They Bought a Race Car Together … and Built a TT2 Contender

Obsession is divisive. People either appreciate it, or they’re repulsed by it. NASA Northeast driver Max Gourley’s ex-girlfriend was the appreciative type, and so bought him a pass to his first track day. From Cobalt SS to Audi S4 in a short span, Gourley wanted to continue climbing the HPDE ladder, and the more competitive he got, the more he had to contend with the fear of putting his car in the wall. He’d grown fond of his S4’s manners and preferred to keep his daily spotless, so he sought out a purpose-built car which could help him make the leap into Time Trial.

When Gourley met his wife in 2017, he had to pinch himself. She also loved track driving, and regularly drove her WRX at local events, but, like Gourley, was afraid of seeing her car in the wall.

“She suggested we buy a prepped race car, and I wanted a Subaru,” he began. “We bought a built STi from a guy in North Dakota who had overbuilt the car for his level of preparedness. He hadn’t yet bought a trailer, but the car was too extreme to be driven on the street.”

Gourley capitalized on the situation and brought the STi home for peanuts. It had been fully caged, had a built engine, a Garrett GTX 3071R turbo, and some so-so AST 4200 single-adjustable shocks. It was a solid foundation to build a Time Trial machine, and a relationship, upon.

However, the honeymoon period with the Subie came to a close quickly. “I broke fourth gear immediately at its first event, a NASA HPDE at NJMP Lightning,” Gourley said. “The STi trans is stout, but the previous owner had abused it and the synchros were toast. I went to carbon synchros, and changed to shorter JDM fifth and sixth gears, which I figured would be important to use. I had my sights on TT2, which meant maximizing every bit of the drivetrain I could.”

In 2020, the competition moved to TT3 and he decided to follow it. “This shift worked just fine for me. I only needed to run Toyo RRs and detune the motor to 360 at the wheels,” he said. “It weighed 3,301 at the time, and it was plenty fast already, but it wasn’t yet a true track car.”

Suspension 2.0

Before touching power, Gourley unsheathed the credit card and committed to the cry once-buy once approach to modification. “I first bought two-way Motons, which were considered some of the best motorsport-grade shocks in the Subie community, and Moton has a good service program and good U.S. support.

“Then I had to consider big brakes since the stock brakes were getting overwhelmed,” he said. “Yes, they’re gold Brembos, but the pad is thin and the rotor is small, so they’re thermally underequipped. Eventually, I bit the bullet and shelled out a lot for an AP Racing/Essex 9660 kit with 355mm rotors and Ferodo DS311 pads. The big brakes have made life easier. I’ve only changed rotors once in three years. They work well with the ABS, which is good because I have to load the nose pretty late into the corner to get the desired rotation.”

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For nearly three years, he ran this car in roughly the same trim without the results he’d hoped for. By 2023, he was getting frustrated. “It was like I was always chasing a podium position from 2019 to 2022, and I knew something had to change. If I wanted to fight for wins, I had to accept the chassis was flawed, but the engine and the powertrain might make up for it if I maximized everything. This would force me to move into TT2, where I believed I could fight for wins, and even make it to Nationals,” he declared.

With those additions, he decided to keep the momentum going and widened the footprint, going from 10.5” x 18” Enkei GTC02 with a 295-section slick to an 18” x 11” Enkei RSR wrapped in 315-section Hoosier A7s. This required cutting fenders and fixing 30mm Karlton flares to accommodate the wider wheel.

He returned the car to EFI Performance, the shop that maintained it before Gourley bought it, and for good reason. Formerly, EFI Logics, EFI Performance had campaigned Subarus in Super Touring classes, and Gourley knew that where he wanted to go required some of the big guns to assist him.

“The thing is, you’re going into no man’s land with a big power build. Pulling 500 horsepower out of an EJ257 takes a lot of work, and nothing’s guaranteed,” he said. “Really, you need to focus a lot on oiling. The smart guy will go with a dry sump, but that was well outta my price range.

“Instead, I went with a blueprinted oil pump, a baffled pan, and an Accusump. With the EJ motors, oil will slosh around in the heads, and with peaks of 1.7-1.9 G, you’ll stuff all that oil into one side of the head, starving the other head and that side’s rod bearings. Plus, since the rod bearings are mounted in the case bearing, you can’t service them. Since a little rod knock leads to a full rebuild, it’s not a cheap motor to maintain.”

Cooling had to improve to support the power bump, too. The standard top-mount intercooler needs to be exchanged for a front-mounted intercooler at this power level, because the airflow through the hood stalls on the back of the motor. Along with that, Gourley added an external oil cooler mounted in the driver’s side of the front bumper, as well as an external trans cooler on the front crash beam.

Brick Through Molasses

Along with the new motor, he knew he’d need a better turbocharger to make TT2-level power. He installed a new rotated Garrett G25-550 turbo setup and all the necessary plumbing, upgraded bushings and a Cobb Accessport setting which both make no-lift shifting possible, and upgraded to a rear 1.5-way diff to help drive the car off the corner.

For more control over the chassis dynamics, he added a standalone DCCD controller. “The stock DCCD is limited by its latency, and the standalone is instantaneous,” he said. “It also allows for tuning of the center diff, and it supports multiple maps to ensure the power gets to the wheels with the grip available.”

The Garrett G25-550 is far smaller than the old 3071R, and the torque wall it produced from 3,700 onward made the motor feel like it’d taken on another liter of displacement. As the EJ currently sits, it produces 420 horsepower at the wheels on high boost. More importantly than peak power, this accessible torque helps influence the balance of the car midcorner better than the older, laggier setup ever did. Additionally, that torque drives the car off the corner a little harder and pushes harder until it reaches an aero wall at about 140 miles per hour.

Because the G25-660 was relocated closer to the hood and forward toward the intake, and had to be moved from its factory location, he treated the newly occupied area with heat shielding, on the down-pipe and the up-pipe. He hasn’t seen any overheating issues since adding the shielding.

Extra speed warranted a better aero kit, so he went for an AJ Hartman rear wing with custom carbon mounts. “One of the unique challenges of the Subaru is its aero profile. It has been called brick-shaped, so Hartman developed a specific chassis mounted wing setup to maximize efficiency of the rear aero,” Gourley noted.

“Due to the snappiness of the motor and the shortened gearing, I now spend most of my time at Watkins Glen in fifth and sixth gear,” Gourley said. “With the old motor, the top speed into the Bus Stop was 143 because of some bogging in the Esses and some time lost shifting. After the new engine and all the upgrades, including a no-lift shift function, I found another 10 mph (153 mph).”

Off-Piste and Gray Diamonds

Being an AWD car, it has its own strengths and limitations that need to be taken into consideration.

The front axle is a limiting factor, and Gourley admits to trailing the car a little longer to the midcorner than some others. Entry speed is sacrificed for what can be reclaimed with a strong exit courtesy of turbo torque and four driven wheels. Often, this is accompanied by an abrupt turn-in relatively late in the corner. If he can trace a diamond-line and deploy the power cleanly, he’s often one of the fastest cars between corners.

However, this is hard to repeat. “The Corvettes and Supras generally put the power down better, and they can outdrag me down the straights with more torque,” he added. “There is an inherent understeer problem with the car, but I think that’s part of the charm of an AWD car. Plus, the stability lets you get away with some wild stuff.”

Wild? Well, Gourley can utilize some unusual pieces of real estate if they offer an advantage. Taking more curbing in the slower corners, or taking the risk of going through the grass or the dirt are all possibilities with the stability inherent in the platform.

“Going into the Bus Stop at Watkins Glen, I eat more curbing than the competition and still keep my foot down over the curbs,” Gourley said. “Then, in the right-hand carousel, it’s understeer city. In long, constant-radius or tightening corners, I can’t do anything but wait until the front end bites. That’s where the rear-drive cars can beat me. They can drive off the corner with the throttle, whereas I can only hold maintenance throttle until the nose lines up.

“At tracks like NJMP Thunderbolt, I’m quick,” he continued. “There, the corners following the straight (2, 3, and 4) are high-speed, open bends with a lotta curbing on the inside, so I can benefit from taking an agricultural excursion. People are shocked to see how much curb hopping and grass cutting I get away with.

“Still, it works well enough in the right circumstances. I took it to Nationals in 2023 with my first-ever set of true Hoosier slicks – they neutralized the car like no tire I’d ever tried before,” he said. “When I finished third, only 0.8 behind TT2 winner Ben Grambau, I definitely raised some eyebrows. Nobody believed it could run with the established guys that year.”

Hold On To Yourself

Gourley’s aware of the platform’s limitations, but his enthusiasm for it hasn’t waned. Its idiosyncrasies speak to him, and he loves seeing the unusual rally car running at a higher level than many think it should.

Gourley believes getting the car through the air a bit faster might strengthen his chances. “The front end of the car is currently opened up, and I’m curious how much I can close, since cooling hasn’t been an issue. Along with that, I’ll be running a floor and a rear diffuser,” he explained.

The fact that he’s been able to reach such a height with such an usual car makes him pinch himself occasionally. “Every platform isn’t perfect and maybe the STi has more quirks than average, but the community is great and the aftermarket support is there if you want to try something different.

Gourley suggested a mentor of some sort is needed to get an STi to this level, adding that he couldn’t have done it without EFI Performance. The work they do on the car now goes beyond maintenance. It’s usually safety related, some kind of custom job, or monitoring the health of the engine with their tuner Calvin Dotson.

“I’d like to thank my wife for supporting me, Ben Miller and the EFI Performance team for being great partners, NASA NE for being a great region and community, and the Track Subies for all their help and support,” Gourley said. “It takes a village to get one of these cars to TT2, and I have to say that, if I had to do it all over again, I’d do it happily.”

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