I’m just going to start this off with the admission that, sometimes, I’m completely baffled by people. This is one of those times. A guy with a Porsche 911 Turbo S posted delightedly on a forum about how he finally ran a quarter-mile in the 9s. He had the slip to prove it and everything! Well, everything except the truth, since the slip was copied from a post on a GTR forum. It gets worse.
Why do people still do shit like this? Are admiring words on a forum post really worth the considerable, hollow effort needed to craft a trail of lies? Maybe? It doesn’t make any sense, especially in an era where events are so well documented, and everything is so much easier to cross-check.
Let’s start from the beginning, which, in this case, is this post from user E-gear on the forum 6speedonline. I’ve editied it a bit, but the full original is available:
Finally, mission accomplished.🇺🇸
My 2016 TTS is equipped with: COBB AP tuned by Sam, ByDesign IC’s, Kline exhaust no cats and BMC filter. Car is fine tuned after many logs for race and 93 pump gas. All for either super hot weather, cool weather and in between.
Ran a 9.99 pass...finally! As some of you may recall, my last track visit netted me a 10.05 run under a 70 or so degree night and after cooling vehicle for an hour or so and IC’s with ice cubes, water and spraying them with CO2 to freeze them.
...
I am proud of this run; barely dipping into the 9's though, but nines nonetheless. I couldn’t back it up, but planning on visiting track next Friday night and partake in the import war event. My track working buddy claims that track will be super sticky for this event. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to repeat. This time I’ll bring my CO2 tank, carpet dryer fan, water hose and cooler filled with plenty of ice and extra 104GT plus fuel.
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Below is my slip...sorry for all my little notes; that is how I keep my diary from one pass to the next soon after making a pass as I race my TTS, C7Z or C6Z. I usually just post the section with the timing splits...last time some folks wanted to see it all...well then, here it is.
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Anyway, just sharing some of my best practices and some of my notes (secrets) for all to try. Hey, it may work for you as well.😀
Thanks,
E-Gear😃
...and this post was accompanied by this image of E-gear’s time slip, showing his miraculous sub-10-second run:
Impressive, right? He did the 1/4 mile in 9.999 at a trap speed of 135.97 MPH. Guess all that money and those mods and the guy’s near-fetishistic obsession with tire pressures really paid off, huh?
Other users on the forum were supportive and quick to celebrate E-Gear’s achievement, even suggesting that he have the timeslip framed:
Not just a 9.99 but a 9.999! That’s awesome you should frame that slip.
Big congrats all the hard work paid off. I was hoping this would happen on the stock tires. You’re inspiring me to keep mine on.
Yes, E-Gear is an inspiration to us all, the hero we need right now, and he was happy to discuss his triumph in detail, including the life-affirming story of How It Happened:
Funny you said frame it...here is a summary:
Lady at booth hands over the slip, it’s dark, I put other window down and drove back to my parking spot with helmet still on. I see some guys looking at me giving me thumps up...I’m like: “what?” Two buddies rushed to me and were like dude...you did it! One reaches in and grabbed slip, rips it in half and suggested the exact thing...he said: “frame this”. I said give it back so I can write notes before I forget how it happened.
Yes, I will frame and put in my home office.
Sorry, my tears of joy are blurring my vision here a bit. I’m okay.
For a couple of days, all was perfect. E-Gear was drinking in his well-earned adulation, dispensing esoteric tire advice and generally holding court. That all came crashing down on November 14, when a user named Teste posted this:
Amazing work matching this run down to the thousandth, including the reaction time! That takes some real talent to do.
Suggested new title for thread “Mission Accomplished, Photo shopped my way into the 9's!”
There was also this link included to a post by a user named PianoProdigy on the GT-R Life forum from January 2014, in which a GT-R owner/operator describes his hard-won achievment of finally running 9s in the quarter mile.
In fact, that GT-R owner, who included plenty of pictures and data from the run, even posted a picture of his timeslip, which looked like this:
Holy crap, a 9.999 quarter mile at 135.97 MPH! A reaction time of 5.496, and an 1/8 mile time of 6.393... hey, wait a minute. Let’s see something here:
Now, I’m no mathlete, but I think the odds of running two different cars on two different tracks with two different drivers and getting the exact same times, as in down to the thousandth of a second, for every marker – 60 feet, 1/8 mile, 1000 feet, quarter mile, and so on – is what mathematicians would call “fucking impossible.”
In fact, one user on another form did a little bit of computation, and came up with
The odds are 1 in 1.e+26, or 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,004,764,729,344
Actually the odd integer is a result of my calculator not working correctly, and my formula might be off, essentially its 1 in 1,000 he would match the first number. Then a 1 in 1,000 chance to match the second, 1 in 10,000 to match the MPH, and since its a consecutive roll the chance becomes multiplied of each other(if my memory is right)
... which is to say that you’re more likely to get struck by lightning while involved in an orgy with Sasquatch, a leprechaun, and some sexy unicorn you met at the DMV than you are likely to match every single number on a drag timeslip.
Also, just to back up the GT-R owner’s story, the man himself posted a video of the 9.999 run:
In that run you can see that the GT-R lets the right lane do its run first, then starts his later. That’s why the timeslip says “Right 1st 4.5665" at the bottom. It says this on E-gear’s slip image, too, meaning that not only would he have had to match every time as the GT-R did, but the person in the right lane would have to finish 4.5665 seconds before E-gear’s run as well. Hm.
The GT-R driver is Alan Tripp, of Tripp Firm Racing (who have the admirable motto of ‘Keep racing on the track!’). Alan explained to me just how E-gear’s deception was discovered:
I’ve been a member on 6speedonline for years, but I don’t browse it regularly anymore since it is primarily a Porsche forum and I sold my Cayenne Turbo. A fellow GTR owner remembered seeing my 9.999 pass on the GTR forums from almost 3 years ago, and had previously smelled bullshit in E-gear’s posts, so when E-gear posted an even-more-unbelievable slip that just made it into the 9s by one-thousandth, he must have thought to lookup my prior post, compare the slips, and found the fraud. What’s crazy is this moron almost got away with it.
Somebody just remembered a similar run from three years ago! That’s amazing. What’s also amazing is that it appears that our noble E-gear has a history of this manner of bullshit, having copied another timeslip for a 10.05 run from another driver’s 2011 run, on a Honda-Tech forum.
When confronted with the evidence, E-gear bravely blames everyone else, and “shenanigans”:
I’ve seen this type of shenanigans done to other guys before; I never understood the motives, but no worries.
In the meantime, my buddy is trying to get copy of clean slip and possibly a video taken by his 5.0 friend for additional proof.
I will be driving down to Ennis Texas this Friday night to race, please come and witness...take pics and video if you must.
A few close friends are attending this time and they too will take pics and videos.
I worked too hard and pay my dues for a long, long time...no need for phoniness crap.
Thanks,
E-Gear
Holes are dug deeper, and it sort of just gets worse from there, culminating in what may be an admission that E-gear doesn’t even actually own a 911:
This is funny, I like it. Thankfully I have a sense of humor. LOL Before I can go back to track and race again, I need to buy my own 911. I don’t own one yet, I’ve been borrowing my neighbors in exchange for special favors.
Hopefully, those ‘special favors’ don’t include Photoshop work, because if you look at the initial image that started all this mess, it’s pretty shoddy:
There’s not much point going into the details of this half-assed, meaningless deception any more, though. The question is why? Why do people do this? E-gear certainly isn’t the first, and won’t be the last.
Are we that desperate for approval and adulation? Do we all crave that feeling of accomplishment? Of course we are, and we do. But this sort of thing is hollow, and helps nobody.
In general, gearheads and racers are a pretty welcoming bunch; I’m sure anyone posting their honest attempts and victories, no matter how minor, or even failures, no matter how devastating, would find support and camaraderie in forums like this.
So what if E-gear has no 911? E-gear can race whatever he has, and I bet there would be people to cheer him on to whatever goals he had. This sort of lying and elaborate fantasy is unsettling, and I hope E-gear finds some solace or gets some help.
So, the I guess the lesson here is that if you’re going to fake timeslips, work on those Photoshop skills and absolutely change those numbers around. People and the internet have way better memories than you realize.