Kendrick’s Super Street SPOCOM MEGA Trip!!

As much as I want to do a deep dive into Kendrik’s STI right now and give my take on his epic trip, I’m going to let him give you the run down and play by play. We will be doing a formal build post on Kendrick’s car in the near future. Stay tuned!

From Kendrick’s FB Post, copied with permission from Kendrick.

I was selected to compete in the 2019 #SuperStreet Show Car Shootout sponsored by #Eneos Oil. This event consisted of two portions obviously a car show and then to prove the point a track day with instruction from some professional drivers. This is full recap of the trip.

Day 1 – Wednesday 17th
The goal was to leave sometime in the morning of the 18th as I only had what I thought was few loose ends to tie up on the car, well this ended of taking all night and into the next day.  Geoffrey Barcus came over after work to lend a hand while my dad was overseeing the work. Well at 4:45am on the 18th I called it quits and went to bed for some rest, knowing every hour I was not on the road at this point was going to make it a lot harder to get to Sacramento night one.

Day -2 – Thursday 18th 
Got up at 7am The car is still not done, getting the new parts from Common Fibers lined up and remounted was just taking me longer, and this stuff had to be perfect! At 11:30am I loaded up the car and got all the tools and gear I could possibly think of packed and by 1pm I was on the road to pickup Zackariah Ruiz my co driver / navigator / mechanic / drinking buddy / sniper. You get it Zack is the man. After fighting traffic to get him we got on the road at 2pm for the long drive to Sacramento 700 plus miles.

Day 3 – Friday the 19th
We made it to Sacramento at 4:45am exhausted, checked into the hotel to get a few hrs sleep before starting up again. The first order of business in SAC was stop at #FullyTorquedRacing to pickup the new splitter rods and hardware for the front splitter since the original ones just inadequate after seeing these. After picking up the parts we headed over to #SnailPerformance in Auburn California. Travis and Tony opened the doors to the shop and let us get the new splitter rods installed and the car washed. I cant thank them enough! We left there around 5pm headed to the hotel in Anaheim. We arrived around 11:30 and passed out. 

Day 4 – Saturday the 20th
Today was show day! The car show just happened to be the biggest in Southern California, at Anaheim Convention Center. SPOCOM Anaheim hosted over 500+ cars and trucks all inside the walls of the convention center, there was something for everyone and simply the level of cars was second to none. My STI was entered into the Subaru category along with about 30 others. It was a long day with roll in starting at 11am and the show ending at 10pm as they announced awards. We managed to take home a 3rd place behind two well known area cars. I chuckled, they didn’t want their trophy to leave Cali because the car was on point with its new carbon pieces from #CommonFibers. After we headed back to spend some time out in the area with some of the competitors we met earlier.

Day 5 – Sunday the 21st
We got up and headed up to #YimiSportTuning in Valencia about a 90 min drive from the hotel. There we had an appointment for a corner balance and alignment with Ken Kasitz. Ken came highly recommended by Time Attack Champion Mark Jager, who undoubtedly understands what it takes to make a GD STI handle. Mark also came over to lend a helping hand and to start pouring track knowledge at me any chance he had. Mark had before so graciously agreed to come give me some extra coaching and support during the event. After the suspension work was done Paul the owner of #YimiSportTuning and I took the car down the road to do some data logging to make sure it was in good health for the track. Everything looked to be in good standing so we followed Mark back to his place and crashed for the night.

Day 6 – Monday the 22nd – Streets of Willow
We started the morning with me being sick to my stomach! But really I was nervous for what I was about to do, no one wants to trash a car they have spent countless hours on, years of their life building. So it took me some time to settle in.  Jean-Charles Meynet meet Mark, Zack and I at the track to help with my driving development. I figured having two of the best Subaru drivers in the state at the track helping couldn’t hurt! To give them credit Jean-Charles Meynet and Mark Jager hold lap records at Streets! JC and Mark made short work of figuring out what I needed, they fine tuned the cars tire pressures and got my dialed in quick. Out on the track the car ran great, I was even surprised this was the first time I really got to use the full travel and dampening of the JRZ’s and their quality really showed on the back side straight with a crest and few bumps the car quickly settled down stayed planted and really came into its self. The rotation was really good and it really was up to me to turn some laps. That was the hardest part, the track has lots of corners and sections that you need to be good in to be good in the next this really made it a challenge, although I felt much better at the end of the day unfortunately at the end of the day the track is hot and the tires seem to go away from the heat so lap times don’t get faster as easy. I did manage to turn laps in my last session tenth’s off my fastest time in the morning so to me that was a win. All in all I have to say everything went well, the constant information feeding by JC, Mark, Steve Arpin made the whole experience so memorable and the best time I have had on 4 wheels in my life! I’m going to leave the results etc. to Super Street to publish but ill say this we had the right number on the car for this event.

Day 7&8 Tuesday/Wednesday 
The typical drive home from California pretty much nothing to report other than paying over 4$ a gal for diesel sucks.

Now here is the part some might be wondering, what does it take to do something like this. Facebook is filled with fronts this is just the truth on what it takes.

Fuel – 786.29 / DEF – 15.43
Food – 270.83
Hotels – 830.35
Parking – 36.00
Misc. – 101.29
Alignment/Corner Balance – 370.00

Total – 2410.19

I cant thank all my friends and family enough! This was an amazing adventure and even more memorable experience

-Kendrick

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