Scion Racing Makes Its Debut at Moroso Motorsports Park

Scion is entering the motorsports arena with Scion Racing and has partnered with Sport Compact drag racing stars Christian Rado of WORLD Racing and Leslie Durst of Horizon Motorsports. Rado and Durst, both 29, will campaign Scion tC competition vehicles in a series of NHRA and NDRA national events beginning in 2005.

Rado's tC will make its competition debut in the Pro Outlaw Front Wheel Drive (FWD) class at the June 4-5 NDRA Xbox Event at Florida's Moroso Motorsports Park. The 2,000-lb., silver streak mica tC is powered by a race-modified 2.7-liter 3RZFE Toyota engine producing 1,200 horsepower on methanol. The tC race car was recently on display at SEMA's International Auto Salon Show in Atlantic City, N.J. Details on his Pro FWD Scion racer can be seen on his Web site, www.world-racing.com.

Christian began racing in 2001, which was the inaugural year for NHRA Sport Compact drag racing. He competed in his WORLD Racing Celica and still holds the Atco Pro FWD track record of 8.478 seconds and 176.14 mph.

Durst, of Long Beach, Calif., Turbo magazine's 2003 Rookie of the Year, has an All-Motor/Pro Stock class competition tC in the works for the 2006 season. The stock 2.4-liter 2AZFE tC engine has been race-modified to produce approximately 320-hp on methanol. This coupe sports a full tube chassis and will be shown at the November 2005 SEMA Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. When completed, Durst expects the All-Motor/Pro Stock tC to run in the high 9-second range.

In just three years at the All-Motor starting line, Durst has scored an impressive run of both high speed and elapsed time records, including clocking the class' first 9-second run and setting the Pomona (Calif.) Raceway track record of 9.934 seconds, both of which were set in 2003. In 2004, she set top speed runs of 132.88 mph and 130.28 mph at NHRA events in Englishtown, N.J., and Las Vegas, respectively.