Straight off the boat and to the race track! // Honda-Swapped Ferrari Time Attack

StanceWorks Video Transcript

Well guys after 2 months since we last saw the car and almost 5 months since it left the United States the Ferrari 244 gtk is finally back in the US and at The Stance workk shop honestly I didn’t realize how empty the shop felt until this thing was parked back in its space

I wouldn’t say that I forgot that I owned it but I did forget what it’s like to have it around after all it was only in the shop for a few short days after we finished it up before we put it in a container and sent it off to Australia

But now that it’s back we need to put together a game plan I was not expecting to have the Ferrari back yet I was originally told it’d be a few days from now but yesterday we got word that the car was released from customs and we drove all

The way up to Oakland to pick it up and then all the way back in one shot because that leaves us with today to get the car ready because tomorrow is the first day of GTA finals practice and competition we’ve got our work cut out

For us but I want to make it this is why we built this car but we’ve got to get it up in the air we got to change our tires we got to change all of our fluids and we’ve got some nuts and bolts to

Check we got to just kind of give the car a thorough once over and make sure it’s competition ready we’ve got to work itut out for us so let’s get to it the world time attack challenge concluded on a Saturday and by Sunday morning the Ferrari had already been

Loaded in into a container for its journey home it still wears not only all of its stickers from the event but the dirt and rubber that it accured from its time on track as well so a good cleanup is in order so we can tell what’s new

And what’s not especially when it comes to leaks now for those of you following Along on a calendar at home we picked the car up on Wednesday November the 8th that was an 8-hour drive to Oakland and an 8h hour drive home allinone stint which gives us Thursday the 9th for

Preparation practice for the global time attack finals begins Friday morning so we’ve only got about 36 hours at our disposal that means we don’t really have time to make any major changes to the platform so we’re going to race it in the exact same setup and configuration

That we did in Australia instead we’re just going to focus on making sure that it’s in Racing order the two most important steps on that agenda are to make sure one we fill it with fluids we had to drain the oil and the fuel before

It went on a boat and then we also need to make sure that all of the hardware underneath this car is nice and tight we raced it and then loaded it into a container so who knows what came loose during its final sessions if anything at all it’s better to check and have

Everything tight than to find out the hard way at button Willow that something is coming Apart as the torque of everything is checked and bolts are tightened down I mark it with a paint pen if I Mark the Fastener or the washer and nut along with the part it’s attached to I can easily tell at any point later if it’s come loose with just a visual

Inspection there are a lot of pieces of hardware on this thing so it is a timeconsuming process but I’m focusing most of my efforts on the suspension and steering because those would be the most catastrophic should they fail on track things like seat mounts and even engine mounts are also relatively critical so

We’ll make sure they’re all tight as well before we put the car back on the ground under the hood of the 244 gtk things are pretty simple and straightforward there’s not a lot of Maintenance to do other than checking all of our fluids I was under the impression that

In order to prep this thing for the track I might have to pull a replacement qua gearbox and make some changes but I actually had a long and very helpful meeting with the Quai team while I was at SEMA they gave me a very good understanding of why why our first

Transmission blew up and what we can do to prevent it in the future but I’m going to touch upon that in one of our next upcoming episodes for now it’s simply a focus on making sure all of our fuel and oil lines are tight and that everything is in functioning proper

Order we also need to perform an oil change because we drained all of the oil from the system before it left Australia our Clear View oil filter housing allows us to get a good idea of what’s going on inside of the engine and thankfully it looks nice and healthy

There’s no chunks of metal or any bearing material so I feel good about what we’re feeding this engine so far as always we’ll be filling the car with pen oil’s Platinum racing oil because it’s formulated specifically for engines like this one it’s made from natural gas

Which means it’s a very clean oil it’s got excellent performance characteristics at extreme temperatures and best of all it’s formulated with turbocharged engines in mind we’re also going to need some fuel while we were in Australia we tuned the car on UNL 109 but that’s not available

Here in California so it’s back to Le 110 Octane VP Race Fuel we’ve also got new tires to mount and that’s where our boy Eric at rockos wheel and tire comes in because his tire shop is on Wheels and thankfully he was willing to come by last minute to mount

Our brand new Falcon Aus RT 660s while in Australia we were forced to run a spec tire for our class but now that we’re home we can run anything we want as long as it meets the minimum tread wear rating at 200 the RT 660 is a

True Street tire but that means it’s compatible with any class we wind up in the 275 front and 315 rears are also quite a bit bigger than what we were allowed to run in Australia which means the car should both perform and look better than ever

Before even as a street Class Tire I’ve been really impressed with these so far because even with 650 horsepower on tap on low boost the Ferrari has been unable to break them loose when the turbo comes On with everything crossed off the list it was an early call the next morning after just 2 hours of sleep we hit the road at 4:00 a.m. in order to make it to the first driver’s meeting at Buttonwillow although we call Button Willow our home track it’s still 3 or 3

And 1/2 hours away from The Stance work’s headquarters which means it’s still a commitment to get There upon arrival we parked up with friend mentor and inspiration Riley stair who some of you may remember as the man who built the roll cage in the Ferrari he hasn’t seen the car since May when it was at his shop so he was eager to see how it turned out All of the heavy lifting got done at the shop but there’s still a normal checklist of things we’ve got to get done to the car before it’s ready to go out on track there’s the obvious things like making sure all of the wheels are torqued which I admittedly forgot to do

Before we left and we’ve got to get the front splitter installed I designed the splitter to be easily installed and removed and only takes about a minute to pull off except for the fact that we added steel cables for supports while we in Australia those steel supports got

Cut during shipping so that the splitter could come off so we’ve got to figure that one out before it goes back on track but thankfully I remembered this and brought supplies so it’s not too big of a deal to help aid in making sure our us competition debut goes as smoothly as

Possible Andrew Molina and and Ronald from haltech came out to make sure that everything on the Standalone side of the Ferrari was set up and ready to go we’re not really changing much but there are some new features from haltech for the Nexus R5 that Andrew is going to

Implement within the ECU before we send it out on track for the first time Today what we’re doing here is we’re pretty much taking the car up in like the RPM range over throttle position and RPM is we’re populating a table on what we expect the manifold pressure to be um and once we have that table populated then the ECU could revert to that table

Whether the map sensor failure or more than anything the fueling calculation so the acceleration is nice and crisp and um yeah it’s just a new method that that we came out with with a howk it’s a free upgrade that we offer and it’s it’s been

A game changer to say the least um for the tuner it’s a lot easier to set up there’s not a lot less work involved but um the way the car drives like it it just feels good like there’s not a lot of latency or lag if ever um and yeah

It’s it’s just a better way of doing things that that uh thankfully the engineers over in Australia kind of whipped up for you know us and now we’re implicating it on all of our use should should be good today and then we also need to add one

More sponsor to the family as you’ve probably been able to tell Falcon Tire has been supplying all of our projects with tires this year and thanks to them we’ve got several sets of RT 660s to chew through this weekend so we made it we are here at button Willow we’re

Running the 13 clockwise configuration for GTA finals and this is what I built this car to do so I’m feeling like I’m in my element this morning again I haven’t driven this car much at all it’s now three times twice in some test sessions and then in Australia I drove

It more in Australia than I ever did prior so this is still new territory I’m still getting comfortable in the car but I’m excited this is this is my element so as long as I set a PB today or maybe at least this weekend I want to go sub

To I’ve never done that here and that’s kind of the Benchmark it’s not that fast for a car like this but it’s fast for me let’s see if we do it if we do that I’m going to be stoked so let’s get to it but before we go out on track there

Is one final hurdle that we need to clear and that’s passing Tech inspection but instead of a safety issue we’re facing a rule violation since we now have a lexan windshield instead of a glass one we’re automatically pushed up into the unlimited class we never really expected to win no matter what class

We’re in but the downside is the fact that the unlimited class allows for a ton of modifications we have not made if anything the 244 is closest to a street class car but fits within limited and given that we’re not running a big Arrow package or race slicks or at a

Disadvantage in contrast to our competitors they weren’t in love with my seat belt sub belt Mount but they said in the end it should be a okay um I trust it which I don’t know if that counts for anything but we’re in we’re Tech inspected so uh we’re ready to get out on

Track here we go but no matter where we land as far as classes go we can ignore it what we’re really here to do is just to drive and develop the car the 244 only has around 20 laps in total ever under its belt so any data and experience we can gather

Today all goes towards making a faster car it’s not so much about how fast we can go today but how fast we can make this car a year from Now for our first session we’re only going to do one flying lap we’ll come in we’ll pull data and make sure everything looks good before we go back out Our GoPros had issues recording our first several sessions of the day so if you’re looking for those full flying laps they’re later in the episode but our first flyer went well it was a calm collected and reserved lap but it makes me feel that much more confident for

What’s to come car feels good it’s uh it’s a bumpy track in comparison to City Motorsports Park and so I’m feeling it now that I’m actually putting a lot more load into the car than I was before uh so it’s definitely clear that the same decision I made ATP where we need to

Come home and start making suspension rision I is what I’m feeling right now I know that we’ve got a lot of springray tuning and damping to do um a lot of that just comes from we took a stab at it during the build process and so now it’s actually time to refine

It so after coming back to the paddock Andrew pulled data from the car to make sure that our fuel mapping and everything else checks out and I spent a little bit of time talking to will Drees about what kind of improvements we can make to the car and what kind of

Improvements I can make as a driver with everything checking out it’s time to go back out for a second set of and to really put some heat into the tires and see what this thing can [Applause] Do [Applause] I forgot to press the button to tell it to llog no yeah so the ECU is still on in in case it would have anything in there but I’m guessing not I didn’t shut off probably not but I did what I wanted to come out

And do I ran a 15 158 that’s a new PB that’s sub two and there’s obviously tons of time left in it so I’m stoked and I’m hot but with unlimited track time due to the fact that it’s practice day we wasted as little time as possible and

Got back out for more hot laps this time to start actually making adjustments in the pit [Applause] Riley and will were standing in the hot pits ready to make any adjustments and thankfully we’re also willing to provide some guidance on what those adjustments should be based on how I felt behind the wheel surprising to me they both suggested to actually soften up the

Damping specs on our H&R coilovers the car is currently bouncing as it encounters bumps on the track and we want to reduce that as much as possible after making the damping adjustments and confirming our tire pressures are where we want we went back out on track for

Yet another round of hot laps the Dynamics of the car changed immediately and although it felt a bit more loose I think that’s because I was beginning to go Faster Oh Now All [Applause] Oh the Falcons feel incredible under the car and are providing more traction than I’m able to use at the moment it’s clear that this car is going to go really fast as my confidence behind the wheel develops and each successive lap allows me to get more comfortable in leaning on

The car harder and harder through the turns and breaking later and later in the braking zones by Will’s estimation we were breaking into the 157’s or possibly 156s during that last test session after looking at the data from our aim solo 2 and comparing it to some laps from Will’s ISF it’s abundantly

Clear that this car has some serious speed in it and without changing anything it should be able to dive deep into the low 150s I just need to get more confident in my breaking zones for starters as I learned to carry more speed through the turns in this thing

And to rely on the arrow and the Massive Tires underneath it I think it’s going to become a force to be reckon with and all of this of course still on low boost at any point we can turn it up but I think that would just Band-Aid bad

Habits as it stands I think for now fine-tuning things like the alignment the suspension spring rates and damping and just spending a lot more time behind the wheel are going to take us a long long way every single time we’ve taken the car out so far today we’ve pulled more

Than a second off of our lap time as I get faster and faster where that time is becomes more and more clear and I get a good idea of how much is left on the table all right so we just finished I don’t know six or seven hot laps which

Is by far the most that this car has done it’s really rewarding that it did it the car feels really good will and Riley have been help me kind of dial in some of the shock tuning it’s feeling better than ever I’m feeling more confident we’re about to have kind of

The last Light of the day track’s going to close soon so I’m going to go out for one last session of the day I showed up to button Willow wanting to Crest the 2-minute Mark it’s the lap time that’s widely considered to be quote unquote relatively quick around

The track now now the new Benchmark though is 155 halfway towards the 40s and while it might be ambitious to try to get there in one weekend with this thing this car has me feeling so comfortable and so confident that I don’t think it’s a far

Ass and in fact if we run the entire weekend maybe we can break into the 154s but with that ambition and the push for faster times does come some repercussions during my final lap of the day I got a little bit greedy Coming out of cotton corners and into grape vine I took it with a little bit too much speed and lost through your end but thankfully if there were any track in Southern California to go off at it’s button Willow because aside from the egregious amount of dust it’s unlikely you’ll actually harm your

Vehicle aside from being sad that I’m going to have to give this thing a thorough cleaning I’m actually excited that I went off because it finally means that I’m getting comfortable enough with the car to find its limits it’s the first step in figuring out just how fast this car can actually Be 56 57s that last session sick so you H yeah I Got Dat though see how fast you’re going when he you see how dirty his car is inside yeah look inside woo sick though yeah means I’m finally leaning on it yeah what’s a little dust it’s not going

To hurt anybody though it went a little bit little bit too a little bit too confident but that’s a good thing I’m getting confident too confidence better than not confident enough in this case went off we’ll clean it up we’ll go back out tomorrow and if you thought I was

Kidding when I said this thing needs a thorough cleanup you’re sorely mistaken in fact Ed wager if you had a normal Road car with a complete interior in it you might as well ride it off because it’s going to be total you’ll never get it clean again the dust of button

Willow’s desert permeates everything and becomes an irremovable feature of your car forever inside outside underneath the engine bay you name it everything is going to be coated and so we’ve got to put in some extra effort to get it all cleaned up as anybody that’s been to

Button Willow will tell you you can never get it all but we’ll do our best I had hoped to spend the evening hanging out and drinking with with friends because I’m not one of the kind of guys who finds It ultimately therapeutic to clean his car up but with as disgusting as the 244 is I knew we had to put in

The time to clean it up as much as possible so myself Anthony and a handful of friends came by and put in the long hours through the night to get this thing cleaned up and ready for Prime Time day one of competition tomorrow at the GTA Finals Be