My Daughter Colleen and I were at Thunderhill raceway on 8-9-10 April with our 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 car s/n 09-7-1066 for the first race in the West Coast Trans Am Series. The Trans Am Series has been around since 1966 and today races at famed East Coast tracks such as Sebring, Road Atlanta, Lime Rock, Mid-Ohio, Road America, Watkins Glen and more plus Laguna Seca and Sonoma on the West Coast. In 2017, the new stand-alone West Coast Championship was added to the Trans-Am Series, running at Thunderhill, then with the National Series at Laguna and Sonoma then back to the West Coast Series races at the Ridge in Washington, Portland, Utah Motorsport park and with the National Series at the season’s last race at COTA in Austin, Texas.
Trans-Am is split into the TA and TA2 classes for tube chassis silhouette racing cars, while its production classes are the GT (grand touring), SGT (super grand touring), and XGT (extreme grand touring) and Pro Am for SCCA GT1 and GT2 cars. The TA class remains the standard of North American GT racing and the flagship of the Trans Am Series with silhouette carbon fiber bodywork and a 366 cubic inch single 4-barrel carburated American V8 engines producing 850+ horsepower. Power is put to the ground through a 5-speed Sequential gearbox with a No-Lift Shift (NLS) systems and an “auto-blip” RPM matching systems for downshifting. Minimum weight is 2,780 pounds and Traction Control and ABS are verboten. Thanks to 850 plus hp the TA cars pass our Lamborghini like I’m chained to a stump
The TA2 class also uses a tube chassis with a silhouette carbon fiber Camaro, Mustang or Dodge Challenger body with a minimum weight of 2,830 pounds. The TA2 V8 engines use fuel injection with a Trans Am certified inlet restrictor plate good for 500 HP (plus) and 450 lb-ft of torque. Transmissions are “H pattern” manual units with 4-speeds plus reverse. Traction Control and ABS are again verboten. Both the TA and TA2 classes are very, very competitive and rubbing is racing, I was hit on both sides at Thunderhill yet was able to soldier on to the finish.
GT3 cars are based on current road car models allowing for a wide variety of car types to be homologated with almost no limit on engine sizes and configurations or chassis construction or layout. Performance of all GT3 cars are regulated, either by the FIA or by a series’ specific ruling body, by a BoP (Balance of Performance) formula that adjusts limits on horsepower, weight, engine air restrictors and aerodynamics to prevent any single manufacturer from becoming dominant in the class. GT3 cars are designed to have a weight between 1200 kg and 1300 kg (2645 lbs and 2866 lbs) with between 500 hp and 600 hp. All cars have a very similar power to weight ratio which is achieved either by high power and high weight such as the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG or low power and low weight such as the Porsche 911 GT3. All GT3 cars also have traction control, ABS, and built-in air jacks for quick pit stops, making them very user-friendly. The GT3 series has become so globally dominant that both the German DTM Touring Car Series and the IMSA GTD Pro and GTD cars are now built to FIA GT3 specifications.
