Formula Drift Irwindale Video

Check out this video of  friend and DA brother Joon Maeng at FD Irwindale. There are a few other familiar faces in there as well. 

Hello Irwindale...It was SENT @ the Formula D Finals!

Formula Drift finals round 7 of 7 at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale, we came, we saw, we smoked some tires and it was INSANE!!! Come experience last Thursday Oct 7th thru Sunday 10th... Show up and Forsbergs lighting it up... Right under the NOS Energy Drink banner

NOS Energy Drink Hill Climb Team Breaks Record at Continental Divide Hill Climb

We had a relatively fun and successful time at Monarch. Relatively meaning it was not racing evil reincarnated as much of our season has been. We broke the record for the Rally AWD class (whoohoo! we were hauling), but we also had some bad luck and ended up making a 6 hour round trip to Denver and back to Monarch to retrieve some parts.

The hillclimb in Monarch is pretty bad a**. It’s one of the roads that remind you exactly why you love to hillclimb. The road is just east of the Monarch Ski Resort on Highway 50. We haven’t been there in 2 years, we’ve only been there once and it was in the GTX. While not particularly technical, nor are the drop offs as crazy as most we deal with, the course is unique and challenging in its own right - completely lined with trees and steep as sh*t. Skill and patience are imperative to be successful here. There are lots of hairpins and setting up properly to plow out of them is crucial because if you don’t get your set up right, you have to recover in the midst of 8-10% grade … lots of time to be lost on this course.

We obviously had the clutch replaced since Pikes Peak, but we’re still running on the stock motor. A bitter pill to swallow since we were at a very steep hillclimb and man would that extra power have come in handy, but c’ est la vie. We skipped the first run on practice day. The road was wicked silty; a very, very fine powder like coating covered the surface of the course. We thought we’d let the road get “cleaned up” a bit by our fellow racers run 1. Plus, Dave was headed straight to Cali after the race to lend our Evo to Andrew Comrie-Picard as a back-up for X-Games competition. We were trying to keep her fairly clean.

Our first run was abysmal. Handling was dreadful. We came back to the pits and jacked the back end up. The passenger side rear tire could be shifted about ½ inch in all directions – clearly the problem. We got it tightened up and headed back up for our second run. The Evo was back to her aggressive self, we had a great run and broke the Rally AWD record on just our second time up the course with a 2:07.57, beating the old record by 4 seconds. That time was enough to take Overall Fast Qualifier of the day as well. On our third run, we took a short but tight right-hander a little too tight and banged up that same passenger rear wheel that had given us trouble earlier in the morning. Though we sped out of the corner pretty good we quickly realized something was wrong and pulled off. Got the car back down to the pits and back up on the jack to discover shock oil splattering the wheel well. Dave took the wheel off and confirmed we busted an Ohlins and also the upper control arm.

 
Since we’re becoming quite accustomed to torture this season, we didn’t spend much time contemplating the drive back to Denver for our stock suspension before we were in the car heading for home. It was about a 6 hour round trip with a very brief stop at the house to grab the parts.  NOS Energy Drink Grape FTW!

 
We arrived back at Monarch too late to start work on the car – we were exhausted. We got up early Sunday morning and started plugging away. Parts replacement went fairly smoothly and we made it on time for our first run, albeit with OEM rear suspension on the car. We got a 2:09 on the first run. We were ok with that … getting into the groove with the new parts and making sure everything was kosher before we pushed hard. We were well positioned to win it having set the fastest time the day before. I need to preface telling you about the second run with a reminder of what happened at Pikes Peak. The clutch went out on us so we were forced to RPM match shift between 2nd and 3rd for about half the run (roughly 6 miles). This inevitably put wear and tear on the syncros in the gear box, but the transmission had been fine up until … our second run at Monarch. Coming out of a hairpin Dave went to put it in second and nuthin’ – he was locked out. Back into first gear, and then into second and we were ok again. But believe me you – races are absolutely won and lost by the few seconds something like that costs you and that’s exactly what happened. We got to the top with a 2:10. Not a bad time – but we were beat by a 2:05 and of course disappointed we didn’t better our qualifying time of a 2:07. We came in third overall. The only folks to beat us were and open wheeler and a champ car, so we continue to be pleased with the fact we can hang with those guys at all considering the power to weight ratio. Plus, happy to be racing period since we had the shock / control arm issue the day before.

We would like to thank our 2010 sponsors for their support!

• NOS Energy Drink
• AMS Performance
• Built-by-Bones & SCR Performance
• CBRD Speedfactory
• Forced Performance Turbochargers
• Shepherd Transmissions
• Tobz Performance
• TiAL Sport

Be sure to become a fan of Kern Racing on Facebook by clicking the link and we'll keep you updated on the latest news about the NOS Energy Drink Hill Climb team.  We've got lots of pictures and videos of the Evo in action for you to check out too!

Dave & Allison

Formula Drift - Round 6 Sonoma

Just got home from Sonoma which was a short weekend in comparison to all our other events being that it is just a short drive to San Fran and also that we do not have Thursday practice available at this track like we do the others. That being said, I am glad we debuted our new Nissan Motorsports engine last round in Vegas because we would not have had the time to adjust with the few runs we have on Friday before qualifying.

 

 Our first lap of qualifying is always pretty straight forward, push hard, get a clean run in, and get nuts on the second lap. However, our first pass put us in 2nd place, and held all the way through the second round! I still pushed hard on the second run trying for a backwards entry but went slightly off course which threw off the run and our hopes at the top qualifying spot.

 

 Landing in the second spot put us in a great position for tandem because we would pretty much be leading first in all our tandem runs. First we were matched up with Matt Field, who is a rookie to Formula Drift this year. He was driving the course very well for his first time out, however he made a few mistakes on his lead run which gave us the win to move into Top 16. Our next pairing was against my Drift Alliance brother Joon Maeng, his new ride with Bergenholtz Racing has proven to be a help to his recent success. He has adapted to the new car rather well and has been much higher in the rankings since he parked his Nissan S13. Our first run was rather smooth and simple, I lead and stuck to my line. I knew Joon had a very similar driving style to mine so on the chase run, I pushed to drive close and not let his car get away from ours. We stuck together through the course and took the win. Our third matchup was with James Deane, he was driving very well and had a high entry speed. We both ran a good lead run and close chase runs so the judges ruled a One More Time. Our next lead run was solid and James stayed close behind so to get an advantage, I would have to get even closer. So, on my chase run, I entered into the first corner with only a few feet between our cars. I was able to slowly pull in closer to his car through the braking zone and with only inches between our cars we both jumped onto the throttle and cleared the rest of the course. The judges gave us the win! We were now in the final four.

 

After we cooled the car down and got back to the start line, I am told we will be facing Vaughn Gittin Jr. in the Semi-Finals. After I had a moment to think, I realized that the two of us were not the only Drift Alliance members still remaining, Ryan Tuerck had also reached the Semis. Holy crap, it could be a 1,2,3 DA podium!!! The only thing standing between us and our long time dream of having 3 of us up there together is Tanner Foust, which is no easy task being that he would have to lose twice. Tuerck runs through the course and beats Tanner, putting Tanner in the consolation round which means it would be either Vaughn or myself who would have to face Tanner for that last spot on the podium. I lead against JR with a solid clean run, on the follow I wanted to keep the gaps close to try to ensure a win, as we enter into the course and start to slow down and I realize that we were both on the brakes pretty hard. At this point, I try to follow JR as best as I could, on the outer clipping point he dropped into the dirt so I do the same but my car spun to a stop which gave Vaughn the win. Now it was up to me to defeat Tanner.

Tanner’s car is fast so I tried to beat him with angle, my first pass I threw the car as hardas I could and went past the lock, sliding into the first corner with all four tires screaming, I was able to pull the car out and continued through the course! This was about as hard as I could run the Sonoma course but on the follow run, Tanner pulled a couple car lengths on me as we entered into the first corner, I was unable to catch up and remained about three car lengths behind for the entire run… The judges gave Tanner the win and I took 4th. An awesome finish that I would be super happy with in any other circumstance but I have to admit, I was so sad to see us get so close to sweeping the podium only to miss it. We’ll get ‘em next time!

Formula Drift in 2 days!

Vegaaas!  Only a few days left until Round 5 of Formula Drift in Las Vegas.  I am so excited for this event, I can hardly wait.  Kevin and Sergio have been hammering on the NOS Energy 350Z the past couple weeks getting our new Nissan Motorsports engine installed!  With the days counting down, the guys were able to get the car together and running over the weekend, and we had a VERY successful test day yesterday.  The car puts out almost 150 more horsepower than ever before, this should bring our speeds up for the entry as well as in drift.

We spent today buttoning up the car and getting ready for the weekend.  Tomorrow I will be getting the big rig for us to load everything in.  There is not much time left, but everything really came together for us and I am feeling really good about the upcoming weekend!

KDF x CFR x FD Washington

NOS has partnered with the Keep Drifting Fun fellows (Will Roegge and Joshua Herron) to produce some of the best drifting footage on the net and they have come through again. KDF and Chris Forsberg Racing are both using the best POV cameras out today CONTOURHD's and shot this entire video using only CONTOURHD cameras. With a little KDF editing magic, this is one of the most creative drift videos to date!

The Most NOSome Vehicle

We need your help to find out which city has the best NOS car. The car/marketer with the most likes/comments, wins the title of "The Most NOSome Vehicle".

First up - Terry Vo in Seattle!

NOS Energy Rally Team Takes Bronze Medal at X Games!!!

 

ACP and his team took the bronze medal in Rally Car at the X Games! Great result as only two of the Fords were faster, and they're super high-spec cars out of Europe. Also, NOS Energy was one of only two drinks partners on the rally podiums at all - the green one and the red one were shut out, despite having strong teams and drivers. NOS and ACP rocked!

The event culminated with an awesome party at the Target Terrace Lounge at LA Live where the team, sponsors, media friends, and special guests rocked the night away and passed the medal around for photos! Truly a killer X Games for NOS Energy and ACP Racing!

Triple Header Weekend!

Busy busy weekend! First we started with getting the missile over to Apex’i USA to get the Power FC tuned… That’s right! Kevin installed a Power FC onto the KA, he is a wiring genius. We were having some overboosting issues, but we got them sorted out and Kevin finished up with 275whp. The setup it capable of much more, but since the engine is still stock internals, we do not want to push it.

Here’s the car as we got up to Irwindale for their first drift night with the Adam’s Motorsports Park crew. It has been a long time since Irwindale held a grassroots drift event so we wanted to go up and support!

The event brought out 98 cars total! The track also said that they turned away 38 cars putting the total of drivers that showed up to 135, but there would not be enough run time for that many. They are already working on what they need to do to ensure enough run time for that many drivers. Overall the event was a great success, NOS Energy Drink was out as well to support the Adam’s crew and Toyota Speedway. I was able to take our southern California manager Jean for a ride a long in the missile. It was his first ride in a drift car!

It drifts!

    
Daijiro came out as well as well to check out the drifting. He says he will have his personal car up and running soon!

  On Saturday we went back out to Toyota Speedway to support the Kids Against Cancer fundraiser. They had all types of racing going on all night, from Legends to Late Models… They filled the main grandstand and gave everyone a great show to watch while raising money for a great benefit. We took our team rig out and set it up and displayed the car in the vendor area.

We took the NOS Energy Drink 350Z out for a quick demo right before the big race! We hit the track and drifted the infield and the big banks until the tires popped! The crowd was super excited as they were up out of their seats clapping and cheering! It was a great feeling to be able to drift the entire track and show another new crowd what drifting was all about.

Lined up with the Legends cars…

 Waiting to go…

My favorite car of the night!

  Popped the tire and debeaded it off the rim! No damage to the car though…

 After the Saturday night racing was done… we packed up the truck and headed over to K&N Filters for their annual car show. They placed us front and center of their big meet and had a great display with the help of Jean and his crew who were giving out NOS Energy Drink to everyone that came by. We took the car out for all the fans to come by and check it out as well.

  We met with many fans throughout the day as well…

 We had a great time seeing everyone over at K&N and want to thank them and Toyota Speedway for having us out to their events this past weekend.

CupCake Meet 7 - Cupcakin' For Kids

Whenever CupCake Meet throws an event it is sure to be a huge success and Cupcakin' For Kids was no exception.  This year CCM and Import Performance brought together over a 1,000 attendees and raised $12,000 for the Scottish Rites Hospital, Cupcakin' For Kids was one of the largest meets in Dallas, TX this year.  NOS Energy Drink was out at the American Airlines Center supporting the event with cold NOS, live entertainment, and prizes.  Given away at the event was a custom helmet from NOS Energy Drink, Memphis Audio, and EFX. 

    

Imported Performance and CCM present: Cupcakin' for Kids from John Jiles Jr. on Vimeo.