly […]