New car for Krass Racing
 

As some of you know my brother has several historically significant road race cars, including one of the 50th anniversary C5-R’s, Cadillac LMP1, Panoz LMP1, and several others most of which have some level of LeMans racing history.

Well I was able to assist in a mutually agreed upon deal between KIA Motors manufacturing of Georgia and Krass Racing to be able to get the KIA Pirelli World challenge Optima GTS car.
From what I know there were three of these cars built, two originally, then when one car was wreck a third car was built which ran in 2014 and 2015. That’s the car that Krass Racing now has. I do not know what happened to the other race car when KIA pulled out at the end of 2015.
The plan is to complete a race ready restoration over the next couple of years then run it in Vintage Racing.
These cars in my opinion are significant because they were Korea’s first major road race campaign car and they won a world championship in 2014, as well as many podium finishes against Mustangs, Camaros, Aston Martins and Porches.

I’ll try to post some pics of it once I figure out how to compress the size :)

Some pics

Cool, any idea on the motor specs?

From the research I have done they use the stock block, crank and cylinder head.
So stock they are 2.0L, maybe it has a slight bore/stroke?
Still runs the high pressure direct injection system, but has a full Bosch Motorsports ECU system with a MoTec monitoring system (also has launch control, ABS and traction control which both are driver adjustable).
They reportedly had 378 HP (I have read that’s at the wheel)...also read an article where they said they could get 550 HP at the crank but they de-tuned them for more reliability.

I don’t know what brand or size of turbo is on it yet, has a very nice fabricated header and looks to be a 3” inch single side exit exhaust.

Car weights is 2,950 LBS with the 378 HP, though supposedly this was with added weight to help level the competition.

Power is through an Xtrac sequential transmission, still front wheel drive (IE: no clutch required after you get moving, just a slight lift and shift).

Oh and it has huge Brembo brake system with two piece rotors.

Some pics of the brakes. Fronts are pretty big, 15”, two piece rotors and 4 piston Brembo’s.
Nice brake cooler set-up. The tears are of course much smaller, 2 piston Brembo’s.

This was back in 2012 when they were testing at amp

Great pic, thanks Joe!!!

They had 2 there but other phone got smashed.