After coming off an incredible 2015 where they broke the Unlimited FWD record at Super Lap Battle, the Spoon Sports USA team returns once again to defend their title. This year, the competition was stacked with a field of cars that have seen drastic upgrades in both the power and aerodynamics department. The Spoon Sports FD2 Civic Type R also received a major overhaul, but not in the way you would expect. After taking the crown in 2015 at Buttonwillow Raceway, the Civic Type R was torn apart at Eimer Engineering where fabricator Chris Eimer was tasked with stiffening the chassis with a new roll cage. The biggest change came with the entire drive-position being moved to the center of the vehicle. This new center-drive layout proved to be a new challenge for driver Dai Yoshihara and the Spoon Sports USA team, as there was little seat time for Yoshihara to fully get acquainted with the set-up on the race track. Some new engine modifications were added to the existing K20A motor and a new tune on the MoTec M800 yielded power north of 500HP…

Originally, I had second thoughts about putting this piece together. I felt like the video footage was a bit scattered and incomplete. I was going to put it together eventually, maybe, but as like an “extra” piece later when the 2016 season ended. I guess I there was a bit of reluctance on my part because it was such a drastic change from last year. In 2015, we all had very high expectations for Super Lap Battle, almost going in with certainty that the Spoon Sports FD2 CTR would break the Unlimited FF record. It felt like it was just a matter of time before it happened. The only thing that would stop the car from breaking the record was catastrophic failure to the vehicle, which was almost the case, and even Dai Yoshihara was able to overcome all the issues the car had. For this year, we really had no idea what to expect. There was such a huge shift with the drive-position being moved around and we honestly had no idea how the engine would hold up after all these years. I should mention that this is the same exact motor internally that the car has been campaigned with throughout its existence. The team ran into so many issues this year that it made it very difficult to improve on last year’s lap time, and the field of competition was just way too strong this year. I guess you can say that this is an honest glimpse at the two-day event from my perspective, of all the ups and downs from Super Lap Battle 2016. In the end, it wasn’t really so much about winning or breaking any sort of record, it was more about the process and the journey involved with taking this car to its next level of evolution…

Thanks to Aaron Wang and the Spoon Sports USA team for inviting me out over the last few months to document the entire process. It was definitely an eye-opening experience…

*I am not a videographer and this wasn’t meant to be a visual masterpiece of any sort. I am merely capturing bits and pieces of my life for you guys to see…

Some of the people that are in this video who have Instagram accounts:

StickyDilJoe (@stickydiljoe)
Spoon Sports USA (@spoonsportsusa)
Spoon Sports Japan (@spoon_typeone)

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