It takes a professional driver, a dedicated crew, a little luck, and some intriguing livery to turn heads at World Time Attack Challenge. For 2016, Dennis Resi had the entire package, starting with an RB28 engine recently overhauled, an Albins sequential transmission refreshed for lightning-quick shifts, and famed driver Tarzan Yamada hired to extract that last bit of performance from the machine.

Having the livery from Disney’s Cars certainly helps draw some attention, but it doesn’t make it fast. It was Dennis’ sensibility which ultimately  was what saw this project through to the success it is today. Rather than build his street GT-R into a time attack weapon, he bought one that had already been made into a dedicated track scalpel, and then refined it even further.

With the Lightning McQueen livery from the Pixar franchise, the car manages to attract attention in the paddock as easily as it does on the track.

A Precision 67/66 turbo force-feeds the stroked RB and makes a staggering 740 horsepower, which can easily spin all four tires. Thankfully, a Nismo LSD up front and a Quaife LSD at the rear help harness that pavement-churning torque, but it’s still a handful. Watching the way he rolls gently onto the power and still kicks the rear end out at 00:44, it seems that the car isn’t the easiest on tires and requires a quick set of hands to manage the snaking rear end. Thankfully, time attack only needs one quick lap, and besides, they brought in the big guns for 2016.

Anyone familiar with Best Motoring know of the wild, larger-than-life character that is Tarzan Yamada. Constantly angry, this man funnels his fury into driving and wrestles with these ferocious kinds of high-horsepower GT cars regularly, hence his hiring. Clocking laps in the 1:30 range, the car is still a few seconds off the fastest cars, but despite the car’s age, it seems Resi has the bug, and isn’t shy about writing a few more paychecks to squeeze more performance out of the R32.