4 years of drifting in 10 minutes. Hooray!

Took clips from the last 4 years of drifting and threw them into a video, mostly for me to get them all in one place, but good to see progress has been made not only with the car, but with driving as well. This showcases the jump from a spray painted SOHC KA24E s13 to the RB25 wide body car is today.

Enjoy!!!

For event organizers, drift specific spread sheets!

Drift Spreadsheet !!!

Just made these for our No Coast Drift Party coming up on the 1st and 2nd, and figured anyone who runs drift events across the country could use these.

Made a top 16 elimination excel spreadsheet, as well as a drivers list spreadsheet for up to 3 qualifying runs, with the totals for speed / angle, line / smoothness, and style / excitement auto totaling at the bottom of each run. Epic and easy.


Top 16 Drift Competition Bracket

Score Sheet for Drivers 1-22

Score Sheet for Drivers 23-44 

If these help you out, post up, share, edit I dont really care.

No Coast Drift Party Pre-Registration for Oct. 1st and 2nd

We are to the point where we are taking pre-registration orders for the event. This includes those of you in state as well.

Drivers List:
#1 Jeremy Norris, CO

Here is the catch for you out of state folks, we have secured funding for a gas/diesel credit:

• 300+ miles away gets $100 each
• 300 - 50 miles, gets $50 each

Just show us your ID's when you get to the gate. This credit will go out to the first 10, or until we reach $1,000, depending on where people are pre registering from.

If we dont get enough people pre reg'd from out of state to fill the credit, it will be dumped into the purse for the comp on sunday :) I will be keeping a running list of the drivers signed up in the order they paypal on this blog.

You will receive the credit when you arrive at Sandia on saturday or sunday. Remember to get your tire requests in here ASAP as well.

If you have any other questions, please shoot me an email at sandiadriftevents@gmail.com

In the comments section of the checkout, please include the following:

Name:

City and State you are driving from:

Car year make and model:

Mods:

Sponsors:

Interesting Fact about you:

Years Drifting:


On to the payment info!!!

Drivers
$135 for 2 day plus discounted camping
$125 2-day entry
$25 Saturday only
$100 Sunday only

Spectators
$20 2-day general admission ($15 Sunday only).

Gates will be open all day, and a pre race BBQ will be held around 2pm on saturday. We will have tech until 4:30pm - Drivers meeting to follow shortly after.  Please try to be there!

On a side note, it may very well be pretty cold at night, so bring warm clothes and tons of tires.

Choose!

Sat and Sun w/ Camping (discounted) $135.00 Sat and Sun $125.00 Sun Only $100.00 Sat Only $25.00

If the button above doesn't work, please send payments to sandiadriftevents@gmail.com

Can't wait to see everyone out there!

<3

Dan

Top Drift round 4 2011 Wrecked Magazine Photos! Hooray!

As always Wrecked comes through with some epic shots, even with the challenges of shooting at night, they came out amazing. Thanks Wrecked for doing what you do!

The photo gallery can be found here

Some of my faves:

Video from Top Drift round 4

Qualifying run, and top 8 following run filmed with my GoPro.

My JustDrift Topdrift rookie season in retrospect / rd. 4

What an amazing season.

Many friends gained, many techniques learned, many new tracks and layouts driven. I cannot begin to recognize how blessed am to have someone in my town that saw some potential and lent much more than a helping hand. Without Jim Guthrie, Brian Dewitt and Car Crafters, this entire season would not have existed.

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you guys. You made a dream become a reality.

This was my rookie season competing against some pretty amazing drivers. While New Mexico is a super fun place to drive, we don't have the population or the scene to kick things to the next level. That's where Justdrift comes in. They have been churning out FD winning drivers for sometime now, and (yet again) I cannot begin to describe how awesome the entire crew at Justdrift is. From the crew to the judges (Charlie, Bomac, JTP, Taka and everyone else), the entire season was full of positive encouragement, feedback and being pushed to the next level. If you live in cali, like drifting and have not been to a Justdrift event, there is something seriously wrong with you. Go. Go now!

Round 4 was another learning experience and was set up like a mini Road Atlanta. High speed, long slide entry into a 90 degree left hand turn, followed by a late apex right hander, then a long sweeping left back to an inside clip and out the starting straight. Everyone driving seemed to be having issues during the day, but once qualifying hit, it was a whole other story.

I was also feeling a bit meh after practice and the qualifying runs were all at night. My first run, i entered at some random spot I had not entered near all day, and took out both inside clipping points at the entry. I also managed to knock my brand new gopro off with the clipping point. awesome work Dan. Luckily those things are resilient as hell, and it looked like nothing had happened to it. Sadly it was off, so no epic footage from that. Mike Bolanos was nice enough to record some clips from the judges area, so thanks for that!!! Ill be uploading those soon.

My second run was one of my best of the day, solid entry, hit most of the clips, but could have been a bit more aggressive with angle and speed. This run would net me 9th place in qualifying as in my 3rd run i tried to extend the entry way too long and basically came to a stop. Since there were only 16 drivers at this event, I was pleased to say I made top 16 lol.

First battle was with Jason Kim, rad driver, who was currently (and remained) one spot ahead of me in the rankings. He spun on his lead run, and I sloppily finished my lead run to take the win. My 2nd top 8 of the season put me against Mr. Smooth / Mustache, Ryan Bell. I knew this was going to be a tough battle as Ryan is always set on destroy mode. He lead first and I had one of the best following runs I have ever had, but fell off point towards the end of the track and didn't stick as close as i could have. On a side note, his tire folded in half and was sticking out about 8 inches from his rim every time he transitioned to the left. It was one of the craziest things i have had this season. He stuck it out like honey badger and finished the run.

My lead was ok, but ryan stuck to me like glue. He and his mustache would move on to top 4. Awesome battle, and thanks to Ryan to giving me pointers and tips all season. He is one hell of a guy.

The top 14 ended up like this, so congrats to you all for kicking much ass!

1	Gunther	100
2	Mendoza	95
3	Bell	90
4	Gamez	86
5	Clemens	82
6	Villabrille	78
7	Brockett	74
8	Hatley	70
9	Orneales	66
10	Kim	62
11	Wolfson	62
12	Cano	54
13	Jimison	50
14	Hill	46

The rest of the battles were super fun to watch and the the new FD drivers were crowned. Congrats to all 6 of you, you killed it this season, and I cannot wait to watch you in FD!

1. Ryan Clemens

2. Neiko Gunther

3. Carlos Cano

4. Ryan Bell

5. Orlando Gamez

6. Enrique Mendoza

I hope I have the pleasure of drifting with you guys next year, if not, this was a summer I will never forget.

Body kits, blown diffs and bumper bars...

So friday was the day I Brian taught me how to repair (read not make perfect) fiberglass body kits. In the past I had only used zip ties and duct tape, and that worked fine. All I can say is this... I was never itchy for days when repairing with zip ties and duct tape.

So I also had this knocking noise coming out of the rear end of my car. I knew I had destroyed an axle at  vegasdrift rd. 4, but I didn't know I destroyed my diff too. I broke the welds on the spider gears, and 6 teeth off of the pinion gear!!! Great work Dan...

Also the drain plug looked like my hair.

Cracked welds, and metal chunks... mmmmm mmmmm good. This sucker lasted 4 years of hard abuse! 

The fresher diff.

We needed to apply some tow hooks to the whip, so Brian set out to bend some pipe and weld it on to some other things that attached to the car. Technical, I know.

We attached a strap and I now have a rear tow strap. All I need now is some stickers that say "Here is the strap that is sticking out of the rear bumper, it is a tow strap and should be used as such".

Local competition, sat 8/13/11

My first time judging in a long long while was a great experience. This event set itself apart from all others, and the NM drift scene seems to be picking itself up off the floor. Lets keep all of our events this fun from now on... KTHXBYE.

Congrats to Andy Barrow for taking 1st, Anthony Ciocca for taking 2nd and Jeff Osborne for taking 3rd. Dave, I love you you are extra rad :)

Quick video I made from Daniel Quanz's Contour HD (Thanks again by the way)



5 cars on track.




Pics can be found here 

TopDrift Rd. 3 - Mini Irwindale, Willow Springs 8/6/11

Yet another great event in the books from the crew over at Justdrift. Congrats to ‎Ryan Clemens, Steffan Moy and Ryan Bell for rounding out the top 3! It wasn't the fastest or most technical track out there, but it was extra fun and was the first time I have ever driven an oval with a wall at the top of it. Talk about a great learning experience. Huge thanks go out to Dave and Allen for the help this weekend, couldn't have done it without you. I'm getting ahead of my self, so on to the happenings of the weekend.

3:30am, ready to meet Dave and Allen at Car Crafters to pick up the trailer and head out on the 13+ hour drive to Cali. We spool up the F350 and head on out. 3 double doubles later we are leaving Kingman, AZ and I forget to get diesel (was hopped up on in n out). 

 

I ask Dave to google how far barstow was from our current location, 85 miles. The distance to empty on the truck is reading 58. Oops. We slow down to like 35mph, turn off the AC and coast down every hill I could find. The DTE drops down to 10, then 7, 2, 1, 0... Nothing in sight. We ride 0 miles to empty for around 8 miles, and finally see a gas station over the hill we'd just climbed. We coast all the way down, and all the way to the pump. 

At first Dave was like:                          Then he lol'd:

We make it to the hotel, eat and crash out. Cool story bro.

On to the event:

Home base - We pitted next to Ryan Bell, Matt Field and Daniel Chow and pretty much made the most rad/boss/badass pit ever known to pro-am. Many nutty buddies were consumed. Made for good times all day and night. 


Just look at that tiny block of shade he is sitting in.

Everyone gets settled in and the drivers meeting starts a bit late. Charlie proceded to scare everyone by letting us know someone had died on this track earlier this week. Thanks Charlie! 

Now that the mood was set the judges laid out how they wanted us driving the course. Somewhat similar to this crappy recreation I made in photochop.

They explained it as a mini irwindale, and it looked pretty damn fun. Well, it was.

As stated above, this is the first time I have ever drifted near a wall around a bank. I use the term near loosely as I was far from near to it lol (does that even make sense? I didn't think so). I learned a ton, and the experience alone was worth the trip out. I get quite a bit of practice runs in before qualifying and am feeling ok. 

Ryan Bell was in full destroy mode all damn day and night. So rad to watch him drive.

Steffan was making so much damn smoke, and drove amazing.

Qualifying:

Everyone seemed to have the track down solid, so it was going to be a tough battle to see who would move on.

We change tires to a fresh set, and I head out to qualify. First run I enter too early with not enough speed, and ride the inside line (read shitty line) on the first outer clip. I transition and I end up high on the wall like I'd been trying to do all day for clip number 2. If only I could do them both at once. 

I manage to complete the rest of my runs, and felt pretty good about qualifying. I ended up qualified 8th, so I was pretty happy with that. 

I got pitted up against Carlos Cano in his F20c powered AE86. 

My lead run went pretty well, I was high(er) on the walls than I was before, but I was sloppy in my transitions in the infield.

Vid of lead run:

My following run was another great learning experience, and I need to learn to be more aggressive by far. Not straightening out might help as well.

Vid of following run:

On that run I also had my first wall tap. Well, more of a wall hit, but it didn't make me bobble or wreck so im counting it. You can see it wasn't just a tap evidenced by my tail light falling out in the infield lol.

Carlos is one hell of a driver, and in the end he moved on to the great 8. I made quite a few mistakes while following (not aggressive and off line, not to mention I straightened for no damn reason) and he was super consistant. 

Everyone drove like serious badasses, and I had such a great time. Big thanks to Mike Bolanos for the positive words of encouragement. You make the events kick much ass good sir!

Random pics:

Tyler Wolfson almost completed an entire event without something weird happening to the car, and is always killing it. Plus, he is repping a driftexchange.com sticker on his ride. What a badass.

After the event, we went to some horrible casino and had the worst service known to man. I left the waiter the first .2c tip in my entire life, and did not feel bad about it in the least. We crashed out, had some amazing mexican food the next day, and set out on the 13+ hour journey home. 

Awesome driving with everyone yet again, see you for round 4!

The start of something (hopefully) beautiful - driftexchange.com

So, I have been kicking this idea around in my head for quite some time. Here are the reasons behind this project.

1) I normally go to an automotive forum to browse the classifieds... I'm sure a lot of you do the same. I wanted a place to go where I didn't have to sift through a ton of BS to get to the good stuff.

2) Not all of us drift the same type of car.There are tons of car forums out there that have to do with a specific make, but none of those allow users of different makes find parts easily. I want this to be a one stop shop for users to find parts for their drift cars easily and quickly.

Get a new car but a different make? No need to join another forum once you register here, just pop into the different makes sub forum!

3) Eventually, with enough member and vendor support, my goal is to begin sponsoring amateur drifters, giving them the assistance they need to attend pro-am level events.

So, please, check it out http://www.driftexchange.com

I also got bored and decided to make (read re-skin) this pixelcar s13, to match my current livery. I like!!