Driving Line VOLUME V ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2019 | Page 14

FAST CARS ARE NOT TAMED
OVERNIGHT
Steven started tracking the car as soon as possible,
but he wasn’t the instant star he expected to be with the
new ride. “The first time I had it on the track was frustrating,
because it wasn’t like the Porsche 911 I used to own. It
wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do.” Steven continued,
“The GT-R doesn’t drive itself; it’s trickier than other good
track cars because it naturally understeers. In order to
use the AWD to your advantage on the track, you need
to understand it and how it works. I started calling the car
‘Godzilla’ because it was a monster to drive.” He even
gave it a Godzilla wrap.
Quickly, Steven become frustrated because he wasn’t
clocking the low times he felt he could achieve at the track.
It’s difficult for a racer to come to the realization that the
car is performing how it should and that the real problem
may be located in the driver seat. Steven’s epiphany
happened a few years ago in the exact location where
this photoshoot occurred: Chuckwalla Valley Raceway. “I
was at the Nissan Challenge track day, and I was feeling
cocky behind the wheel of my relatively new at the time
GT-R. During one of the earlier rounds, I was sharing the
track with a guy named Steven Doherty in a stock 240SX
S13. I figured I’d dominate him on the track without any
problem, but during the race he was on my tail, right behind
me the whole time. I was totally shocked,” Steven said.
LESSON LEARNED
The reason Steven was so shocked was because the
240SX’s 2.4L engine was not considered overpowered with
only 150 hp available, whereas the GT-R’s turbocharged
3.8L puts out about 600 hp. To put that into perspective,
Steven had four times the muscle in his GT-R that Doherty
had in the 240SX. Using simple math, it’s easy to conclude
that the GT-R should have been much faster. Steven learned
a valuable lesson from that single race. “Doherty showed
me how much the driver matters versus the car,” he said.
SADDLING GODZILLA: ‘15 NISSAN GT-R TRACK CAR
“Doherty and I instantly became friends, and I asked him
if he would drive my car around the track while I sat in the
passenger seat so I could see what he did differently than
Godzilla is not a beast to be saddled without “I bought a ’14 Porsche 911 because I liked the experience. Steven Chan had a number of cars and a look and thought it would make a good track car. I had bunch of seat time before he picked up the ’15 Nissan GT-R it for about a year, but after tracking it a few times, I felt After that day at Chuckwalla, Steven realized how
seen here. “I started out in autocross well over a decade it needed more power,” Steven said. His first inclination much he had to learn—and how much faster he could
ago, driving an ’04 Mazda RX-8. I wasn’t too serious about was to go for the raw power and slick Italian design of a become. “From there, I got more schooling and became
it at the time; I was just playing around and having fun. Ferrari 458. But a European supercar was not in his future. one of Doherty’s disciples. I drove more and I got faster,”
Unfortunately, I had to stop racing for a number of years After considerable research, he learned that Nissan’s GT-R Steven said.
because of family problems that I couldn’t avoid,” Steven R35 readily compared with Ferrari’s 458, which sealed the said. But that didn’t permanently impede him; he quickly deal on putting the car in his garage.
got back into racing as soon his family issues cleared up.
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me. That trip around the track changed me.”