ACTION WITH MORE ACTION
A record number of passes were recorded at the 32nd Annual The Shootout as expanded rules and a major step up in reliabilty from the racers meant that oil downs were very few and far between. Whereas previous SHOOTOUT events could have had as much as 16 hours of down time for cleanup over the three days, there was a total of less than two hours over the three days this year. That meant the track surface kept in the heat from the tires and delivered the traction needed for many to run personal bests. Diaper and catch pan rules that were a gripe for some turned out to be part of the reason the track stayed clean. On top of that, many racers did a much better job of building tougher cars with better tune-ups and some better startegies to take advantage of one of the best prepped tracks in the World.
DSPORT Issue #271
Text by Michael Ferrara // Photos by Ashley Young, Jared Baschko, Troy Gundrum, Joshua O’Brien, Motorized Media, Carguygamer
PRE-REGISTRATION UP NEARLY 20-PERCENT
Thanks to some great help from our expanded IDRC SHOOTOUT staff, the word definitely got out to the Mitsubishi community. Pre-sale for racers, autocross, spectators and VIP parking were up nealy 20-percent from the previous year. This made for the busiest Thursday load in and early-tech session ever. Weather forecasts for the 3-day event looked great.
FRI: MAX EFFORT/AUTO-X AND CAR SHOW
During the 2024 SHOOTOUT, some pretty serious showers kept many from the car show. This year, the weather was pefect and the new location for the car show (under the grandstands near the concessions) proved to be a hit. Since Max Effort and Autocross was moved to take center stage on Friday (previously it was Saturday morning), the car show couldn’t occupy the space taken up for the autocross course. This year’s car show location proved to be a major upgrade being closer to the crowd and delivering full size Adam’s Polishes product. However, a couple competitors were unaware of the move to Friday for MAX EFFORT and autocross, but they were able to get in at the last second.
SAT: TECH TALK & QUALIFYING DAY 2
A number of people camped overnight at Summit Motorsports Park and used the morning to work on their car or gain some knowledge. The always popular DSPORT tech seminars featured tech talks from a number of the leading performance manufacturers including Garrett Motion, Haltech and Morrison Fabrication. The sessions wrapped up just as round three of qualifying started. The SHOOTOUT’s new schedule sets two qualifying sessions on Friday at 3pm and 6pm and two on Saturday at 1pm and 4pm. While a number of racers used the cooler conditions to run best on Friday night, others found some bugs to work on for Saturday’s qualifiers.
SUNDAY: SINGLE ELIMINATION BATTLE
Six heads-up classes, four index classes, three bracket classes and two specialty classes proved to be the perfect mix for the 300-plus racers. The always popular Quick, Street, SFWD, Street Eliminator and Stock Appearing classes were well represented. Both the Quick 32 and Street 32 classes were part of the “Mitsubishi versus the World” program that has a new ladder system, which proved to make all the racers happy. Again, Team World was light in attendance. So if you know some fast 4- or 5-cylinder Quick or Street class cars that aren’t Mitsubishi’s, get them out for the next SHOOTOUT. Thanks to the sponsors and the community pot, the winner of the Street class received $11,000 in cash (plus a new turbo) while the Street class winner took home $3,200 in cash. The racer-favorite index classes featured some of the largest fields as up to 40 cars attempted to qualify in some of the classes. The mix of 9.5, 10.5, 11.5 and 12.5-index cars continue to gravitate each year with the quicker classes gaining entries while the slower are slowly shrinking. This year, a third bracket class joined the fast growing ECOBOOST class and the open Bracket class. A Boosted-6-DI class was launched to give more streetable inline 6 platforms with direct-injection a playground. One racer managed to take home the money and trophies in booth ECOBOOST and the B6DI class.
SHOOTOUT 2026:
BIG PLANS / MORE FANS
While a number of improvements made SHOOTOUT #32 the best to date, the IDRC is committed to make the 33rd incarnation the best ever again! The plan is to work with DSPORT magazine to follow a couple builds on the road to SHOOTOUT #33. We are planning one of these cars to be our very own R33 GT-R and potentially some more cool cars featuring Club DSPORT built engines. Be sure to subscribe to DSPORT magazine to follow the builds in depth and like, subscribe, join or do whatever you need to do to follow our expanded content distribution on Facebook, Instagram, dsportmag.com and importdrag.com. We’ve got big plans, so make sure you put in your PTO for August 28th to 30th. We will see you there.
