DSX Motorsports (sponsored by Flatirons Tuning) Preps for Super Lap Battle

The following blog post was written by Ryan Dussex of DSX Motorsports.


Soon, the restless air of Austin, Texas will be excited by the shrill of the fastest time attack cars in the country, as hand-selected drivers take to the glorious Circuit of the Americas track to battle for the claim of the fastest lap at the Super Lap Battle USA. We will be fighting for those same bragging rights for our first ever appearance at The Circuit of the Americas.

Less than a week remains before we head towards Austin for the Super Lap Battle Opener, taking place February 16-17. But what is the Super Lap Battle?

The Super Lap Battle is a competition time trial event known as Time Attack. Originating in Japan, this competition format is all about setting the fastest time in one lap! For many drivers, they will push lap after lap to beat their own personal best times. For a few others, they will set lap records across the country that will remain standing for years!

This year’s Super Lap Battle will also feature a drift demo from the infamous Lone Star Drift crew, a rallycross demo from Rally Ready, open testing for The World Challenge TC class cars, as well as a car show! This is the first time that Super Lap has offered free entry to spectators, so if you are in the area, take advantage of this rare opportunity and experience the action in person at The Circuit of the Americas. Or if you can’t make it for the live experience, you can follow the Super Lap Battle on Super Laps Live stream feed on youtube.

This is a semi exclusive event that requires pre-registration and pre-vetting of the drivers. Even though the skills will range from the fastest cars in the country down to near stock cars on street tires, and everywhere in between, there are a few drivers that we are personally excited to see. William Au Yeung will be driving the super fast Unlimited Class Honda Civic. These guys are traveling all the way from Canada for this event and are expected to be a crowd-favorite in the Unlimited Class. Derek Boyd, from Boyd Autoracing, will be running their EVO X in Unlimited and has roots in Colorado. Snail Performance driver Markos Mylonas will be driving his WRX and holds many of the time attack time records in the Street Class. DSX Motorsports will also be running in Street Class, running the WRX sponsored by Flatirons Tuning. IAG performance will have Dan Kroll Piloting racing an STI in the Unlimited Class and should also be fun to watch. Nick Stentiford will be running his s2000 in the Street Class and is another Colorado local. We’ve got a little friendly competition going on. Also rumors that the CanJam Subaru is going to make an appearance all the way from Canada after setting records at the last Global Time Attack event in November.

We’re keeping our goals simple for our first year at this event; first and foremost, nearly all the effort for the event has come from my sponsors and the team leading up to the event. Getting there and not breaking down is by far the most important aspect of the trip for us.

Once we get there, however, we set a personal time to beat: 2:29.248. This is the Top TT4 time set by a BMW M3, and as the car sits, aside from tires, it is essentially an underpowered TT4 car. This will hopefully give us a baseline for the next time we come back to COTA in September.

For our preparation coming from the off-season, we started with a Nasa Spec 6-point roll cage while maintaining the full front interior. The Denver Doughnut Shop did an amazing job and the cage turned out great! The cage hugs the interior of the car and the color even matches the exterior World Rally Blue. Brian and Sam spent a great effort on the details and we couldn’t be happier.  We added some roll bar padding to the driver and passenger side overhead, bracing to alleviate head impact damage from the cage. The cage also allows us to run a full 6-point seat belt system, courtesy of Flatirons Tuning, along with a passenger seat that will provide a passenger the same level of protection and stability on track as the driver, while saving weight over the OE seats.

Then, ZF Design did a full transmission rebuild with a JDM 5th and 6th gear (shorter), carbon syncros, steel shift forks, modified front differential, and a new AP racing Suretrac rear differential. After taking the transmission apart, we realized that we were super lucky to get this knocked out before this event. We are super appreciative of Zach and Jason for squeezing us in with such a small window of time. Any number of components were close to failing and we’re really happy we were able to get this corrected before this event.

We are also excited to be running a 68” 9Lives racing spoiler with prototype Flatirons Tuning uprights and mounts for the GD chassis utilizing the WRX winged trunk.

Next up, we powder coated last season’s Enkei NT03+M  wheels a bright green and mounted some fresh Bridgestone 255mm RE71-R tires specifically for this event. Shoutout to Boost’d Scoops Motorsports who assisted with the mounting and balancing the tires.  We’re excited to see how these perform compared to last years tires.

Final touches include giving the WRX a good cleaning, and applying our sponsors’ vinyl before loading up in the Flatirons Tuning trailer. With just an alignment left to be performed, she will be ready to tear up the track in Texas!

Once the tire smoke settles, and as racers lick their wounds or brag about their accomplishments, we’ll follow up with a full report on our experience at the Super Lap Battle, USA!!!