Hot Car Spotlight:

This is a spotlight of a track/race car that we love. We’ll examine some of the details that make these cars so cool, from examples of cutting edge aerodynamics and engineering to historically awesome cars that influenced today’s race car design.

Written by: Ryan Passey

The Car:

The Escort Evo piloted by Yoshiki ‘Fire’ Ando is one of the heavy hitters in the Japanese time attack scene. This car was debuted in 2019 with some lofty goals: to reset the tin top lap records at all of the international circuits in Japan. The last three years have shown that they aren’t just talk, because they’re doing exactly that. But of all the tracks, one is the most important in the eyes of many; Tsukuba. And at Tsukuba, the race has been on over the past couple years to see who would be the first time attack car to go sub-50 seconds on a steel belted ‘street” tire (HKS TRB03 used a slick, which time attack purists argue is a fundamentally different category).

Like other big names like Under Suzuki, the Escort team have been to Tsukuba many times before, each time getting faster and drilling their time lower and lower into the 50’s, but with that 49-something proving slightly out of each. Until now.

Today, they did it.

49.897 on a Yokohama A050.

It’s so cool to see big achievements like this from people who live and breathe time attack. Fire Ando is clearly one of those. It’s not about marketing or ROI, this is just a guy who is passionate about going fast and he and the Escort team just put their heads down and get after it.

This is a really cool car. If you haven’t seen it before, it’s worth a trip down the google search rabbit hole. Before you know it, an hour’s passed and you’re feeling inspired to go do rad wing stuff with your own car. Below photos of this beast are from a few of its previous outings.

photo credits: Ian Baker, Narita Dogfight, Speedhunters, ShuBox