This is the place where you will find pics and updates directly from my race weekends, plus a lot of other fun stuff such as stunt driving or things not always about racing.
Cheers! /Carl
Pic of the week
Grid before the race, Nordschleife 2008.
Songs to check out
1. Foo Fighters - The Pretender
2. Span - Baby's Come Back
3. Adam Tensta - My Cool
4. Outkast - Take Off Your Cool
5. Alexandra Stan - Mr Saxobeat
Food and Drinks
1. Redondo Beach Brewing Co, CA
3. The Standard, Hollywood, CA
3. Nic's, Bevery Hills, CA
4. Vino Pasta, Gothenburg, SWE
5. Paradise Cove, Malibu, CA
Other things
Spot to be filled with useful content.
Do you want to know what Formula Drift is?
Sunday, April 26, 2009
NBC LA aired this video yesterday in which FD director Jim Liaw explains what Formula D is. A lot of really nice clips from the track, for instance halfway in a neat clip of the two Swedes of Formula Drift doing tandem through the Shoreline Drive hairpin (me in the City Tire / Kallusive Clothing 350Z and Sam Hubinette in his Viper).
At the end of the day we went All-Star Bash style = busted zipties and full lock.
Photo by tunerzine.com
Formula Drift 2009, Long Beach, top 32: I wasn't awarded the best odds to move on from top 32 as I was set to do tandem against reigning FD champion (T. Foust), but I was happy with the overall performance of the City Tire / Kallusive Clothing 350Z Twin Turbo so I was feeling fairly optimistic nevertheless, there was all to win.
Spent the Saturday morning warm-up to play around a little with tire pressures and scrubbed in a pair of new Hankook tires. Tried a few times to change the line and stretch the capacity of the car, but it got forced and in the end I just had to fall back on what felt natural and just make bigger lines in order to carry more speed. The team was doing great spotting and coaching from what they saw from the grandstands. Photo by madro21@Flickr.
It was a great fun session. The tires just kept holding up, it was awesome. Did some practice runs with Sam Hubinette and Vaughn Gittin Jr. Photo by madro21@Flickr Photo by madro21@Flickr
Competition time: As the lights went green Tanner rolled off real slow on 1st and 2nd which suited me very well as my 3rd gear is like a rocketship anyway. Had my entry speed / rpm where I wanted it with a perfect gap to Tanner, as I was setting myself up to take a raceline, which would allow a very fast lauch out of turn 9 to turn 10, using the impressive performance I get with the Technosquare engine and our new Carbonetic diff.
The mistake I did taking this "racing line", was that I went a tiny bit too deep with my entry, and at Long Beach turn 9 there is only a very narrow strip of regular tarmac that has enough grip to make the turn. So instead of a rocket launch the car lost sideways bite on the slippery tar-ish surface and I just had to line the car up as parallell as possible to minimize the impact in the layers of tires padding the wall at the exit of "turn 9". Tapped the rear end and the car rotated so I lost the front bumper. Photo by wreckedmagazine.com
Used my 5 minute "time out" to remove the rear bumper that had torn a few zipties off already and checked the car but it was only a matter of cosmetics that our bodyshop South Gate Collision can easily handle.
Green lights again, me leading this time. Relaxed and went for a typical "me" run, fast and smooth, drifting the car as close as possible to the outer clipping zones and hanging the rear out at the important outside barrier in the last hairpin, hoping to force Tanner to look like he was playing it way too safe so that the judges would call for "one more time". Photo by tunerzine.com
It definitely could have worked, this run awarded a great crowd response and one of the judges did vote "one more time".
My first ever Formula Drift event awarded me a good amount of important points and most of all a very good evaluation of the City Tire / Kallusive Clothing 350Z. The car is incredibly strong and my setup work has really paid off. Next round I will definately prepare for a good qualifying and then move it up from there. Until then I know the team is really eager to get a lot of unnecessary weight off the car. Thanks to everyone coming out to cheer on, great thanks to City Tire who never fails to deliver, everyone at Kallusive Clothing (your design team worked soo hard with the amazing livery on the car), Hankook for awesome rubber, Carbonetic for a diff that really makes a difference, Technosquare for tons of power (and we still have more to crank out), South Gate Collision for keeping our backs if things go wrong + Attic, Zeal, Endless. Also a note of appreciation to all FD and Long Beach event staff for a really good event. I haven't had fun like this in a long time.
See you soon and don't hesitate to stop by at City Tire for the latest gossip.
I got the target for the City Tire / Kallusive Clothing drift team fulfilled today - get into top 32 - so I am in for the main event tomorrow when there will be elimitation/tandem runs throughout the whole day. Just played it safe in my first qualiying run to just get a score and then I tried to go push it a bit more in my 2nd run, but through turn nine (first turn) I carried a bit too much speed and got too much angle on the exit which severly destroyed my run up to turn 10. This section is basically setting us drivers up for the whole run so I really worked on that during the open practice in the afternoon, doing tandem with Vaughn Gittin Jr, Sam Hubinette, Joon Maeng etc etc. Autograph session for top 32 was crowded! Had my own Kallusive girls representing, did an awesome job.Below is a pic from the PR-event last night, all drift cars got to go to downtown Long Beach with police escort. A great thing for the fans and sponsors.After this showing, the team went Kallusive on the car... And here's the result, pretty neat. Tomorrow I will start top 32 against reigning champion Tanner Foust. Nobody is really expecting a rookie to beat last year's winner, but the good thing about drifting is that anything can happen... :)
Come cheer me on or follow the action on www.formulad.com !
I had no idea about this since at the time I was unloading the drift car to partake in the drift demo at NOS Center / Orange Show Speedway. The victory in the team drift demo/comp that I brought home together with Ryan Litteral and Michael Essa I tribute to you Gary. I know you weren't a huge drift fan but preferred regular racing, but I feel this is the right thing to do, my way of doing something.
At FD round 1 I will be wearing a black arm-band over my racing suit. I want to wear the band because I am extremely sad and upset about what happened, and especially how it happened to such a good-natured and peaceful guy.
I am a firm believer in that guns should be banned, from manufacturing to selling to purchasing to owning. Piece by piece I want law enforcement to strip the guns from the streets and destroy them. It will take years and years but it will be a safer place in the end. Guns don't help to protect anyone, unless in the hands of trained personnel such as the law enforcement.
We live in the real world. It is not a ganster-movie or a video game, bullets kill people and people don't stand up and walk away afterwards. We don't need this sh*t going on. Ban guns. Guns = greed.
My heart goes out to Gary's girlfriend, his family and his close friends. People take care and be careful and care for eachother. Life is precious.
FD pre-tech went well with the City Tire / Kallusive Clothing 350ZTT + Won 1st place at NOS Center Orange Show Drift Demo wih new Carbonetics diff.
We have had tons of work on the City Tire / Kallusive Clothing FD car during the last couple of weeks. Especially the last half week has been insane - to finalize all the small things on the car we had some long long days and NO BREAKS for rest, just a constant push. Anyway, after finally wrapping we got to UTI in Rancho Cucamonga at the very last minute before Formula Drift Pre-Tech closed and yes it was worth all the efforts, the car is now FD approved with only a few really minor things (like marking out the new tow straps and putting the windshield wiper back on)to do until the season premiere at Long Beach this upcoming weekend.
From there on it was another scramble to get over to NOS Center/Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino for a Saturday night drift demo/competition, nice job by Naoki at Drift Day to get us in there, props.
It was a lot of fun to come to a spectator event and a track I've never seen before, just having a quick driver's meeting where it was decided to do three-car team tandem demo comp and then roll onto the track. This is the type of challenge I value at this point in order to build my drift experience.
First outing out everyone was feeling the surface out a bit, Just Drift Matt from SD was trying out his new engine and I was testing the new hydraulic handbrake, new rear springs, new camber arms and new differential, a lot of changes at once but they were all carefully considered and dialed in, and it felt soooo good, we were basically spot on with adjustments. A thank you note to Fredrik @ FEKE Engineering back in Sweden who has been my race engineer at all my 24 Hours of Nurburgring races for bouncing and/or confirming ideas reg the suspension setup over the phone.
The crowd resonse was good on our first outing but that was nothing compared to our second run when all drivers went all in to try and win the trophy. I ran with Ryan Litteral and my tandem practice buddy Michael Essa this outing and we were really hungry to take it home even though the San Diego guys Tommy and Matt are really top notch tandem buddies that would be hard to beat.
I led our team and went for a lot of smoke and big angle with keeping moderate speed in order to have Ryan and Mike come up close, we then ended it with some freestyle stuff that really got the crowd going after the actual comp run - and we got voted to 1st place! It was just a demo competition but great for the crew after all the hard work to get some kind of reward.
Overall, I am very happy to finally feel that the car is sorted out. Even though we can always work with weight reduction it is now behaving like I want it too. Our hydrualic e-brake solution was also a major improvement for the Z, it was NIGHT AND DAY difference from the stock junk. Anyone with a 350Z who's interested can hit up John at City Tire to discuss a similar installation.
The Carbonetics diff was a really nice addition to the car, all of a sudden it got so smooth, doing the same job. It was definitely a different feel from the 2-way steel plate diff I used so far, especially after transition, where I now as a driver need to put effort into the entry, otherwise it acts more as a 1,5 way and would straighten out unless I do something about it (ebrake or clutch kick). What it really means is that I can make much more aggressive transitions during slowing down without the car losing control or just sliding a long way before getting some sort of grip and allowing me to change direction or follow a line. The effort it took to install and break in the Carbonetics was totally worth it.
I also like the feel from the adjustment we did to increase the front caster using our new camber arms, I got a bit more angle to work on and self-steer felt really fast/accurate.
Pics and some video clip will be posted very soon. Formula Drift season premiere coming up this weekend, starts with a drift car parade in downtown Long Beach on Thursday night. I'll write more soon. /Carl
Again a lot of water has run under the bridge since last time. The preparations for Formula Drift are coming along nicely. It is very exciting to welcome Kallusive Clothing as a partner to the team, a company with incredibly creative and cool clothes and accessories. Check it out on www.kallusive.com. It is a front-runner designer brand for sure. On Saturday I will be at UTI with the CTO 350ZTT, along with most of the rest of the FD field. Come check it out and take the opportunity to see the cars close up and talk to us teams and drivers. FD starting list
I was out at Buttonwillow for the Redline Time Attack last Sunday, where I raced a stock 996 Turbo which had to be in the modified class due to its performance out of the showroom. Yes I am a little tired of driving street cars in competitions but that's about to change... I was able to showcase my skills against a lot of well prepped and faster cars and I pushed all there was in the car to take 5th in class (out of 13 drivers in this class). I had a raceprepped R34 Skyline and a new GTR less than a second ahead of me so I wish I had had a tiny bit wider tires.
I was basically doing similar laptimes throughout the day from my 2nd outing, the 1st I used to scrub in the tires and adjust tire pressures. Tried some minor changes to the car and through this I managed to keep the laptimes even though the track got slower from strong winds blowing in a lot of dust over it during afternoon. The Yokohama A048:s I drove on were very impressive for the 996 Turbo throughout the day and I could keep pushing all the time. The ones I had were just too skinny for the stock weight at 10/10ths, added to this the springs were also a good bit too soft. Driving about 8/10ths the tires and chassis felt like everything anyone who likes regular track days can ever wish for, extremely good response and consistent tires on a nicely working chassis. At true qualifying pace it was a different story - the car's suspension became just like driving on mashed potates. It would have needed some stiffer springs to take full advantage of the rest of the car (engine, brakes, overall balance), I was sliding a lot and even scrubbing the rockers in the ground in a few turns. Anyway, thanks to Yokohama and City Tire for support, it was a productive and fun day and I met a lot of cool people.
May have some fun news very soon regarding a demo drift event on Saturday night for all drift fans. More info to come once I have details.
Name: Carl Rydquist Age: 34 Home: Redondo Beach Web:CarlRydquist.com Reel:Click to watch Highlights: Winner of Zandvoort 500 (2005), Winner of Swedish Endurance 3h GT Racing Championship (2004), Winner of Swedish Endurance 8/12h GT Racing Championship (2001), Winner of Eurosport Super Racing Weekend Challenge (2001), Winner of Redline Time Attack Mod RWD (2010). 24 Hours of Nurburgring (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011). 24 Hours of Barcelona (2011). 25 Hours of Thunderhill (2010). Memberships: FIA (intl racing license), DRAW Portfolio, Formula D, Performance Two Stunt & Precision Driving Team (Hollywood, CA), SAG Stunt Driver (Screen Actors Guild). Teams: City Tire (Drift), AE Performance, STORM GT Racing.
