Just Drift TOPDRIFT Rd. 2 Horse Thief Mile, Willow Springs - 10th overall

Where to begin... This weekend was incredible. Beyond words, outstandingly amazing. Thank you Charlie, the Justdrift crew and the judges for one hell of a weekend, and once again, i'll throw out the largest possible thank you to Jim, Brian and James from Car Crafters and Guthrie Racing for making traveling to drift events a reality, without their help, I would be stuck doing the same old thing on the same old track. Ok i'll stop now :)

Day 1 - Practice

7am, Saturday morning. Arrive at Willow springs, and haphazardly make our way to Horse Thief Mile (Seemed noone from the track knew how to get there) and after backing the rig up almost a quarter mile to get to the correct turn off, we made it to the paddock.

The Paddock

Unload the cars amidst the 40+ others, have a quick drivers meeting where this track is explained to be rather difficult. Charlie asks who hasn't been here before, Jim and I raise our hands... Jim and I are both in group A (first run group of the day) lol. Begin all day runs of 1/2 hour each.

We helmet up and meander on to the track, heading up for the first warm up lap.

Initial thoughts:

• Holy smokes this track is steep.
• Holy smokes this track is narrow.
• Holy smokes this track feels like a roller coaster.
• Holy smokes this track is amazing.
• Holy smokes this track really does separate the men from the boys.
  

After doing it completely wrong for all of the first practice session (including a few off road excursions), I notice the car is cutting out bad during acceleration (more on that later), and end up just dealing with it being 150+ HP low again lol.

Right after initiation

2nd practice session, I finally start to figure out how to run this track, and make one complete linked run at the end of my session. It wasn't pretty and my line was horrible, but damn it felt good. Fast forward 4 more run groups, and after talking with Ryan Bell (fellow top drift driver), I iron out some kinks and am feeling nice and consistent with my entry, line and speed.

For those that have never driven this track, here is a written visual from my perspective. 

Come around the turn at the bottom of the hill, accelerate uphill full throttle in 2nd gear, all the way to the top (both hill and gear). Initiate hard using weight transfer and e-brake, bringing the car as close to full lock as possible. Immediately get back into throttle, hitting a very late apex clip point around the first hairpin. Drive a rather awkward line, as far as you can get down the hill on the straight, bringing the rear tires to the very outside edge of the asphalt (but not off). If you don't get far enough down the hill here, your run is already over. Find the clipping point further down the hill on the outside of the straight, lift slightly and transition hard, then right back on the throttle for just a moment. Too much throttle here, and you go off the track at the bottom of the hill, too little, and you end up in the dirt on the inside of the bottom hairpin or not making it and straightening out. For me, most of my runs would include e-braking pretty hard to drag myself outside to hit the clips on the next hairpin. Back on full throttle, hit the inner clip, then as far outside, fast transition, then outside again, to hit the last inner clipping point, finishing the run. 

Day 2 - Qualifying

2 quick practices to get back up to speed and make sure everything is still dialed. Drivers meeting to go over the line, clipping points and other things. Car is way down on power now, worse than the day before. Brian, checks out the spark plugs right as group A is qualifying (now going by numbers, thank goodness im 45), and finds the ceramic on 3 plugs is broken off. We make a quick run to Auto Zone, and pick up new plugs, throw them in, and i run up to balcony and it feels amazing again. 

My qualifying runs are upon me. I lay down a decent first run, nothing too aggressive, just to get one in the books, then do almost the exact run again. For the third I let it hang out, aggressive entry, used the whole track, hardly had to e brake the downhill, stoked on that run. 

Qualifying run - Getting outside!

Drivers meeting. 50 dudes, all waiting to hear the news on who would make top 16. Feeling pretty nervous at this point, Jim sadly spun all 3 runs due to horrible rear tires, and the crew was back at the trailer. 

They start reading off names. 16th,15th,14th, 13th,12th,11th,10th, still no Dan Brockett, getting pretty worried at this point,9th,8th - my name gets called. So stoked. So beyond stoked. Wishing my Mixie was here to celebrate with me ;)

Made it :) I decided to look the wrong way for this pic lol. 

Day 2 - Tandem

I line up for tandem John Jimison, have a shitty lead run, and a shittier following run. We get one more timed. I have an amazing lead run, and straighten out first thing when following... I have so much to learn about tandem its not even funny lol. 

This is a slight indicator of the grade of the track... Pretty steep.

Spooled it.

The decided to suck, and straighten out.

I have talked your ears off, on to the pics!

Results after 2 rounds!

Round 2 final results, top 16 in bold!!!

Car #	Driver Name	Points	Round 2 Rank
2	David Briggs	100	1
1	Neiko Gunther	95	2
15	Dave Westfall	90	3
11	Orlando Gamez	86	4
3	Ryan Clemens	82	5
4	Carlos Cano	78	6
6	John Jimison	74	7
16	Enrique Mendoza jr	70	8
7	Adam Bakaya	66	9
14	Dan Brockett	62	10
10	Alex Villabrille	58	11
5	Chris Licup	54	12
13	Adam Levi	50	13
20	Brandon Patterson	46	14
21	Randy Ramos	42	15
17	Mikey Whitey	38	16
12	Ryan Bell	34	17
28	Andy Hatley	30	18
30	Mauricio Orneales	26	19
32	Bruce Krees	22	20
8	Jason Kim	18	21
9	Mikki Frial	18	22
18	Jesse Vargas	18	23
23	Tyler K Xiong	18	24
24	John Bathel	18	25
25	Daniel Kuo	18	26
26	Philippe Abatol	18	27
40	Jason Bostrom	18	28
41	Jacky Sin	18	29
42	Joe Mitchel	18	30
43	Van Williams	18	31
19	Jim Guthrie	0	32
22	Ramon Hernandez	0	33
27	George Kilada	0	34
29	Tony Cisneros	0	35
31	Masashi Montonga	0	36
33	Matt Dale	0	37
34	Josh Chang	0	38
35	Mikko Eustaquiao	0	39
36	Spencer Reiker	0	40
37	Misa Ingles	0	41
38	Yoshie Shayuma	0	42
39	Eric Hill	0	43

A few more pics from vegas, including my wrecked fender :(

Vegas Drift Rd. 1 - 16th place

What a crazy weekend. Had a great time overall, learned a lot more and am ready for the next round. Here are my thoughts. I am going to be pretty hard on myself, as I expect a lot more of me. The saving grace of this weekend was having the love of my life finally get to come out to an event with me :) Just having her there made a world of difference.

So...

First things first I hit a wall pretty hard after about 5 practice laps (car was feeling amazing by the way), everything was going great, then I went way off line way to fast and smashed the wall rear end first, then hit the front right tire at almost full lock. I crushed the rear bumper / fender / trunk / taillight,  broke the PBM toe rod in half and bent the front strut where the knuckle meets the coil-over.

Keep in mind that this is my first major wreck in 4 years of driving the car at events, so I was pretty bummed my weekend was over. I limped the car back to the pits to see Brian waiting there with a giant hammer and block of wood.

Post wreck pic

The dude worked a miracle, popped the fender out, bent the strut back into shape, "realigned" the car and off i went... Until the rear wheel rubbed with the slightest input... Back again to see the rear toe rod was broken in half. I had no spares, and went looking through the pits for one. Luckily a very kind Vegas local had just swapped his out for new ones and let me have it.

We slapped it on and off I went with my wall made alignment. The car didn't want to transition, among other things ( to be expected) and right when I was getting the hang of it and laying down runs, it died and wouldn't turn over... Once again I thought the weekend was over. I get a text from Brian telling me to get a ride back with Ben and jump in Jims car and get practice in. I cannot thank Jim enough for letting me use his car, it meant more than most people could understand. He also gave up driving in qualifying to let me have a shot.

So I did.

I got 2 practice runs in before qualifying started... Holy smokes 700hp is a lot. I laid down a conservative run to get one in the books. I never went past 3/4 throttle as it had so much power all around.
2nd run I nailed it. Super aggressive entry, hit the clips, then decided to let it eat and floored it right at the end.

I spun out. Those 700 ponies came on like a freight train. Luckily the previous run was enough to make the show, and I qualified 14th in the top 16.

This was also my first time making top 16 at a large drift event. It felt great!!! Since I qualified towards the back of the pack, I was up against the number 2 qualifier, Josh Guild (rad driver by the way).

Needless to say, I lack the tandem experience needed (come on NM lets do this) to advance, and got knocked out first round. I got out driven in every way, especially since I had the HP advantage. Well done Josh :)

As stated I learned a ton once again and will be back it it this weekend for top drift round 2.

Test... And blow through 6 tires in 10 minutes.

Took the car out the Sandia Motor speedway today to get a feel for it, as I havnt been behind the wheel of it since oct. of last year.

Felt really good to be back in the seat, had some issues with holding power in 3rd gear, but the angle was amazing when the power was there. 

Few pics that Will Fox from racingsouthwest.com snapped of the days fun. Thanks a million Will, the shots look epic!

330hp at 8psi like whoa.

Thanks again to Scotty from Motiva (thankyouthankyouthankyou) for getting his tune on and staying up late yet again for this car. I owe you a case of dr. pepper for sure.

Quick vid of the run:



Once again had a few issues, re gapped the plugs and found out my coil packs / fuel pressure regulator / fuel pump all suck. We didn't want to push it with all those things working against us, but in the future if i ever fix all that crap 400+ won't be too hard to hit.

So... All in all,

Old HP and TQ, 292 / 268 on 15psi, no engine management.
New HP and TQ, 330 / 309 on only 8psi, AEM EMS.

Picked my wheel color just now...

Thanks to an inspiring chat with CJ. 

It lives!

Huge thanks to Scotty from Motiva (who ripped out 65+lbs of wiring and re-wired the whole damn thing).

Engine bay looks 1000x cleaner without all that junk.

Kick panel to be made to cover the ecu.

Fippin' switches

65+ lbs of wire. DIAF plox.

Just Drift TOPDRIFT Rd. 1 pics

Just Drift TOPDRIFT Rd. 1 was a blast and a half

A huge thanks to Anthony C, as without him I would not have been able to have such a rad weekend. He lent me his drift car for the event, what a guy :)

Despite having the handicap of a car that wouldn't go into second gear, with my head hitting the roof, knees hitting the steering wheel, 120 less horsepower and no e-brake, I had one of the best drift weekends ever! It was awesome to get to drive with people at a much higher level than myself.

I got 2 full days of 2,3, and 4 car tandem, and got to run with my friend from vegasdrift, Nick Dizon, so that was a welcome surprise to see him out there. The weekend couldn't have happened without my main sponsor, Jim Guthrie with Guthrie Racing and Car Crafters. He did pretty damn amazing considering this was his first event. Another huge thanks goes out to Ben, Brian and Mikey for putting up with me all weekend long, fixing things and being awesome.

Here are the results. I was pleased to see I got 18th out of 48 drivers, not bad at all. Pics will be in the next post :)

TopDrift 2011

Qualifying scores going to TOP 16

Rnk	Car #	Name	Score
1	23	Chris Licup	270
2	26	Carlos Cano	266
3	34	Neiko Gunther	261
4	10	Michael Bell	257
5	47	Adas Baksys	253
6	24	John Jimison	246
7	41	Mikki Frial	245
8	39	Jason Kim	243
9	9	Jesse Vargas	240
10	28	Alex Villabrille	231
11	8	David Briggs	229
12	44	Jim Guthrie	228
13	11	Ryan Clemens	225
14	25	Mikey Whitey	216
15	42	Adam Levi	214
16	20	Ramon Hernandez	211
17	35	George Kilada	210
18	45	Dan Brockett	207
19	29	Tony Cisneros	204
20	14	Masashi Motonaga	199
21	1	Orlando Gamez	190
22	16	Enrique Mendoza jr	188
23	30	Matt Dale	188
24	33	Josh Chang	187
25	3	Tyler K Xiong	184
26	36	Mikko Eustaquiao	179
27	7	John Bathel	170
28	40	Daniel Kuo	166
29	17	Philippe Abatol	165
30	5	Spencer Reiker	152
31	37	Misa Ingles	134
32	32	Yoshie Shayuma	120
33	43	Eric Hill	20
34	2	sylvia mendoza	DNF
35	4	Luke Pakula	DNF
36	6	Brandon Patterson	DNF
37	12	Michael Mancuso	DNF
38	13	Hasan Hamade	DNF
39	15	toi matthis	DNF
40	18	Chi Hui	DNF
41	19	Vladimir Orlov	DNF
42	21	Roger Smith	DNF
43	22
44	27	Ryan Fadera	DNF
45	31	yuri garcia	DNF
46	38	Mauricio Ornealas	DNF
47	46	Seth Prestley	DNF
48	48	Randy Ramos	DNF

Off to cali at 7am friday for TOPDRIFT rd. 1

So Anthony C. kindly lent me his ride for this event, Cali here we come. Should be interesting in a borrowed car I have never driven in, to a track I have never driven, against people 76 times better than me.

I am excite! Pics from the trip to come...