Formula Drift NJ - Round 3 Review

 New Jersey was a pretty intense weekend. I had a lot of high hopes coming into this event and was looking to get my first northeast podium. As the weekend began we had some excellent practice runs on Thursday. Kevin was trying a new setup on the car and it seemed to be working well for the tight course at Wall Speedway. 

 

Leading into Friday we had a pretty solid plan, get a good pass in first for qualifying, then go all out on the second run (like usual). The first run was great and put us in 2nd place! As everyone was going into their second run, we got pushed down to 6th place, so I wanted to try to better my first run and grab that top spot along with the extra championship points. As I was coming around the bank, I could see the wavering guardrail getting closer… as I was in the outer clipping zone, my rear bumper tagged a protrusion in the guardrail and knocked our car straight into the wall. We would obviously earn a 0 on the second run and I now had to trust Kevin and Sergio to fix the damage that I had created. The guys dragged out our Genius Tool box and started getting busy. 

 Saturday came and I got out on track for a few laps in the morning, everything felt perfect! I knew I could rely on the guys to get us back in the event with a good car. Our first matchup was against Bill Sherman. He was driving really well this event in his new chassis and he was pretty fast through the infield. We ended up running two One More Times for a total of six laps! In the end we got the win, but I was so hot and tired after all that running. Our car was running at 240 degrees, and apparently Sherman’s car blew the motor shortly after he left the track. That is a lot of abuse! 

 

 Our next pair was with Charles Ng, who had just taken out Conrad Grunewald. I was told that he was pretty fast and outran the Camaro. Kevin and I discussed adjusting the car to add some speed to keep up with the Mazda. Our predictions were right and we were door to door with Charles all the way through our chase lap and we moved into the Great 8. 

 

I was getting really excited and nervous at the same time. I was now up against Darren McNamara, who won this event last year. Once again Kevin and I adjusted the car to get some more speed out of it to keep up with Darren… everything was going great and we were right behind him, until the transfer in the infield. I got lost in all the smoke behind Darren’s car and transferred to soon! As soon as I was able to see the track again I was heading straight for the inside cones. Instead of straightening out and going around them I just stood on the gas to maintain drift. We were at a huge disadvantage at this point, and I put a great lead lap down on the next run but it was not enough to make up for my mistake. 

Next round is in Monroe, Washington, where I took 1st place last year! I am very excited to get back to that track, and hopefully we will have a few surprises for everyone there!

Chris

Also, here is a quick video of some of our practice runs with our Contour HD cameras.