Hobart driver aiming to break lap record in new beast at Baskerville

It’s a 1000-horsepower monster that Hobart’s Liam Hooper hopes will eat the lap record at Baskerville.

Liam Hooper will be racing his Subaru WRX at the Tasmanian Circuit Racing Champs at Baskerville this Sunday, hoping to break the lap record. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

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ONE of the fastest Subaru’s in the world will debut at Baskerville Raceway tomorrow and “test pilot” Liam Hooper can’t wait to unleash the 1000-horsepower beast.

Driving his Subaru WRX Coupe, Hooper, 37, of Hobart, hopes to break the lap record for Sports GT racers around Baskerville in the penultimate round of the Tasmanian circuit racing championship, with the final round at Symmons Plains next month.

Hooper used his previous WRX as a development car for the real deal.

“We spent the past three years working on the ‘recipe’ because it’s high-performance and to get things right takes time,” Hooper said.

“There’s no one else in the world doing it exactly like this so we had to do quite a bit of guess-work and suck-it-and-see kind of stuff.

Liam Hooper will be racing his Subaru WRX at the Tasmanian Circuit Racing Champs at Baskerville this Sunday, hoping to break the lap record. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

“Once we got the other one right and set some fast laps and had some success, we switched it over to this chassis because it’s lighter _ about 100kg less than the four-door.”

The Sports GT lap record could tumble at the hands of the Subaru, which unofficially pipped in practice yesterday.

“The Sports GT lap record sits in the high 53-second mark at the moment,” Hooper said.

“That’s what we are looking to beat on Sunday.”

Hooper unveiled the car at the last state round at Symmons Plains last month.

“That was its first race straight out of the workshop after Brad Sherriff, he’s a world-renown engineer that we’re lucky enough to have here in Tasmania, built the car,” he said.

“We had the car on a testing level of power and set-up, and we were the fastest car. This weekend is about making some fine-tuning to get the best out of it, turn the power up and hopefully set a new lap record at Baskerville.”