My first ever Formula Drift PROSPEC event happened last weekend in Orlando Speed World. It was an experience I will never forget. We didn’t podium, however we did make it in the show on Saturday for the Top 32 battles. There was SO much that happened behind the scenes, so let me tell you what it’s like to be in the pits of Formula Drift...
James, Mateen, Stevie , Arya and myself all geared up to leave Maryland at 7pm on Tuesday evening. Chris will fly down Thursday night and meet us. We had the truck and trailer hooked up, race car loaded, and we were ready to drive throughout the night and make it to Florida on Wednesday morning. Smooth sailing.
DAY 1 - Wednesday Load in & Tech inspection
We got to OSW around noon. We got our hardcards (FD badges) and preceded to our designated pit area. We drive our rig through the pits, and I want you to take a second to imagine driving through all the big name pits like Nitto and Falken . As we are continuing driving, we are also passing some of the biggest and best drifters IN THE WORLD! This was so epic for me. We finally refocus and find our pit in the back corner. To our surprise, we happen to pit right next to DRIFT HQ which was awesome cuz they had a large sized pit and they are also our friends Our tech appointed is at 3 o’clock, so it’s time to get the trailer unhooked and the car out. We preceded take the car over to tech, and wait in line. I was able to chat with Brandon Sorenson, which was neat because the last time we had talked was the day he earned his license at USDrift Shootout 3 years ago. It’s our turn to go through tech, and the nerves are kicking in! Jimmy, Chris, and I have read the rulebook a hundred times, but at any moment we could have done something wrong and not be able to compete if our car fails tech. After 15 mins of anxiety, we found out we FAILED! But don’t worry, it was just for our headlight bulbs. For our new livery, we thought it would be cool to have green colored headlight bulbs, but FD says no - must be normal bulbs. No biggie, we run down the street to the parts store and grab a set of bulbs. Now we have passed tech. As a team, we decide to do a track walk where we spent 30 mins on the track inspecting the asphalt and trying to vision the perfect line.
DAY 2 - Thursday Practice
We get to the track nice and early. Trying to get a head start on our first day on track. There is a Drivers meeting on the morning. There are (2) two hour practice sessions scheduled for today as well. One in the morning/afternoon, and one in the after/evening. For those who don’t know, I have never raced at OSW. I’m also required by the organization to run GT Radial tires, which I have also never ran before either. So practice today is extremely important. Not only do we need to figure out the line and the initiation tactics, but we also have to dial in these tires for this track. Keep in mind, we had just installed brand new Fortune Auto 2 way coilovers 4 days ago that we are also still dialing in as well. We get in the massive line for practice, and I choose to chase first. We get to go out, and after the first turn, my lead driver spins out and I shut it down to avoid unwanted contact and drove off track. Damn! Kind of a wasted practice run. I get back into line and decide this time, I’m gonna lead. That way I can do the whole track without anyone in front of me. A lot of people told me prior to coming to OSW that the run up (the beginning of the track) is long. But to my surprise, I kind of thought it was short. I have a 4 speed transmission. Because of my gearing and rear differential ratio, it’s crucial that I do the first turn in 4th gear. So my goal in my lead run was to initiate in 4th gear going into Outer Zone 1 (OZ1 - the first turn). It’s my turn and off we go! I’m shifting driving towards OZ1 and it came up so fast I didn’t have time to get to 4th, so I just send it in 3rd. It was a clean run, but I now know what I must do to get into 4th. I get back into line (lead position again) and go. I get into 4th correctly and I felling great about my initiation. However, as I’m finishing the first turn about to transition into the infield, I feel the car has lost its power. I’m now driving so slow. I immediately pull off track. I see my temperature gauge is rising and my team is in the hot pits looking to help diagnose what’s happen. Our belt had flown off and shredded to a million pieces. Luckily, this is our #1 fail point on our car so we have spares. I drive the car back to our pit, and we change the belt with ease. I suit up, and go back out in line to squeeze another practice lap in. About 10 mins after being inline , I noticed temps going up - slowly. I radio it to my crew. I don’t want to get out of line again, or I’ll miss getting another lap of practice. So we start looking at the car while still in line. We now noticed that one of the dual electric fans is not spinning. It appears that part of the broken belt got caught on the edge of it. We must get out of line and go to our pit to jack it up and cut it out. We do so in a quick matter, and once again try to go back into line to get one more practice lap in. After 15 mins of waiting in line, (2 cars away from going), time was up! We return to the pit and as much as it sucks to not get another lap in, I was feeling great! I knew exactly how the initiation needs to be, now I just want to dial in a couple things and it will be great. We now have 4hr break until our next practice session. It’s a good time to jack up the car and do a shake down/bolt check. While I was jacking up the front of the car, I stepped over to the side of the vehicle to place a jackstand underneath and THE JACK FALLS OFF THE FRAME AND SMASHES DIRECTLY INTO MY RADIATOR/FAN and completely destroys it!!! Coolant starts leaking, pieces of fans are crumbling down, scattering around the asphalt. I couldn’t believe it. 7 years I’ve been jacking the front of the car from the front frame and in this moment, at our first FD event, it slips off and destroys the only parts that we don’t have spares of...
With another drivers help (Dmitriy), we inspect the radiator to see if it can be repaired. We are convinced that we can repair the leak with JB Weld. So we clean it up and repair it. It’s the original JB Weld, so it takes a day to cure. We were able to find another dual fan setup in Coco Beach, so Stevie saved the day and retrieved that for us. Now it’s just the radiator. We have to make a decision, and decide to forfeit the second practice session in order to let the repair cure and just be ready for qualifying tomorrow. Chris shows up at the end of the day, and agrees. We ended the evening with another Drivers meeting.
DAY 3 - Friday Qualifying
We get to the track knowing that our JB repair is cured and ready for coolant. We pour it in, and discovered the radiator has and additional leak where the side of the rad meets the tube. What I’m trying to say, is that it was in a difficult spot to repair. All high spirits are dropped, and we are now trying to figure out what in the world we are gonna do in the next hour before track is hot.
I’m sure most of you don’t know this yet, but we offer a mobile Drift Experience where you can rent a 240sx for a day and I’ll teach you how to drift. It’s something that we started earlier this year, and I have acquired some spare parts for S-chassis incase something happens to the school car while we are drifting it. Well ironically enough, the 240sx radiator and the radiator we have in the FRS are very similar. The coolant hoses are in the exact same spots, and I happen to have a used performance radiator for the 240 with us in the trailer. I'm not sure if it’s any good, but we decided to try it anyways. Using mechanics wire, a bunch of zip ties, even some cardboard and tape, we are back in action! It worked! FD allotted an hour of practice before qualifying began, and we were able to get 2 practice laps in! The car felt great, I felt great, and it was now time to qualify!
Now qualifying this year is different. It use to be every car got 2 qualifying runs. Whichever was the better score was your qualifying position. This year, on your 1st qualifying run if you get a score, that’s it! It’s over. However if you don’t get a score, let’s say you incomplete and get a zero, you are allowed a second chance. But even if you were able to score a 100/100 on your second run, your still gonna be ordered in the pool of people who had to go again. So if there is 40 drivers and 10 get an incomplete, the highest qualifier (of that 10) would be ranked #31. Well that’s what happened to me. I accidentally missed shifted on my first run, causing me to have to do a second run. On my second run, I received a qualifying score of 70/100 which is not bad! If I would have done that on my first qualifying run, that would have put me about #20. But since I did it on the second run, it put me at #29. And just a friendly reminder, this is all to get sorted into the Top 32 competition on Saturday. So being #29 out of 32 meant that I had to fight my way through the bracket really hard to make it on the podium stand. Nevertheless, I was just extremely happy to make it into the show considering what we had been through. After qualifying, we had to do an autograph session. We had printed out a hundred pictures of my car and we ran out! It was a hit! It was really neat to sign posters/skateboards/shirts for a bunch of kids and fans. I also got to sit right next to PRO driver Daijiro Yoshihara (who also drives an FRS), so you know I was fan boy’n.
DAY 4 - Saturday Competition
The day started with another drivers meeting. Then we had the Top 32 Opening Ceremony where they introduced each driver and their car to the fans. We received the Top 32 bracket online late the night before and saw we had to go against a really good driver. Joshua Love was the #4 qualifier, so I really needed to step up my game. We were the 4th battle, so right after the ceremony we got in line and waited for our turn. As a driver, you don’t really get to see much of the competition like you can at home or even in the stands. Your suited you, stuck in your car preparing for your battle. Everyone was watching it live on their phones at the hot pits so they could catch a part of the action. It was finally our turn to battle. I was going to chase first, since Love had the higher qualifying score (higher qualifier always leads first). We start our battle and I missed shifted into the first turn again! I was super bummed because I had already done that before in qualifying, and now again here in competition. This time instead of downshifting to 2nd, I went from 3rd gear to N. I knew at that moment I had given Love the win, but it was still my turn to Lead. So we switch, and I laid down an awesome lead run.
We went back to our pit, and I thought the day was over. I thought I could change out of my suit, grabs some frosty’s, and spectate what was remaining of the comp. Boy was I wrong, there were so many fans at our pits when we got back, we talked to fans, sold some merch, and talked cars constantly for the next 6hrs. It was crazy! It was 6pm and I realized I hadn’t eaten a single thing!
At the end of everyday, there was drinks shared with other drivers, talking about builds, and making strong connections with potential future partners. Probably the coolest part of being in FD.
I’ve heard horror stories of other driver’s first time experiences in FD. They have told me that they crashed their car, or breaking something and not being able to fix it, or not even getting to drive in the competition. So for a first time ever PROSPEC event, I think we did great! I can’t wait for RD2 in Englishtown.
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