The Build

Cars have always been a passion of mine. Growing up, I loved building with Legos; After attending a Formula Drift event when I was 13, I realized cars weren't all that different — they could be taken apart, modified, and made your own. From that point on, I wanted to build a car of my own.

I bought the car completely stock in 2022 with essentially no experience working on cars. Since then, I have done all the work myself, learning through research, experimentation, and plenty of trial and error. What began as a stock street car has become an ongoing exercise in understanding how a vehicle works as a complete system, rather than a collection of individual parts — poor geometry, inadequate cooling, unnecessary weight, car balance, insufficient stiffness, or a component that simply wasn't designed for the loads it experiences. etc…

As a designer, I believe function comes first, and a race car has a particularly unforgiving way of exposing anything that hasn't been done properly. Every change has consequences, and every failure becomes an opportunity to understand the problem, find a solution, and test it again. At the same time, function shouldn't come at the expense of aesthetics — no one remembers your lap time, but they do remember how good your car looks. The project reflects my approach to design: understand how something works, understand why it fails, and create a solution that performs as well as it looks.

Pineview Run: 1:22.1

Watkins Glen: 2:08.3