I opened my Facebook to some of the most wonderful rally news! Nameless Performance has announced the official “Nameless Performance Rally Team” to contest the 2015 Rally America 2wd Championship. In addition to announcing their intentions next season, they also announced a new driver and co-driver for the team. Aussie Will Orders will unfortunately no longer be part of the Nameless squad, but taking his place to pilot the GT-86 beast is none other than Chris Duplessis! Sitting alongside Duplessis will be his former WRC Academy partner in crime Alex Kihurani!
But wait, their’s more! The GT-86 has been undergoing some serious modifications since it last blasted down the gravel stages. Apparently they’ve decided a rear mounted radiator is the best option for cooling and easier engine access, giving the car a Group B badass look. If like me, you want to see this awesome machine with Chris Duplessis behind the wheel flying through the forests, then Nameless needs a little help. They have the car, but they need to get a few sponsors on board to help with all the other expenses to compete in a full championship campaign. I can’t think of a more exciting platform than the GT-86 for sponsors in rally, especially with the upcoming modifications. The car looks unique, sounds unique, and is fast as hell! Enough of my jibber-jabbering, read all about it in their official announcement below!
Nameless Press Release (via Facebook)
We have an announcement to make:
Will Orders has moved on to other adventures and will no longer be driving for the Nameless Performance Rally Team. Will has made the choice to dedicate all of his time to his family and his other commitments managing the racing program for teams in the Rally America Series. These commitments don’t allow enough time for Will to drive to 100% of his abilities so he has made the call to retire from competitive driving. We are sad to see him go and wish thank him for all he has contributed to our team and our company. We wish him luck with this new chapter in his life.
Following a thorough evaluation and selection process, we are proud to announce that we have signed Chris Duplessis as our driver moving forward. Chris is a world class driver in his own right with multiple championship wins under his belt and an international competition history. Chris is one of the best rally driving talents that the USA has ever produced and we are proud to have him as part of our team.
Chris is based out of Bethel, ME and grew up driving on the logging roads around his home town. He currently owns and operates a rally car rental business along with Danny Grant called Kitty Smiles Rally Adventure. Being a home grown American driving talent aligns with the core values of the company behind this rally team: Nameless Performance, a company dedicated to high quality manufacturing in the USA. We feel that this alignment of values strengthens our team as a whole and brings a new facet to the way we can market the team and our company.
To round off our new driving team, we have brought Alex Kihurani on board as well for 2015. Alex and Chris have been a strong team in the past and have a history of winning and setting records together. Keeping this well established driving team together brings a solid dynamic to the program that sets a firm foundation for us to build on.
This driving team change comes alongside a serious redesign of the car. We have put in countless hours of engineering time and many more hours of fabrication work to make the changes. We had to shelf some of the more radical ideas we have for a later revision, so for those of you thinking we haven’t gone far enough with the car, stay tuned for the next revision to see what’s in store.
We have redesigned the rear suspension to improve the geometry and add some new aspects to the behavior of the rear of the car. The new design also allows for 3” of extra ground clearance to help keep the important bits out of the dirt. We have moved away from the quick change differential in favor of the factory differential housing with upgraded internals and a taller than stock gear ratio to allow for increased top speeds.
We have also moved the radiator to the rear in order to move that weight closer to the center point of the car and improve weight distribution. This also changes the look of the car into something reminiscent of the cars from the Group B era. Moving the radiator like this also gives us more room at the front of the car for a larger intercooler and allows us to service the engine more easily.
The engine has also gone under the knife. Previous outings with the car have shown us that the engine in its current form was not strong enough to make it through more than one event even at the low power level we were at. We fixed this by partnering with Vigilant Motorsports based in Portland, OR who has built us a solid engine that should be able to take whatever we can throw at it thanks in part to a killer valve train setup from Supertech.
We will not be running the team at the upcoming Lake Superior Performance Rally, but we will be bringing the car out in November for a shakedown event to get Chris and the team comfortable with each other. The goal of this event will be to give Chris some seat time so he can get a feel for how he and the car will work together and to give the team an opportunity to test the changes that we made to the car in the break. For this event we will have a guest co-driver that will be announced closer to the event.
If everything works well and we all feel comfortable with the new arrangement, the goal will be to campaign the full 2015 Rally America Series with the aim of winning the 2wd championship.
We are currently looking for additional sponsors to help with travel expenses, flights, tires, and other operating costs associated with running a top level team. If you or your company would like to become part of a winning family of sponsors, please contact us and we can discuss exposure opportunities.
We would like to thank our current sponsors for all the support up to this point and for their continued support of the team: Nameless Performance, Inc.,John Reed Racing, RallySport Direct, Supertech, Vigilant Motorsports, BRAID wheels, Competition Clutch, Pauter Machine, Dick Hannah Subaru, Advanced Composite Systems, MCA Suspension, and Holinger Engineering.
