It was a long weekend, and a great event. Plenty of fierce battles between old friends and veteran drifters alike. It made for an amazing time, and a fantastic weekend.After the dust settled… I almost lost an eye, had 6 destroyed tyres, and a 3rd place trophyDetails to come shortly.
The 2007 Nopi Nationals was host to the Nopi “World Drift Finals”. Unfortunately… I don’t have much good to say about the weekend. Rather than go into detail… I will just say that this was the worst drift event I’ve competed in to date. I honestly left the speedway on Sunday hating drifting… and left wondering if all of this is even worth it.
Despite a mechanical failure rendering my car useless for the weekend…
I did manage to get some solid face-time with Jason and the crew from Speed TV for an interview!
After breaking a sway bar end-link during tandem competition, I mananged to bring home a 2nd place finish! The track was very high-speed, and incredibly bumpy. Trying to tandem with a broken end-link was interesting to say the least… but overall a great event!
Mechanical difficulties cut the weekend short for me when my clutch went out after 5 runs. I tried making a qualifying pass, but could not put any power down to spin the wheels. We made a frantic dash to try and get a replacement, but apparently there are no parts counters open past noon on a Saturday (if open at all) in Pittsburgh. Fail. I did get a chance to sit down with the Speed TV crew for a good interview. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!
I had an amazing weekend up in St. Louis with the Slide America BMW. The car performed beatifully, and the BFGoodrich tires were amazing! Gran Turismo East and Foerst Motorwerks helped set the car up for it’s first professional podium finish! This has been long overdue… and feels especially sweet considering I’m pushing half the horsepower!I won’t even get into how fierce the battles were… otherwise I will write an entire book. Let’s just say this weekend was BEYOND INSANE… and let the pictures do the talking..
After a day of “shaking the rust off”, I finished top-8 at Drift Fury in St. Louis at Gateway International Raceway!
I managed a top-8 finish in Cordele, GA this weekend for round 2 of the SCCA Drift Series at Watermelon Speedway! There was a questionable call made in regard to my opponent’s advancement, but a great event for sure!
I spent a few minutes on a retouch of a great photo from Formula Drift Atlanta last weekend.
If you’re the photographer who took this… please e-mail me – I want to give credit where credit is due. :)
The original:
Formula Drift events at Road Atlanta are always amazing. I ran in to some issues with a broken passenger-side control arm… which definitely threw a wrench into things. I mis-calculated my entry back into 10A, and spun… catching the inner lip of the passenger-side wheel on the inside of the rumble strip. It basically pulled on the wheel enough to destroy the inner bushing on the control arm. At first I thought my weekend was done… but Kieran from GTE and Erin Sanford ran up to Strictly German, which happens to be the largest BMW salvage yard I have ever seen. They managed to get an entire control arm & bushing back over to me, and Matt from Foerst Motorwerks got it swapped out on the hill. It was INSANE.
After all of that, I managed to initiate my fastest entry into 10A… I didn’t lift the entire way down the hill… I was hellbent and pissed off, and I remember thinking “I hope this works”… then stabbing the clutch as hard as I could. I didn’t end up qualifying Top-32… but I gave that track hell considering the circumstances. So overall, it was an amazing weekend..
I will be competing in the 2nd round of the SCCA Formula Drift Series at Road Atlanta! I’m super excited to get back out on that track. Hopefully there will be no technical difficulties with the car this year. :)
See you all at the track!
Since this event was the last of the championship series, all of the DriftMechaniks crew decided we would dress up in thrift-store business suits, and rock out the last event of the season with some style.
Unfortunately there was a horrific accident, in which a photographer was struck by an understeering drift car. The event was cancelled after the accident, and with good reason. We all wish him a speedy recovery… and REALLY hope he is okay.
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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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:
