Fabricated Motorsports Lonestar Drift Pro-AM Round 3 October 2011

Well, I finally got to test a lot of my new changes out this past Sunday out at the Fabricated Motorsports Lone Star Drift event which was round 3 of Texas’s Formula D Pro-AM series. There were a lot of changes made to the car before this event, the new brake setup, the new transmission, some alignment changes, etc. Anyways, the weekend started out at Powerfab Automotive where we dyno’ed and tested angle/weights on all the cars. My car made 376 rwhp which was surprisingly lower than last time which was lower than the time before, uhoh haha. However, the car does have 59.2 deg. of angle and weighs ~2720 lb, its a bit heavy but overall not bad! We showed up early Sunday morning and got right to it, the car immediately felt amazing and the e-brake was effortless. If the car is settled and requires no extra steering input mid-drift i can simply reach out 2 fingers and lock the e-brake with them. I was very impressed with both the e-brake setup and the extra caliper setup I received from George Marstanovic, with the two combined the e-brake is now very very effortless and effective!

The other thing I noticed in practice, was the transmission. This thing is no longer a T56. I didn’t have to think about a single shift, it felt like an SR transmission in healthy condition. Just enough give so the gates weren’t narrowed out, with the smoothest shifting I’ve ever felt. Not once did the transmission grind and not once did I miss a single gear. In one run in particular during the first turn I was able to do 3/2, nope feels dumb, 2/3, maybe there’s more, 3/4, nope, 4/3. The car never left drift, never grinded, never hesitated. If you’re a T56 owner, you’re very aware that during this acrobatic act your transmissions gonna tell you NOPE. I’m happy Jason talked me out of the T101a setup, this T56 suites me more. If any of you guys feel your T56 is a lost cause feel free to hit me up, I can get you in touch with Jason and you can talk to him about transmissions and what your options are. These things really CAN feel great believe it or not.

So I got some good practice in, fun tandem with good friends. A lot of these people I haven’t driven with in forever so it was a pretty epic time for me. It was also very exciting to have Chelsea back out and driving at another Texas event. I pulled up for my qualifying run and blew my cv housing into oblivion doing tire warmup, hauled ass back to the pit and swapped it out in a hair under 5 minutes with Powerfab’s help and got back to the line just as Aaron called out the end of qualifying. The new axle held up and we had acquired 1st place in qualifying.

In competition I started off with a cool s14 that had a lot of circle track’esque parts on it that I wasn’t familiar with/hadn’t seen before. I took the win and moved on to top 8 against Robert Turnbow and ended up moving on again. In final 4 I ended up going against Chelsea in Josh Steele’s 350z. It was a very fun battle which I think gave us more seat time than we had anticipated haha. It went through 2 1 more times and a couple light hits before I moved on in the 3rd round. The last person to go against was Will Parsons for 1-2. All I have to say is I shouldn’t have ever given him that dream catcher. Will was a maniac all weekend and was hungrier than anybody for that win and it showed! We had 1 OMT and on the 2nd pair of runs I knew I had to try something crazy so I threw my car in harder than I had all weekend and thankfully it caught. I got the advantage on my lead run and had an advantage on my follow until the axle snapped before the last turn. I think this axle took out more than just itself though as my wheel now was rotating like 10° when the car rolled forward and there’s a lot of clicking and popping back there (moreso than just CV machine gun). So the weekend ended with 1st place qualifier, 2nd place finish! I’m so proud of my car and how its performing right now and so thankful for all the people that helped get it to where its at. Thanks Powerfab Automotive, WFSU, Texas Drivetrain Performance, Kenda Tires (such an awesome grassroots driver support program!), NST and Fabricated Motorsports for making local stuff cool again! Anyways enough rambling here’s some pics

And now the car goes into hibernation until 2012. There are many changes and many obstacles ahead. None of this driving or work would’ve been possible without help from Powerfab Automotive, Texas Drivetrain Performance, Chargespeed, DMax USA and Tein USA. I look forward to continuing to work with the existing partners I’ve made and the new companies I’ll be working with in 2012.