blog.CarlRydquist.com: Federal Top Drift Battle 2008, Round 1

Welcome

Hey, welcome to my official blog!

This is the place where you will find quick reports directly from my race weekends, plus a lot of other fun stuff going on, not always about racing.

Cheers! /Carl

Pic of the week

Me in the Karousel, Nordschleife 2007.

Songs to check out

1. Foo Fighters - Let it die
2. Foo Fighters - The Pretender
3. Adam Tensta - My Cool
4. Outkast - Take Off Your Cool
5. Sia - Breathe Me

Food and Drinks

1. Vino Pasta, Gothenburg, SWE
2. The Standard, Hollywood, CA
3. Barney's Beanery, Santa Monica, CA
4. Le Clafoutis, Sunset Strip, CA
5. Heaven 23, Gothenburg, SWE

Other things

Spot to be filled with useful content.

Federal Top Drift Battle 2008, Round 1

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

This last weekend I had a really good time. Drove out to Willow Springs for Just Drift's practice session with a set of worn out wheels I bought the night before, thought I'd go and try out some drifting, plus check out the people competing in the Top Drift series.

After a bunch of rounds using a little bit much of a racing technique w going deep into a corner, then shutting down the speed hard on the brakes and flicking the car over, I realized I need to NOT enjoy my long 3rd gear slides as much as I did, but be more conservative and let the car scrub of the speed going sideways. Also one of the drift instructors in place, Chris Mendoza, gave me some really good hints about how I could control the transition.

Ok, said and done... I thought. Had to change my 225/50/17 Michelins to 235/55/17 GoodYear for the afternoon since the Michelins were all gone after lunch, and of course the bigger wheels were a lot grippier and made the car more understeered and my e-brake couldn't even remotely lock up the rear, so I just had to forget about that for the time being and try to balance the car naturally instead. Struggled with understeer in the transition from left to right slowing from 3rd to 2nd, but finally got down to just making a gentle tap on the brake to give the car a little weight shift and swing over to the other side. Just at that time the tires went completely gone during one lap and sent me oversteering like crazy at the last clipping point - so I skidded in to a puddle of muddy water and showered my whole car. Nice ending of the day, huh...

Anyway, back around lunchtime the JustDrift organizer Charlie had let me know I was very welcome to join the competition on Sunday, although I wouldn't be allowd into the tandem competition since my car has no rollbar - if I would reach top 8 that was. Well... big chance I thought, maybe top 16 if I get things right and can get some consistency during the Sunday forenoon practice.

Photo cred: JustDrift
Thought about it for a while going home on Sat evening and then decided to accept. Charlie set me up with a set of Federal Tires since my first drifting set were 100% finished and CityTireOnline would be out at the track and mount them for me. Awesome service to have out there btw, thanks for that!

So, I was really charged and ready to drift on Sunday morning, although I only had a few hours sleep since Jennifer and I went to San Diego for a good friend's birthday party at the pretty swanky Airport Lounge (no drinks that night though - I take all driving and competitions seriously).

I actually hoped for rain, since I thought it would increase my chances. Rain and snow are kind of my home surfaces, growing up in Sweden, and a relatively soft springed car behaves better in the wet, but the weather reports reg 80% chance of rain were 100% wrong, but the event was still held at "The Balcony" instead of on the Horse Thief Mile part of Willow Springs Raceway, since if there would be a shower the events at HTM would have to be shut down. Good decision from the organizer, better safe than sorry! More fun that way.

Got my Federal Tires on the car and I got some good advice from a competitor reg tire pressures and generally, I knew these 235/40/17 would be a bit stickier, but coming out, the poor 287 hp engine felt really sad about all the grip. I felt I got worse and worse during my three first double runs and I was really frustrated and felt like sh*t that I only got into understeer all the time after the transition. It also started to affect my front tires which were slowly starting to loose grip from the scrubbing they had to take.

Came in to the pits to blow a massive amount of air into the rears to reduce grip and then I noticed that the left rear had been leaking and I had lost over 15 psi! No wonder I had such problem with to much rear end grip causing massive understeer turning right and also just too much rear end grip in general.

I was a bit frustrated at that time since my whole first session I felt like I couldn't do anything right anymore and I needed to really pick up my game to even feel productive reg practice. Anyway, the tire got fixed, we had a lunchbreak w pizza courtesy of JustDrift (thanks!), got some good hints again from the judges Henry Shelley and Hiro Sumida (more thanks), and then in the second practice things actually started to work for me again. I needed to get some grip back in the fronts, worked my tire pressures and I learned something reg these Federal rear tyres that was important to make my car behave.

Time for my first ever drifting qualifying. Chris Mendoza was great and offered some more bouncing of "thoughts" on how to approach qualifying and being used to putting in blistering one-shot qualifying laps I wasn't feeling any nervousness, just the normal adrenaline.

So the first lap I did a solid job that I was pretty sure was going to take me to top 16 (but not further), then I could attack more with the next two laps. Spun out on my 2nd lap going in with more angle (almost made the transition but went overboard just before the barrier), but then remembered again what the judges said they really were looking for, so I took what I felt was a pretty fast direct line from first to second clipping point and made sure to be close to the second. Then sort of just tried to carry the speed out to the barrier towards the pit, hitting the 4th was always easy and then just making sure to not relax too much and screw up fifth. It felt like a good lap, and going into the pits Charlie and Chris were all smiles and assured me that was a definite top 16! And they were right..!!

Cars ready for qualifying for top 8.
Top 16 is what I wanted and all I could expect so now I just relaxed a lot and thought the qualifying for top 8 would just be good practice, however I still wanted to give the guys some good laps to fight and show I wanted to learn and become better so I made further adjustments on the tires to get the balance even more like I wanted it.

Seeing the top 16 guys driving, I almost felt I was in the wrong place here. Such good runs and consistent driving. But when it was my turn, I slided out from the staging and the balance was really like I wanted it. Decided to try and earn more points by bringing more speed into the initiation, to get a longer and faster slide, to compensate for needing to cut that slide short to not overshoot the second clipping point. Well, I wanted a bit much still and went a little wide round #2, but I came with pretty decent speed out to the barrier/#3, nailed #4 again and got the car around in good time before #5. That was a fun run!

Photo: Justin Garnett
The next one I decided to go faster round the whole thing and especially bring even a little more speed going in, I like the high speed drifts!! Came around close to #1, let the car swing over early to be close to #2 this time and that felt really good for being new to this! Then I got worried since the scrub off was earlier and therefore it became harder to slide all the way out to the barrier but somehow the poor engine managed to keep the wheels spinning (I basically floored it and just had to wait it out) and let me move out there. Then the #4 was easy again and I decided to go for speed towards the #5, so I almost had a little break between those two slides, just 2/10th of a sec but those tenths feel like a lifetime when you know the judges are watching.

Anyway, this was the best I could do I felt, a nice wrap after two days of practicing a new sport. I was consistent, starting to have really fun, could get the car pretty much towards where I wanted it, but I was really not sure about getting in the top 8, I have never seen my drift angle, maybe it felt cool but looked lame? But somehow I felt there must be a chance anyway since I was close to the clipping points, did as much as I could with the car and actually a couple of guys spun out too...

Waiting for the announcement...
Then it all came in on the radio, my number was called up and that was so cool, in the top 8, I was way stoked! Texted Jennifer and my Scandinavian racer friends down in SD and hopefully there will be a Scandinavian Drift Team showing up before the season is over! The next thing that entered my head was "I've got to get a car with a cage or start modifying my 350Z before next round".

Want to finish with a big thank you to all the nice people out there, organizer, volunteers, instructors, judges, drifters and not to forget all the photographers who make the aftermath such a great experience, not only for the drivers but also for friends, families, fans etc. It didn't really get in the report above but anyone around this area who ever thought about drifting - check out JustDrift.com and sign up for a practice event. The people are super welcoming, really cool guys and girls and the whole attitude at this event makes me want to come back and keep working on my skills and try to add to a good show.

Just saying thank you for a great weekend, rolling out for a walk-over since I had no rollbar in my car. Photo: Justin Garnett

Still thinking about my car, which way I should go, love driving the 350Z everyday and it's a little sad to start tearing it apart but it is also a really good car to start working from, doesn't need too much work right away, mainly make it a lot lighter, some decent aero, but the powertrain is good for a while etc. There was a really nice clean-looking red/white Nifty Z33 out there. Anyway I don't feel super excited about copying everybody else's cars, although they are nice I feel like I want to bring something for diversity, yet appealing to me and not crazy expensive. I have some time until Federal Top Drift Battle Round 2 to decide. Post a comment and let me know what you think!

All the best and drive safe. /Carl

Labels: Drifting

posted by Carl Rydquist @ 4:20 PM

1 Comments:

At March 1, 2008 6:13 AM, Kristoffer said…

Hej!
Congratulations on your first drift event, we had some reading aloud in the sofa... :)
br
//'ELK'