THINK the Bathurst 1000's top 10 shootout on steroids - then you might have some idea of what Brad Shiels will face at the World Time Attack Challenge.
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Held over two days at Sydney Motorsport Park, the annual event draws teams, drivers and their high performance cars from across the globe to do battle against the clock.
Bathurst driver Shiels was recruited by the Xtreme GTR team to drive their Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R earlier this year.
He made an impressive debut for them when claiming outright honours at the Australian Time Attack Challenge in July, setting a record 57:5652 mark.
But Shiels said that was just "a bit of a warm up for the World Time Attack". This Friday and Saturday he and his team face much stiffer opposition and it is open class honours which will be the goal.
"There are literally people from all over the world, there are cars from Japan, America, Finland, Sweden - all parts of the world really, it's a pretty huge event," Shiels, who has three prior World Time Attack appearances to his credit, said.
"That's all we can hope for, class honours are about it because the cars in the class up from us are next level again. There's no way in the world we'll be able to compete with them.
"But our open class, the class our car is built to, is really, really competitive and it should be pretty cool.
"It's a really cool weekend and it's really different to what people are used to watching. Usually it's cars racing each other around a track, this time you're racing against a clock and the cars are just awesome. There is so much engineering that goes into them and they look so different, they've got wings and all different bits hanging off them.
"They've spent about a million dollars on the car I am driving, it's really cool."
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As a driver trainer Shiels has done "thousands of laps" around Sydney Motorsport Park in a host of different cars. That is one of the big assets he brings to the team given the small margins he has to work with.
"Those laps definitely, definitely help because there is no practice, you've got to put all your faith in the car and engineer and then you just go out and go 110 percent on the first lap," he said.
"Having driven a lot of cars is an advantage in this situation because we literally only get one lap at a time and they are really highly strung cars, so they only last for a lap at a time.
"You've got to get that one lap perfect, you don't have any time to get used to the car at all. It's a crazy, crazy car to drive, it's got about 1,300 horsepower and it will do over 300 kays an hour down the straight at Eastern Creek.
"In comparison a V8 Supercar does about 260, so it's awesome.
"It's pretty much a qualifying session each time, there are other cars out on the lap and you just try to do a flying lap. At the end whoever does the fastest lap wins.
"The tyres have literally got one lap in them before they're completely gone and that's pretty much the same as the car. You've got to get that one lap perfect otherwise it is all wasted."
On Friday Shiels has eight sessions behind the wheel of the Xtreme GTR entry and there were another six before Saturday's 10-minute shootout session.
