What does it take to bring crowds, to bring racers, and to bring newcomers in all areas. Well Import Face-Off has proven it again in the High Stakes City known as Las Vegas, holding it down in a track known for its bad winds around this time of the year. No one expected it to be close to perfect, but upon entrance on Sunday morning the Car Show attendees were already rolling in strong, from the likes of Team Hybrid, and local crew Street Symphony if you where a Show Car type you could see it all. Also, with many new and past show cars  filling up the lot, in the pits some never been seen cars like a mean looking VW Drag Bug, and hailing from as far north as Washington was the ETS GTR from English Racing.

As big of a race this is, the highlights of the event where the FWD Class and the small Outlaw Class. In the past year the classes have been pretty stocked with great numbers and only the Outlaw Class or Force Induction Pro rolling in with a handful. In the FWD class you had an exciting number of cars and both veteran and new drivers. Javier Loarca who has been racing all around coming in recently from the Turbo By Garrett’s Boost Fest  made it out, Gio Salinas and his latest track killer built by Sheepey Built was there, Jeremy Bretschneider and the Darton Sleeves backed Coupe along with Jason Park hailing from SFV, Steve Conley, Chad Barber, Roberto Romero and the list goes on. Not forgetting the rest, but if you have been following the latest IFO events, you know who have been the most consistent at the top in this field and the quickest. As common as the winners in the past, have been some of the names I mentioned already, but this day it was the challengers, the ones with no big sponsor wraps or big names that took down the big guys one by one. First to go was Gio Salinas, Jeremy followed suit and so on. As luck would have it, local Racer David Del Cid representing Team Adrenaline using his brothers car Richard, who was the 16th qualifier, battled it out to the finals and took home the trophy and prize money. Unfortunately, Steve Conley’s M Factory x Speed Factory Racing Civic was suppose to line up in the end, but a minor engine issue prevented him from wanting to go forward.

In the Outlaw Class, the Final was all that mattered, it was Dana Westover and his Virtual Works Racing Supra going against the Second Quickest GTR in the World driven by Michael Roark. What made this particular race special is more than I can say here. First off the English Racing x ETS GTR is known in the Mile and Half Mile racing world. This GTR was the Quickest and Fastest at one time, until the AMS GTR took the record away not too long ago. Traveling around the country going to all types of events including Shift-S3ctor’s Airstrip Attack and the TX2K14 this year it has been going at it with the best in the game. Dana on the other hand has been a local favorite with so many passes under his belt, his 8-Second Supra has been dubbed the Quickest Import in Nevada. Just recently coming from the Street Car Super Nationals, Dana has been building, and working on this beautiful blue Supra for a decade and more. Always building and developing new parts for the MKIV they have been at it through the years with new records set every single time. But this final race was the king of them all, as they lined up the anticipation was on the edge, the lights lit up, boom, they both launch and Dana takes up the front wheels and leads 3/4’s of the race while the ETS GTR plays catch up and almost reeled him in, thus ending it at a 7.94 for the GTR and a New personal Best Record for Dana at 7.92. The crowd went wild and just like all races the talk about how great it was and social media in the next few days were nothing but clips of this battle.

Sadly, this is the final IFO Race for us for the year as Import Face-Off closes off their Final race today in San Antonio Texas. We honestly can’t wait for 2015 as we have been saying it in the past 2 races, it’s not just the crowds, music, and good vibes as always. But it’s the family of Race Teams, Car culture and type of Racers and Cars coming from all over attending Import Face-Off that makes it that much better, the staff and Cliff have done an excellent job of creating the Premiere Import Drag Racing series of North America. Thank them for that and if you want to see more and be part of it all, join us in 2015 as we try to go to even more IFO’s across the country. – Rommel Estrada #ifo #thefoat #motolyric #dragstars