It is now official! After months of speculation and deliberation we can now officially announce the Tilton Interiors Evo will be racing at the infamous Japanese Tsukuba Circuit at the Revspeed Time Attack Hyper Meet on April 5th and 6th.
The car will be loaded into a container with a myriad of spares including spare engines in early March before sailing across the Pacific. The whole Tilton Team will be travelling across for the event including driver Garth Walden and tuner Scott Khuner. The team principle Kosta Pohorukov is quietly confident that they will do their country proud.
“This will be the first time we’ll be racing there and although we know we have a very fast and reliable car, anyone that has raced time attack at this level will attest – anything can (and often does) happen!” said Kosta. “When something goes wrong in our own backyard we normally have the resources to fix it. It may be a different story in a country on the other side of the world.”
“We now have the full support of Voltex and after the event the car will be shipped back to the Voltex headquarters in Suzuka where Nakijima-san will undertake a new aero program. This program should give us what we need to take on the latest generation of time attack vehicles.”
“I believe we now have the best team on the planet and I feel I owe it to them to taste some victory champagne!”
For those who don’t know, Tilton Interiors team has been at the forefront of Australian time attack racing since the first national Superlap Australia event at Oran Park in 2008. They took an outright victory a year later in 2009 and followed it up by a very strong 4th place at WTAC 2011 in the newly finished silver Evo – just behind the infamous and well sorted Garage Revolution Rx7.
ABOVE: Tilton Evo at the 2011 WTAC. Subtle but significant changes were made for 2012 resulting in spectacular lap times.
But it was in the following 12 months where huge steps were made and in 2012 the car returned to WTAC and spent two days chasing down Nemo and finishing in a hugely creditable second place with a lap time of 1.27.18. A time, we found out later, recorded with only the front wheels driving! This time in previous years would have secured an outright victory but it was now very clear the goal posts have been moved.
The car’s driveline issues have been sorted and it puts its 800 horsepower down through a sequential Holinger transmission. We are also told, the car will be running the higher spec “proper race motor” when it hits the track in Japan and if we know Kosta and his team – they will be giving it everything to try to snatch the lap record.
“For us to be able to go over and race in the home of time attack – Tsukuba – is a dream come true” said driver Garth Walden “Most of us have worked on this project for years and to be able to make it all come together in Japan will be something we will all remember forever. But make no mistake – that will only be a precursor for the one we really want, the WTAC victory!”
ABOVE: Garth Walden, the driver of Tilton Evo want to smash the Tsukuba lap record but his main goal is the WTAC crown.
One of the Superlap Australia crew will be travelling with the Tilton crew to Tsukuba so stay tuned as we bring you all the action!
