Yokohama World Time Attack Challenge is on this weekend at Sydney Motorsport Park. There are a stack of cool cars heading out there, including Levi Clarke’s wild ’32 Ford pickup, Mike Borough’s K24 Honda-powered Ferrari 308 and even our upcoming September cover car.

While WTAC might not seem like typical Street Machine fare, there is something for everyone, a great vibe and plenty of on-track action. Check out our coverage of last year’s event below to get a feel for it.

This story was first published in the July 2022 issue of Street Machine

After the cursed spicy lung put the kibosh on big track events for the past two years, lovers of crazy-fast one-lap sprints rejoiced when the Yokohama World Time Attack Challenge returned to Sydney Motorsport Park on 1-2 April.

The main attraction for Time Attack fans was the Pro class, where the cars have north of 1000hp, weigh about the same as a large walrus, are festooned with aggressive aero and are piloted by some of the best racers in the country, all with the goal of running the quickest single-lap sprint.

Alongside the Time Attackers, there were also Turbosmart Flying 500 speed runs, the Garrett Australasian Drift Titles, the Hot Wheels stunt team, trade stands and plenty of tasty metal on show in the Shannons StylizeD show ’n’ shine. Here are a few of our favourite rigs from the weekend.

1. While almost everything on track screamed past the stands loud enough to box your ears, nothing could compete with the punishing ferocity of the McLaren M8E’s mechanically injected, all-aluminium big-block Chev. Originally built to compete in the 1971 Can-Am Group 7 series, a racing series with extremely limited design regulations, this M8E is a rare survivor of the era.

The giant 496ci engine puts out so much power that big rip ’ems and many gears just aren’t necessary for it to attain stupefying speeds. With 800hp in a 780kg car, Carrera Cup driver Harri Jones really had his hands full piloting the McLaren on roaring display laps!

2. Danny Probert and his super-tidy XD Falcon drift monster (SM, Mar ’21) were in fine form during practice at WTAC and qualified seventh, but got knocked out in the first round of competition.

The XD runs a 700hp Barra backed by a G-Force cog-swapper and a massive amount of custom fabrication underneath. The front end is all Wisefab S-chassis parts mated to custom chassis rails, and down the back is a fabricated IRS based on that found under the peerless AU Falcon.

3. How’s this for a prize pair of pick-ups? Scott Barter’s ’56 Chev (SM, Yearbook 2020) and Aaron Gregory’s SMOTY-winning ’51 Chev (SM, Oct ’19) both garnered plenty of attention and admiring looks while parked together behind the WTAC pits.

While both trucks ride on airbags and sport Iron Lions for power, Scott’s is blown and auto, while Aaron’s sucks in its own air and has a clutch pedal.

4. The Tilton Racing Evo has been a staple of the Pro and Pro-Am classes at WTAC since the event’s inception, and continues to run right at the pointy end of the competition. The car’s owner and Pro-Am pilot Kosta Pohorukov decimated the Pro-Am field with a 1:26.07 run, 7.5 seconds quicker than his nearest rivals at Gingerbread Racing. In the Pro class, professional wheel-twirler Brad Shiels took the Evo to second place with a 1:20.97.

Weighing in at 1200kg, the Evo makes 1100hp from a tightly wound 4G63 and can generate five tonnes (yes, that’s three hippos or 11,628 copies of Street Machine) of downforce thanks to its crazy aero package.

5. Even a Raging Bull isn’t wild enough for some drivers, so Precision Racing builds Lamborghinis like the two bonkers Huracans the team brought along to compete in the Turbosmart Flying 500. Under those angular lines lives a built and boosted V10 good for 1400hp and low eights on the quarter.

Precision’s Joe Tummarello took out the Flying 500 with a 288km/h run. A lap around the track in the Huracan’s passenger seat with V8 Supercars wheelman Warren Luff at the tiller was also raffled off for the Starlight Children’s Foundation.

6. There are plenty of LS-swapped Silvias out there, but James Pinch went in a very different direction when he chose to drop a Mercedes C63S AMG V8 between the rails of his S15 drift pig. The S15 has sported several different engines since James picked it up in 2008, including a Toyota 1GZ V12, but the AMG has presented some unique challenges.

These things are a ‘hot V’ layout, with the intake ports on the outside of the engine and the twin turbos nestled in the valley. The majority of the build has been handled by Fullnoise Performance, and the stock engine should crank out more than 400kW at the tyres with nothing but a tune.

7. Mitch Pullen will have a crack at almost any form of tarmac competition in his Lexus-fronted HiLux, including circuit racing, drifting and even SM Drag Challenge! The ute has hosted both NA and boosted LS combos over the years, but the current combo is the coolest so far.

The owner-built aspirated 388-cuber pumps out 720rwhp at a sky-high 9000rpm and sounds like a NASCAR as it lunches tyres at a furious rate. There’s not much of the original tradie-ute underpinnings left, with a three-link controlling the diff and a sequential Holinger for swapping cogs.

8. Steve Faulks got everyone’s attention when his Bitten Motorsport WRX trailed a spectacular spray of sparks down most of the main straight on Saturday night. The team didn’t realise its aero would be so effective, and the Subaru was pushed down onto the tarmac for several hundred metres at 230km/h!

The car weighs 1266kg and makes over 700hp at all four paws through a Modena ’box, good enough to place fourth in Pro-Am with a 1:35.056. Steve started racing the WRX at WTAC in the Clubsprint class in 2011, and has progressed to Pro-Am as the car has evolved.

9. Michele and Mark Guyer’s Xtreme GT-R is a regular at WTAC, and V8 Supercars gun Tim Slade was at the wheel for 2022. The award-winning R32 is one of the best-presented race cars you’ll ever see, as the entire car seems to have been built and maintained to show-quality standards.

The billet RB26 mill pumps out 1300hp to all four tyres while weighing in at 1380kg. Tim set a new Open class record of 1:27.379 before the RB26 dropped a valve crossing the line, and Nathan Morcom in the GAS Evo answered with a 1:27.247 to take the class win.

10. After a shock absorber failed early on in practice on Saturday, Patrick Barlee drove the wheels off his C6 Corvette to bring home the second place tinware in the Australasian Drift Titles. The ’Vette was a fire-damaged convertible that the team stripped and fitted with Lexan windows and a complete set of carbon Kevlar panels from Latvian specialists HGK – all the panels together weigh just 38 kilos!

Underneath the bulging bonnet lies a shrieking 420ci Chev that makes somewhere near 900hp on E85, with a Samsonas sequential gearbox and Winters quick-change IRS rounding out the drivetrain.