TEAM TITAN'S CONVERSION FROM SPORT COMPACT TO XTF COMES FULL CIRCLE
Tue, 2010-04-27 16:00
Sometimes it’s easy for drivers to get lost in the shuffle of headline performers.
Gary White, however, took his turn in the American Drag Racing League (ADRL) spotlight with a historic run in his turbocharged, six-cylinder Team Titan Scion Friday at the Hardee’s Georgia Drags VI in Adel, Ga.
White clocked a 3.99-second time at 182.45 mph in the Extreme 10.5 class at South Georgia Motorsports Park.
Gary White, however, took his turn in the American Drag Racing League (ADRL) spotlight with a historic run in his turbocharged, six-cylinder Team Titan Scion Friday at the Hardee’s Georgia Drags VI in Adel, Ga.
White clocked a 3.99-second time at 182.45 mph in the Extreme 10.5 class at South Georgia Motorsports Park.
“If you would have asked me that at the beginning of the day, I would have thought we would have had a shot at 3.99,” White said. “The first two qualifying passes, I decked the throttle and the motor just died and I don’t know why. We fooled with it quite a bit and changed the tune-up and it went up there and ran.”
White’s electrifying run made him the fourth member of the five-person Mickey Thompson Three-Second Club for Extreme 10.5 entries. White joins Chuck Ulsch, current class champion Spiro Pappas and Todd Moyer in a club established last spring by Mickey Thompson Performance Tires and Wheels.
“The 3-second deal is great,” White said. “I’m glad it’s off of our back. We came so close at Rockingham last year, we went 4.009 (seconds), and then in testing we went 4.005. We really thought we would get it at Dallas and we didn’t and then Houston got shortened. I was really afraid we weren’t going to get in the five member, 3-second club. I was afraid all the spots were
going to get taken and we would be sitting out.”
White becoming part of the 3-second club is especially impressive considering the competition he’s going up against. His fellow drivers are coming to the starting line with big block turbos, and essentially
supercharged Pro Mods on 10.5-inch tires. White, meanwhile, comes to battle with an inline 6.
“We ran this stuff in (NHRA) Sport Compact racing for a number of years,” White said. “When we saw this class (Extreme 10.5) come about with lack
of weight limits, we thought it would be a pretty good fit. We figured if we could use all of our horsepower, and leave with everything we got, we could be competitive. That’s basically what we do. I don’t know how much more we can do with it, but we will give it another season anyway.”
Although White is in a different arena with Extreme 10.5, he didn’t have to make a drastic set-up change with his engine from where it was in the Sport Compact class.
“It’s really not that much different,” White said. “The last year we ran Sport Compact, we had to be 2,450 (pounds). It was a heavy car and we have gotten a lot of weight out of it. We have a couple hundred pounds out of it, but it was hard because it was built to be 2,450. It is hard to get down to the 2,100-2,000 range where we would like it to be. That’s just the way it is. There’s not a lot we can do about it.”
White also says he isn’t sure how much more he can push the envelope.
“I don’t know what we will do next,” White said. “We’ve talked about some stuff and we even talked about borrowing some engines from Todd Moyer. Last year, we were having a hard time having this (the engine) make more than 10-12 runs before we had to go through it. Over the winter, the motor went under a pretty good reconstruction and it’s living quite well right now, thanks to Reher-Morrison. They did a lot of work. We played on their dyno for a couple of weeks and got some things ironed out. Mainly, to try and get enough fuel to the car, that was our main problem. The motor is living and I don’t know how long it will last, but if this would have been our motor from last year, we would have had to change it out already.”
White clearly doesn’t see his car progressing beyond Extreme 10.5 ranks.
“The only thing you could do is Pro Extreme, and they will not run 200 mph,” White said. “The only thing we could ever think about doing is maybe going turbo with a big motor, and maybe go Pro Extreme. I don’t know where 10.5 is going right now? I’m kind of disappointed because there are only nine cars here (at the Georgia Drags V) this weekend. I’m not sure what is up with that.”
White also believes a change in class also would strip him of the Extreme 10.5 identity he has formed.
“That’s part of the reason we didn’t (do it) last year when we talked about borrowing motors from Todd Moyer,” White said. “They offered it to us on numerous occasions and we didn’t do it. We know if we put a big motor in there, we will lose a lot of our fan base. It’s a unique deal to tell people what we are doing. We have a factory block, factory head car motor. In fact, I have one of these same motors in my street car. It makes about 900 to 1,000 horsepower and I drive it every day. That’s how I got involved in this whole deal anyway was buying the parts for my street car.”
Now in the ADRL, White’s entry looks like it could have come straight off the set of the Fast & Furious.
“We get a lot of comments from people who come up and say some pretty off the wall things sometimes,” White said. “We just laugh and shrug it off. Some of it is kind of cute and some of it is kind of frustrating to hear. We just got to let that kind of stuff go.”
White has been sponsored by Scion, which is a division of Toyota, since 2005.
“We have been with Scion since we were running NHRA Sport Compact and they have treated us real good,” White said. “They’ve furnished us with a lot of support and a lot of parts. Not really any R&D (Research and Development), we’re the R&D. I don’t think there is anybody in the world doing what we’re doing with one of these motors. If you tell someone you’re making 2,100 horsepower with 190-cubic inches, they would say you’re crazy. That’s almost 11 horsepower per cubic inch. One of the misconceptions about this car is that everybody assumes that it is 1,800 pounds or something ridiculously light. It’s not, it is actually heavy. We’re 2,200 pounds and we’re not light in our class by a long shot.”
White also realizes the success he has had couldn’t have been accomplished alone.
“The guys on my crew have just done a lot of hard work,” White said. “Brett White, my son does all the engine management, and a lot of wrench turning during the week. Eric sets up the suspension and calls a lot of the shots on the clutch set up. Between those two and myself, we have a pretty good time. We don’t really get stressed out too much. My wife also takes care of all our travel stuff and of course we couldn’t do it without Nero and Baadal Deliwala, the owners of Titan Motorsports. They are here at all the races and get us the parts we need and make things happen for us. We also get a lot of support from our friends at the races.”
White clocked a 3.99-second time at 182.45 mph in the Extreme 10.5 class at South Georgia Motorsports Park.
BretKepnerPhotos.com
Sometimes it’s easy for drivers to get lost in the shuffle of headline performers.
Gary White is interviewed by Bret Kepner as Mickey Thompson's Carl Robinson looks on. White became the fourth member of the Mickey Thompson Tires 3-second club for Extreme Ten Five cars. (Roger Richards)
Gary White, however, took his turn in the American Drag Racing League (ADRL) spotlight with a historic run in his turbocharged, six-cylinder Team Titan Scion Friday at the Hardee’s Georgia Drags VI in Adel, Ga.
White clocked a 3.99-second time at 182.45 mph in the Extreme 10.5 class at South Georgia Motorsports Park.
“If you would have asked me that at the beginning of the day, I would have thought we would have had a shot at 3.99,” White said. “The first two qualifying passes, I decked the throttle and the motor just died and I don’t know why. We fooled with it quite a bit and changed the tune-up and it went up there and ran.”
White’s electrifying run made him the fourth member of the five-person Mickey Thompson Three-Second Club for Extreme 10.5 entries. White joins Chuck Ulsch, current class champion Spiro Pappas and Todd Moyer in a club established last spring by Mickey Thompson Performance Tires and Wheels.
“The 3-second deal is great,” White said. “I’m glad it’s off of our back. We came so close at Rockingham last year, we went 4.009 (seconds), and then in testing we went 4.005. We really thought we would get it at Dallas and we didn’t and then Houston got shortened. I was really afraid we weren’t going to get in the five member, 3-second club. I was afraid all the spots were
going to get taken and we would be sitting out.”
White becoming part of the 3-second club is especially impressive considering the competition he’s going up against. His fellow drivers are coming to the starting line with big block turbos, and essentially
supercharged Pro Mods on 10.5-inch tires. White, meanwhile, comes to battle with an inline 6.
“We ran this stuff in (NHRA) Sport Compact racing for a number of years,” White said. “When we saw this class (Extreme 10.5) come about with lack
of weight limits, we thought it would be a pretty good fit. We figured if we could use all of our horsepower, and leave with everything we got, we could be competitive. That’s basically what we do. I don’t know how much more we can do with it, but we will give it another season anyway.”
Although White is in a different arena with Extreme 10.5, he didn’t have to make a drastic set-up change with his engine from where it was in the Sport Compact class.
“It’s really not that much different,” White said. “The last year we ran Sport Compact, we had to be 2,450 (pounds). It was a heavy car and we have gotten a lot of weight out of it. We have a couple hundred pounds out of it, but it was hard because it was built to be 2,450. It is hard to get down to the 2,100-2,000 range where we would like it to be. That’s just the way it is. There’s not a lot we can do about it.”
White also says he isn’t sure how much more he can push the envelope.
“I don’t know what we will do next,” White said. “We’ve talked about some stuff and we even talked about borrowing some engines from Todd Moyer. Last year, we were having a hard time having this (the engine) make more than 10-12 runs before we had to go through it. Over the winter, the motor went under a pretty good reconstruction and it’s living quite well right now, thanks to Reher-Morrison. They did a lot of work. We played on their dyno for a couple of weeks and got some things ironed out. Mainly, to try and get enough fuel to the car, that was our main problem. The motor is living and I don’t know how long it will last, but if this would have been our motor from last year, we would have had to change it out already.”
White clearly doesn’t see his car progressing beyond Extreme 10.5 ranks.
“The only thing you could do is Pro Extreme, and they will not run 200 mph,” White said. “The only thing we could ever think about doing is maybe going turbo with a big motor, and maybe go Pro Extreme. I don’t know where 10.5 is going right now? I’m kind of disappointed because there are only nine cars here (at the Georgia Drags V) this weekend. I’m not sure what is up with that.”
White also believes a change in class also would strip him of the Extreme 10.5 identity he has formed.
“That’s part of the reason we didn’t (do it) last year when we talked about borrowing motors from Todd Moyer,” White said. “They offered it to us on numerous occasions and we didn’t do it. We know if we put a big motor in there, we will lose a lot of our fan base. It’s a unique deal to tell people what we are doing. We have a factory block, factory head car motor. In fact, I have one of these same motors in my street car. It makes about 900 to 1,000 horsepower and I drive it every day. That’s how I got involved in this whole deal anyway was buying the parts for my street car.”
Now in the ADRL, White’s entry looks like it could have come straight off the set of the Fast & Furious.
“We get a lot of comments from people who come up and say some pretty off the wall things sometimes,” White said. “We just laugh and shrug it off. Some of it is kind of cute and some of it is kind of frustrating to hear. We just got to let that kind of stuff go.”
White has been sponsored by Scion, which is a division of Toyota, since 2005.
“We have been with Scion since we were running NHRA Sport Compact and they have treated us real good,” White said. “They’ve furnished us with a lot of support and a lot of parts. Not really any R&D (Research and Development), we’re the R&D. I don’t think there is anybody in the world doing what we’re doing with one of these motors. If you tell someone you’re making 2,100 horsepower with 190-cubic inches, they would say you’re crazy. That’s almost 11 horsepower per cubic inch. One of the misconceptions about this car is that everybody assumes that it is 1,800 pounds or something ridiculously light. It’s not, it is actually heavy. We’re 2,200 pounds and we’re not light in our class by a long shot.”
White also realizes the success he has had couldn’t have been accomplished alone.
“The guys on my crew have just done a lot of hard work,” White said. “Brett White, my son does all the engine management, and a lot of wrench turning during the week. Eric sets up the suspension and calls a lot of the shots on the clutch set up. Between those two and myself, we have a pretty good time. We don’t really get stressed out too much. My wife also takes care of all our travel stuff and of course we couldn’t do it without Nero and Baadal Deliwala, the owners of Titan Motorsports. They are here at all the races and get us the parts we need and make things happen for us. We also get a lot of support from our friends at the races.”
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