Atco Raceway was subject to another crazy Batlground drift demo at the 6th round of the Nopi/NDRA Xbox Cup Racing Series! The police wouldn’t let the crowd anywhere near the drifting, and also stepped in to restrict our show with HEAVY limitation. We weren’t allowed to really do burnouts, get near walls, and were prohibited from doing rodeos. In fact… we were barely allowed to tandem. It was weird, considering it was private property, and everything was heavily insured. I felt like we weren’t able to put on the kind of show that I know we can. Despite the interference, I suppose it was still a good demo… I just know it could have been better.
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We landed some great coverage on Speed TV’s Nopi Tunervision. The coverage highlights some of the madness from our drift demos over the course of the weekend.
The third round of Drift Fury was insane! Atlanta’s Illest took two podium finishes, with Jonathan “Marty” Martin finishing in first! The points race for the series is INCREDIBLY close, with a two-point spread between Marty and myself for the championship!
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Speed TV’s Nopi Tunervision host Charity Hodges interviews me at NDRA Valdosta about my li’l e46.
Competition was fierce at Turner Field for round 2 of Drift Fury! When the dust settled, I was left standing atop the podium! It was a DriftMechaniks 1-2-3, as we swept the podium! Erin Sanford took 2nd place, Jonathan Martin took 3rd, and Sammy from Tiger Racing took 4th!
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A short video off the Drift Fury website:
The drift demo at the 5th round of the Nopi/NDRA Xbox Cup Racing Series was insane! The E46 sustained some damage to the passenger-side rear quarter panel. I guess sometimes the walls kiss back! Luckily, the damage is only cosmetic, and should be fixed in no time! The fans up in Rockingham were really great. I met some awesome people over the course of the weekend. We did more shooting for Speed TV, so I can’t wait to see how that turns out!
Special thanks to Ashley Hawks for the great photos!
Demos > Competition.
Gateway International Raceway, just outside of St. Louis was subject to two days of unabridged MAYHEM, as we unleashed an onslaught of drifting insanity for the 4th round of the Nopi/NDRA Xbox Cup Racing Series.
This was our second NDRA drift demo. The first demo we did in Valdosta for round 2, was a blast… but we were still figuring things out as we went. This demo in St. Louis came together like VOLTRON. Things developed into more of a “show”, and the crowd went nuts. There were SO many people there. I don’t know where they all came from… but as soon as it was demo time, people were running to get a spot on the wall. The 6pm demo on Saturday was INSANE. There wasn’t an open space to stand around the entire demo area. People were sitting on people’s shoulders to get a glimpse. It was simply amazing. Beyond amazing, it was inspiring. The crowd was so into it, and we fed off that energy to create a show that might be difficult to top.
I learned where the opposing corner of the car was to my position in the driver seat during the demos. I knew the proximity of where contact would occur… but that’s one of those things you can’t truly learn until contact is made. Feeding off the energy of the crowd, I was able to “kiss” the wall at speed, and not sacrifice my line, speed, or angle. It was nuts. I started out with small low-speed… brake-stand style taps… and by the end of the weekend, was grazing the wall at speed. I managed to take a cone out that was a cigarette pack away from the wall’s edge. It was anarchy. Pure anarchy.
Drifting was a new thing to a lot of people at the event. Countless people said “I didn’t even know what drifting was until today… you made a fan out me – this is awesome!”. I few people said “I thought drifting was stupid until today… you guys changed my mind”. Hearing things like that means the world to me. You can’t put a pricetag on things like that. It validates that all the blood, sweat, and tears we put into all of this actually means something. It means EVERYTHING to me… but when it means something to other people as a result… it makes you feel like things are moving in the right direction. I would rather see drifting make it’s mark on the world, than see myself make a mark on drifting.
A short clip, shot by Tri Tri-Rudolph, from my qualifying run where I flipped the clipping point.
What an amazing weekend! After obliterating both motor mounts, & a bearing in my differential during qualifying, I managed to lay down a run that I was pleased with, so overall I walked away happy. The BFGoodrich G-Force Sport tyres performed flawlessly, and made for a great smoke-show upon track exit! HUGE HUGE thanks to Kieran from Gran Turismo East, and Dan & Tracy from Batlground Engineering for lending such a huge hand this weekend!!!
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I had the drift car officially stripped of all her vinyl for about two whole days… then she got wrapped with new graphics! It was kinda cool having her all black and shiny again. With those ol’ Racing Dynamics tucked under the wheel wells… she was indeed looking more old-skool euro – much to my liking.
I got the primary base of the new graphics on the car about an hour before I had to be at the track for Round 2 of Formula Drift @ Road Atlanta. I got most of the sponsor logos on the car at the track, and actually finished the rest of the application after race-weekend.
I designed everything in Illustrator… and it’s kinda crazy to see it go from the screen to the car. I’m an old skool veteran to vinyl application… but never anything this large in scale. I couldn’t have got-r-dun without Tracy’s help at Batlground. Everyone conked out asleep, or went home… but she stayed up to help me hinge the vinyl onto the car… proving once again that Batlground is the BEST ever. Thank you Tracy!!!
Ol’ grrrl is finally starting to look like a racecar instead of a street car with more stickers than you can count. Now… about some aero…
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This is a screenshot out of Illustrator of the file I was working with:.
Weeding vinyl on carpet isn’t much fun.
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On three… I’m going to close my eyes, and this will be applied… 1.. 2..
THREE! Man, that was easy. ;p
Batlground and Gran Turismo East logos complete.
Headed to the track with more vinyl work to do…
At the track…
On the track…
I will be competing in the 2nd round of the SCCA Formula Drift Series at Road Atlanta!
We did our first drift demo for NOPI/NDRA in Valdosta this weekend. It was a blast. We have a lot to work out to make the whole thing more of a “demo”… so it was a good learning experience. The way the track was set up… spectators weren’t really allowed anywhere near us, so we were pretty isolated to the infield of the circle-track the whole weekend. It gave me a chance to relax between demos, and do a ton of skateboarding.
We all got interviewed be the Speed Channel… so we’ll see how it turns out! Overall, it was a great weekend!
As part of the Batlground Drift Team, I will be participating in drift demos at four of the NDRA races this season, in addition to the world-famed NOPI Nationals in September!
After a sleepless night of car-prep… with the entire rear-end of the car on the floor of the shop less than 20 hours before the drivers meeting… the first round of Drift Fury was a success!
The beginning of the day was my first chance to shake-down the car, and get used to the solid rear-end. The car felt amazing. There used to be a noticable rebound on kick-back… that was no longer there. The car just wanted to keep going. It took some getting used to… but felt really great.
With 60 drivers in the feild… and elimination from 60 to 8… competition was fierce. The Top-8 elimination would leave Aaron Losey, Jonathan Martin, myself, Dennis Mertzanis, Forest Luster, Shawn Smith, Erin Sanford, and Rob Fellows standing.
Despite falling asleep in my helmet while staged for Top-8 (literally)… Erin Sanford and I would end up having a “one-more-time” battle, with close runs the first time around. In the end, Aaron Losey walked away with 1st place, Jonathan Martin with 2nd, myself with 3rd, and Dennis Mertzanis with 4th.
Afterwards, the skateboard made it’s way out of the truck, and a bunch of us started kicking it around old-skool style. It’s crazy how many drifters skate (or used to). It was a rad time, even if I was falling asleep randomly. ;P
