The Anatomy of one
insanely fast Nissan 350Z

But the dream was not over yet! The 350Z would be re-incarnated as an unlimited race car that he had always wanted to build. However, it had to meet these three criteria points:

1 – It must stay true to the ALMS GT car in terms of style and character.
2 – It must always be fun to drive, and reliable enough to run sprint races.
3 – It must always stay naturally aspirated and sound amazing.

So Sasha set out to build his perfect race car.

Anybody knows that to go fast, especially at a racetrack such as Mosport, you need downforce and with the addition of a custom splitter, an APR wing along with better tires and some weight reduction, the Z went from running a 1:33.6 in Koni Challenge trim to a 1:28.5. Sasha figures the wing and splitter were good for about 2 seconds of that improvement.

Next came power adders in the form of long tube headers that Sasha designed, tested, and built himself since there wasn’t anything on the market that satisfied his needs. These pipes alone picked up a massive 30whp over the stock exhaust manifolds which is ridiculously big power on a naturally aspirated V6 engine. Sasha’s racecar netted 13whp over the headers that were previously on the car.

Sasha also installed a set on his 350Z roadster and this video shows what a glorious sound they make.

2010 brought a fully built engine with high compression pistons, larger cams and a custom intake manifold, that increased power to 330whp. Along with the power came further weight reduction and the step up to 18″ wheels with real (but used) slicks. The lap time at Mosport dropped to a 1:27.0 However, Sasha wasn’t too pleased with time since he expected the car would have done a mid-to-low 26 with that setup.

Despite building a custom intake manifold it was still holding back power so in 2012 he decided to stop messing around with a plenum and switch over to ITB’s. These are Jenvey units and combined with ported heads, the engine made 372whp! That’s some serious jam but don’t think it was just a matter of bolting these parts on and voila, big power. The opposite is true, Sasha spent many months testing different part combinations, tuning, failing, etc. to come up with this setup. He credits Clark and the guys over at Jim Wolf Technology as being instrumental in helping guide him to a setup that would make strong power.

All the hard work and determination paid off though as the 350Z now went 1:24.8 at Mosport.

The search for faster lap times and more power led into 2013 where a 3.7L HR engine was built with larger cams and custom ITB trumpets with air boxes. You may be asking why the need for airboxes? Well, even though ITB’s look sexy as hell exposed they end up sucking in a ton of hot engine bay air, and Sasha found the engine would lose as much as 20whp with the hood closed on the dyno.

The result of all the new efforts, a whopping 413 horsepower to the wheels, revving to 9000rpm making this naturally aspirated Z one of the most powerful ever built.

The exterior also got a make over with a new blue colored paint job and a DJ Engineering dual-flap wing as well as splitter extension by C3 Composites.

Despite a healthy increase in power and aero improvements, lap times didn’t improve as much as Sasha had hoped and 2013 ended with a best time of 1:24.5,  but that’s what testing and R&D is all about. Not every change or modification is going to be positive and despite the small lap time improvement Sasha still continued to forge ahead.

By the middle of 2014, with a new Dailey Engineering dry sump setup on the VQ and some fresh slicks as well as a carbon roof and doors resulted in the Z setting a 1:22.8 lap time. That’s an incredible feat for a car of this nature, especially considering that late 1960s F1 race cars were running 1:22’s at Mosport.