Ba Gt-p 11.96

[Craig]

A little story for those of you that like to see current model cars run fast down the 1/4 mile.

Gaela has a beautiful BA GT-P that has won a few "show and shine" trophies over the past couple of years but after getting a little bored with the show scene the question was asked "what's it going to take to race this car down the quarter"?

Well my ears pricked up with the thought she must be having me on but no Gaela was deadly serious and then started asking what's the record for this class of car (12.32).

The only condition was that it must be done 100% with no short cuts and if you break it you fix it.......lol

So the plan was set to go after the record and if the car was good enough lets have a crack at the 11 second zone. So I set the car up with standard suspension, slicks and front runners, exhaust off and the seats taken out, all up the car weighed in at 1629kgs + my weight of 107kg the whole combo was 1736kgs.

We had a couple of shakedown runs at the LS1 Nationals on a slippery cold racetrack and cranked out 12.44. Then off to Ballarat for the PFM masters on the 1/8 mile track and running 7.93 @ 89.00 MPH which told me it should run around the 12.0 zone.

So it was off to the AFF drag day test and tune on the friday night, 1st run netted a 12.15 we got the record and then we ran a couple of 12.02's.

The next day at the AFF Nationals i watched a few cars go down the track and thought it looked pretty good out there so it was time to see what this beautiful car can do.

1st run 11.97 @ 118.11 MPH with a 1.69 60 foot time........there it was the 1st GT that is naturally aspirated to run into the 11 second zone, then we backed it up 2 runs later with an 11.96 @ 117.88 MPH run.

That was qualifying out of the way then came the racing side of things, we entered the car in the 12.00 - 12.99 bracket and we ended up taking home the winners trophy with some consistent times all in the low 12's.

The car is a BA GT-P MK2 6 speed manual with only bolt on's and pump gears fitted and a tex clutch with a RIP SHIFTER (the best manual shifter by miles) and 4.10 diff gears.

Racing utes was always fun but running a sedan is a whole different ball game being wary of the weak CV joints etc I just couldn't believe how good this car reacted to everything I threw at it. Launching this thing at 5,500 RPM is a great feeling let me tell you.

Here's some pics....

Cheers Craig