HE called it 'crazy fast', but Brad Shiels' effort at Wakefield Park during the Australian Time Attack was seriously good.
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So good that he won the event. So good that he lowered his own Australian Time Attack lap record. So good that Shiels can now claim to have done the fastest lap ever clocked at Wakefield Park.
In the first one-lap flyer he did at the event behind the wheel of the Tilton Racing Mitsubishi Evo, the Bathurst driver clocked a 53:0600.
It bettered the previous record of 53:7045 set by Harrison Jones in a Formula 3 Dallara in 2018, Shiels hitting a top speed of 267km/hr.
"That is is like crazy, crazy fast for Wakefield Park, usually a really fast car there does about 220 and if a V8 Supercar was there it'd do 220-225 sort of thing," he said.
"It's awesome. It's pretty cool to be the fastest ever person around that track."
Prior to the event Tilton Racing - the three-time World Time Attack champions - had let it be known that it was chasing the outright lap record at Wakefield with Shiels.
Their Evo certainly had the potential to do it with 1100 horsepower under the bonnet and in testing Shiels was well into the 54s - running quicker than the 57:5652 Australian Time Attack record he clocked in 2019 in a Nissan R32 GTR.
"It didn't actually start out life as a Mitsubishi Evo, it's a completely custom-built, space frame race car and then it's got an Evo body put on it. It's still got the standard Evo engine - modified obviously - and the standard diffs and suspension," Shiels said.
"There's always a bit of pressure when you are going there to do the fastest lap possible, definitely.
"We went and tested at Wakefield Park in March and we were a little bit off the record, I think we were seven-tenths of a second away. We went away and made a few changes to car and went back at it at Time Attack."
Each competitor was allocated four runs at the event. There was no warm up or practice laps, it was simply go as fast as you can as soon as you see the green light.
Shiels did not need long to get the record he and the team wanted. He also felt he could have gone quicker.
"On one of the runs we had a little bit of a problem with the car, so I only did three laps that day. The record came on the first one, we thought we could have gone a little bit faster, but the conditions of the day changed a little bit and we ended up not being able to go faster," he said.
"I was really, really frustrated that it was a 53:06, I wanted to do a 52. Not that it makes any difference, it just sounds heaps better.
"From the time you start the track you are turning the whole time until you get back onto the straight. But coming down the straight before I finished the lap, I've got a predictive timer on the dash that's what the lap should be and it was flicking between a 52 and a 53.
"It felt good the lap, but there were a couple of little spots where it wasn't handling at it's best, so there's definitely a 52 left in it. But It's good just to be out there driving around."
While Shiels still wants to further test the limits of the Tilton Racing Evo, his effort was easily the fastest of any recorded at the event.
His closest rival was former Bathurst 6 Hour victor Nathan Morcom, who clocked a 56:5190 in a Mitsubishi Evo 9.
Shiels is still waiting to make his TCR debut for Tilton Racing as COVID-19 keeps forcing calendar alterations. As it currently stands, the expected opening round will be held in mid-October at a venue to be confirmed
