We recently met Sterling Cole owner and principal at GPR Autosport near Boston. His team has been building cars and competing professionally and in Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) races since 1998. Born with racing in his blood, Sterling has a father who professionally raced motorcycles and offshore power boats, a grandfather who enjoyed Hill Climbs in the Northeast and a grandfather who was a test driver! While attending racing school, Sterling matched his instructors’ lap times in his third day.
GPR Autosport is finishing up the preparations of their 3rd Generation Mazda RX-7 FD. With a custom built and race prepared chromemoly tube frame chassis, the FD composit wide-body features the full aerodynamic package. Powered by a 13B street-ported, turbocharged, race prepared, 1.3L Mazda rotary with lightened and balanced rotating assembly, dry sump oiling system, complete Haltech digital ignition, fuel and electronics. The exhaust system features a powerful ally, the Burns Stainless Single Stage Race Mufflers. The straight-through stainless race muffler design combines minimal weight, maximum flow and maximum power while still performing the function of a muffler.
A fully adjustable coil-over racing suspension holds up the 4-wheel proportional disc brakes with stainless steel lines and carbon fiber cooling ducts. Power to the wheels come through a 6-speed sequential transmission, aluminum flywheel, racing clutch, and Ford 9-inch racing rear end.
This year the team is taking this exciting race car to the GT2 Class of the 2022 SCCA Super Tour/Majors series. Over the past year the team has been petitioning the SCCA to get the rules in their class changed to add a turbocharger. In October 2021, they were finally granted the right to use an EFR 7670 Turbocharger. They have been running head-first in final prep of the car by new years and will be dyno-testing the car through the winter before the spring season opener.
We invite you to follow along with us as we follow Sterling's team at GPR Autosport in their quest to compete in and win at the SCCA National Runoffs.
Won’t you share your story with us? Tell us what you are building, we look forward to seeing what’s in your garage.
