blog.CarlRydquist.com

News: Team-up with AE Performance

2010-03-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

AE Announces its Involvement in the 2010 Redline Time Attack Season

Both of us representing common partner Hankook Tire, AE Performance and I have entered a new hard-charging team collaboration for the 2010 season of Redline Time Attack with the main target to go for podium positions with full force. Alongside AE Performance's Redline franchise 'factory' cars and drivers; Paul Dentice in 370Z, Rich Taylor in BMW E92 330 and Paul Walker in BMW E92 M3, AE Performance will also back me in the Porsche with everything from cruical prep work and track support to racewinning tuning parts, in the same way an AE Performance customer car can be tuned, prepped and supported. This collaboration is the perfect example of a 1+1=3 team effort which will enable me to place true focus on driving, datalogging, car setups and producing results while we at the same time will be able to display AE Performance's overall capacity with racing success even greater than in 2009, thereby further enhancing the benefit for everyday customers.

With this I can also officially announce that City Tire - now a Hankook Motorsports Program vendor! - and I have made the decision to keep our focus on Redline Time Attack and other possible racing venues this year, and pass on 2010 Formula D. We are working on a plan to bring the City Tire Formula D Nissan 350Z TT to one or two demo events during 2010 though besides development / testing / practice.

Stay tuned during the last 14 days of AE Performance's preparation for the Redline Time Attack season premiere at Buttonwillow, on this blog and on AE Performance's blog!

Redline Time Attack test day on SpeedTV website

2010-03-06T17:04:00.000-08:00

Click to read the Speed TV report from Redline Time Attack official test day!
http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/gt-redline-time-attack-prepares-for-2010/

I also have some small silly season updates right now.

- I feel very positive about just having entered into an agreement to run the Porsche Turbo within an established Redline Time Attack team. More details about this team soon but their support will definitely add to my competitiveness and in return I aim to be able put their team name as high up as possible on the laptime sheets.

- The City Tire 350Z Twin Turbo is ready for FD 2010. We have budget for 3 events. FD requires a minimum 5 event registration though so with two weeks to go to register, we currently have the door wide-open for a great deal for a title sponsor, or a few smaller sponsors to jump on board to make our season happen. If we don't have a good budget to run on and to maintain the car properly, we're forgetting about FD this season and instead setting all focus back on grip racing, first of all in Redline Time Attack.

Stay tuned!

Redline Time Attack official test day

2010-02-28T19:04:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to Redline Time Attack's quick report from the official test day at Willow Springs, CA, which I used to shake down my car after making a few winter upgrades.

I still have a little work to do on brake system, engine tuning and a few more points on weight, but all in all the car ran well.

The traction from the Carbonetic diff turned out to be absolutely fantastic even though I ran a little much negative camber on the rear wheels. That's promising.

From the timesheets I saw four cars running below 1min 22s during the test. These were topped by Mike Cronin in Fontana Nissan GTR on R-comp tires, then myself taking 2nd best time of the day on Hankook Ventus street class tires, then behind me was Duong David in his Robispec Mitsu EVO (tires unknown to me) and Conrad Grunewald in the Gruppe-S Camaro, also on Hankook Ventus.

On a side-note, during the afternoon I also took out the AE Performance 997 GT3 RS for a couple of laps and set 1.22,9 making sure not to run it faster than my own car. :) It was nice to compare the OEM suspension setup of the GT3RS with my own car.

Whoever wasn't there missed a very fun day with full and easy access to the teams, but next chance will be during the last weekend of March at the RTA season premiere at Buttonwillow.

Besides the driving there were a lot of talks between Redline, teams, drivers, sponsors and media, making last minute deals and media preparing for the season etc. More inf soon and first competition just one month away.

Playtime

2010-02-25T20:42:00.000-08:00

Carbonetic LSD. Get bitten.

First drive impression on the 911 Turbo: The rear end bite is spectacular. More drive impressions to come very soon.

Story: Carbonetic hooked me up with this limited slip diff the other day and today I had it installed by Porsche raceshop Tech Trix Motorsports owned by my drifter buddy Michael Essa. Next up is shakedown with the new drive-configuration, suspension etc.

Getting lighter

2010-02-19T19:25:00.000-08:00

Removed some deadweight from the Porsche Turbo last weekend.
Now it drives on the rear instead of all four. Car appr 85 lbs lighter and driving passion appr 800% better.

The Afterhours Automotive custom built racingexhaust also got done and mounted, the engine growl with this became totally sick, not disturbing, just a low, slightly muffled powerful growl. And more importantly, additional weight was lost from the rear end by doing this. The exact weight difference between OEM and Afterhours exhaust tba. HP improvement on dyno (Dynapack, reads a little high), including upgraded calibration, nearly 38 peak hp added to the previous tune and OEM exhaust. Driving, the more prominent gain felt was a faster spool and a stronger, flatter torque-band, plus driveability was greatly improved.

Right now in Michigan for work. Snow here, just like back home in Sweden. Just watched Fri night ice-hockey in the Yost Arena, Michigan Wolverines vs Michigan Wildcats (NMU). Great game with some really good intensity, cool to see a couple of Swedes playing well in the game too (Hagelin scoring for Wolverines).

Redondo Beach 10K

2010-02-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

Redondo Beach 10K was really nice, again. Bunch of friends doing some very good times, from 48, 49, 52, 53min etc and I achieved my goal to at least make it under 1 hour, with 58min 15s. I ran twice to prepare, and I think with a few more runs ahead of the next one I can set my next 10K goal to 56min. It's nice to just set some goals. Aside from the running, it was really nice to see the sun out again, been kind of rainy and grey-ish lately.

On Thu or Fri I am supposed to get the 996 Turbo back from a custom exhaust build, I am interested to see the dyno results. Right after I get it back, I'm doing the long awaited 2WD conversion on the car, this car will simply just be a lot funner to drive as 2WD.

Cheers

Gocarts, weight-loss, running and silly season

2010-02-06T11:41:00.000-08:00

What's up lately? I've been taking up gocart practice again, started after returning from Christmas and New Year's celebration in Sweden this winter. Noticed it took only a few visits to get back into the zone and definitely something I looove doing, it really takes that perfectly balanced agression to push a relatively powerless vehicle exactly on the edge, with decent grip on twisty tracks. I miss a little bit the great company from the guys in the indoor winter series back home, but met a couple of fast guys at the local track, and it was also a fun surprise to meet FD driver colleague Joon Maeng there last time I went to drive.

Weight-loss is another natural complement to be fast in gocarts and just a general thing to get a grip around, to feel fit and strong ahead of the racing season. It has gone pretty well so far (9 lbs gone since Jan 1) with not too much effort and it feels consistent too. Want to drop a couple more to get back to my, in my own opinion, ideal match weight I had around 2 years ago, so I just have to stay off the weights and do other sports instead til I'm there.

Tomorrow I'll be running (jogging) my 2nd Redondo Beach 10K, it's nice and local, the start is right outside our gym and and we can walk over there. Having been basically only in the gym during the last 6 months, running is really on the back burner so my target is to make it under 1 hour (if I was actively running I'd set it to 48min but with no practice I have to stay with a real target time). Ran 4 miles Thu (35min) and 5 miles yesterday (46min 20sec), today just relax physically and tomorrow morning it's time to do the 6.2miles (10km) without loosing pace too much at the end. My brother is a killer runner compared to me and has given me some good hints and cheering on, hope it'll help.

Racingwise, Hankook has really worked hard over the winter break to make a good plan for the season, we put a lot of effort into one specific project to race again for Hankook in the 24 Hours of Nurburgring, however from a solid start and a good offer on the table it turned out to nothing. It feels odd, I've raced in the 24H of Nurburgring every year since 2006. Doesn't mean I won't be going back there another season, but for now that outcome means entirely different racing avenues are now being pursued short-term, and a serious plan for 2011 needs to be shaped.

One small step for 2010, Redline Time Attack

2010-01-22T18:54:00.000-08:00

My sponsors are currently working hard to lock in my 2010 main races. In wait for some of those bigger news to fall into place, I can at least begin with announcing that I will frequently be entering Redline Time Attack this year between other events.

The format of Time Attack is simple: It is a qualifying competition where drivers after several practice and car setup sessions, get 2 x 3 laps to post the best laptime of the weekend. I can tell after two visits last year that it is great, a real work out for setup and qualifying skills.

RTA is undergoing a big tune-up under new ownership and is looking to take a previously un-paralleled position as the premier US Time Attack Championship. The preliminary season schedule looks like this:

Buttonwillow Raceway, CA March 26-28
New Jersey Motorsports Park, NJ, Lightning April 10-11
Las Vegas Motor Speedway, NV (Outside Road Course) April 23-25
Auto Club Speedway, CA May 29-30
Autobahn Country Club, IL June 12-13
Willow Springs Raceway, CA July 2-4
Sebring International Raceway, FL Aug TBA (tentative)
Spring Mountain September, NV 18-19
Infineon Raceway October, CA 23-24
Auto Club Speedway November, CA 12-14

I will be participating in all West Coast events that will not collide with bigger races and once Sebring gets locked in and a date confirmed, I will make a big effort to make that race too as my only East Coast event. Sebring is a world renowned racetrack, and is notoriously known for the Mobil 1 12H of Sebring which is part of the American Le Mans Series. In other words, a track I want to get first hand experience on.

As baseline vehicle, I will be racing the C.A.R. Engineering/City Tire/Hankook Porsche 911 Turbo 2WD (996), which among 500+ hp and other upgrades has a GT2 aerodynamic package and GT3 suspension arms front and rear. Racing this Porsche will enable me to stay razorsharp at setting up and qualifying this type of vehicle. The car has been classified into the 2WD Modified Class which allows so called R-compound tires that are essentially made of racingrubber, but still approved for street. This kind of tire makes the whole driving experience about 800% better than running on regular street performance tires, although nothing can quite compare to running on slicks.

On top of racing (practicing with) the C.A.R. Engineering/City Tire/Hankook Porsche, a few other seats in Redline Time Attack, mainly Unlimited class, are being worked on at the moment.

More news to come soon regarding which sponsors that are supporting my Redline Time Attack program and what preparations that are being made. Stay tuned - season premiere is only 2 months away!

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T04:02:00.000-08:00

2009 was full of new great things getting started. Mainly I feel more accomplished as a driver after doing high speed drifting in Formula D. Having the skill to handle a car in a big drift makes my job a lot easier when it comes to pushing a fast GT racecar to its full limit. Doing that quickly reveals where the car has its weakness setupwise and the team can adjust the car so I can quickly improve laptimes. It is also easier to early discover tendencies of how balance can change over a race. 2010 should be no less fun, still a bit more administration to be done before anything can be revealed but my experience, speed and driving technique is still just getting stronger so it is all about securing a competitive platform now both for race and drift. One thing I can share though - I will do more racing in 2010 than I did in 08 and 09 which was mostly about drifting. More info soon. Happy New Year, be safe, be nice, have fun! Carl

My roots

2009-12-26T03:13:00.000-08:00

Celebrating the holidays in Sweden. We were lucky to get snow like the old days this year!

Things in the works

2009-12-09T18:52:00.000-08:00

A quick update, it seems still online at many drivers and teams, but usually that's when the most are going on in the background. I am working on creating my best season in a few years, having worked up a little more solid platform during one and a half season after my transition to live, work and race in the US.

In the meantime, an old video I came across - it's one part of six, the reason I am posting this one is the liberating and carefree all out driving.

Back soon with more news!

Redline Time Attack Rd8

2009-11-17T22:57:00.000-08:00

I love racing Porsches. Ok there I said it, like nobody knew that. But I will elaborate, here's why I love it:

It's all about the feel inside the car, while driving. Alright, I admit it doesn't hurt these cars look really good and fast on track, but going back to the core, it is about the feeling.

Driving a car like this, I have a pretty big engine mounted all the way in the back, in a comparaby small car. The engine is pushing the whole vehicle in front of itself. The front end gets pretty light, the behaviour with that weight in the rear can get a little fierce, but with the right touch it just gives a huge pleasure to keep it in check, to control a car like this.

Upon applying the brakes (Endless ME20 pads in my case), the car squats wonderfully in the rear, and more than any other car, it feels like throwing in an anchor and then reeling in, or actually, hanging on to that rope.

It is really notorious how slightly reduced grip in the rear tires, make that "rope" feel a lot slipperier, the feedback is absolutely instant. S-turns is not a chapter for the faint hearted, but with the right tricks, feel, setup and technique, the car will shoot through pretty fast... Over the limit it will be a handful to sort out, and not very fast.

The engine note (not the exhaust part) from the flat 6 is exceptionally notorious and it has a quality feel and sound to it that make me want to repeat it over and over again, for hours. Only sad part is that that Turbo is so powerful you really don't get to stay in the sweetspot between 6000 and 7000 rpm too long. In a Boxster you'll get to listen a long time, which sometimes is more enjoyable to be honest. A trained ear will easily detect the sound of a Porshe form any other car.

It's a powerful beast, in a stylish suit. Purpose built, with performance to surprise and scare most people, and it has that special feeling - it is engineered and designed for the true driver to never want anything else. I got to tell you, once I started racing a Porsche back in 2001, it was where my passion found "home", when it comes to motorsports and racing.
Auto Club Speedway, Sunday Nov 15; City Tire Online and Hankook Tire had hooked me up with tires so I could head out to do a competitive shake-down and to gather some data for next year's Redline Time Attack season. - BTW how do you like the paint job of the GT2 aero? Done by PAC Autobody and Paint, Wilmington.

Already at the time of the drivers meeting, it was clear that it was a really good turn-out, very well done by the organizer to attract so many drivers. Mostly street class cars - that class was packed(!), but also a large amount of modified cars. Unlimited starting list looked a little sparse compared to the other fields.

The Modified AWD which my car is currently classified for, was a lot bigger and more competitive now than when I visited Redline at Buttonwillow at the beginnning of the year (that time I took 5th with far from full size tires). The class is now full of Mitsubishi Evo, Subarus and Nissan GTRs, with a varying degree of HP, weight reduction measures, aero etc. A true builder's racing class.

On my end, I started out to bed-in the brakepads and feel out the setup as the tires got up to working temperature. The ME20 brake pad compund proved itself very strong for full on race pace, always good initial bite and friction and very easy to modulate.

Tirewise, the only DOT approved tire Hankook could find for the 12x18 GT2 wheels on short notice was Ventus R-S2. This is a very good performance tire indeed, however not a full R-compound in comparison to some other brands used in my class with down to half the threadwear rating, but this is what I had and I was decided to make the best from it!I had prepared the car with a number of adjustments, to suit the track and the tires.

I had stiffened up the front swaybar setting to counteract the otherwise expected oversteer. I also removed the usual 1mm negative toe (toe out) since I would not need crisp turn in, this would come by itself due to tire balance. In the 4WD Turbo the car needs a lot of front grip on corner exit to not start pushing, this would also be better with no toe out. I lowered the rear ride-height a bit from an aggressive sprint setting and I was conservative on the camber angle in front since I currently don't have adjustable camber in rear (this will come). Also rear wing got a few extra degrees. The results was... a very good starting point.
Lining up for pre-grid: Mod class has some very very serious racecar builds, as well as performance cars with various amounts of track preparation. It was obvious that I was down on power within my class. With appr 500hp you would think the car would be pretty fast - but some of these Mod AWD cars have absolutely astonishing HP numbers. Pretty crazy to see.

I kept working on the setup as the day went along, and at the end the car got really well balanced. Compared to a modern Porsche racecar on slicks, it is still pretty moderat - tires play a huge role as does the weight of the car, so there is a lot of potential for improvement.

With the R-S2 performance street tire I recorded steady state G-forces of 1,15G through turns (the banked turn 1,6G). This winter I will get some efficient upgrades done, to reach a higher grip level. Photo: Larry Chen

With the setup changes and the able support from Hankook to optimize tire pressure and temperature build-up, my laptimes went from consistent 1.51,7, via 1.50,0 (Time Attack 1), to 1.49,2 (afternoon practice).

I my 2nd Time Attack session I didn't post a better time, two cars got into some type of incident and the session was restarted when I had hit 1.49,6 on my way to ideal tire temperatures for my third lap. I didn't have enough gas though to do more than 5 laps (warm-up, 3 TA laps, cool down lap), so even though I gave it a shot I just had to roll into the pits when the engine started cutting out due to gas surge.

Not much to say about that, my final position in Modified Class AWD was 8th.

It was a sheer pleasure to put the car through its paces and working on the setup. Pushing hard drivingwise and gathering a lot of information on the data logger are the main things to have done going into the winter break. It gives a clear picture regarding exactly which upgrades to the car that will make the biggest improvements.

Thx City Tire for support and photos (all expect marked "Larry Chen"), thx Hankook for support and tires!

Redline Time Attack coming up

2009-11-13T06:50:00.000-08:00

As a method to keep my Porsche racing skills current (and have fun) I will be competing in a number of Redline Time Attack events next year. To shake-down the car and gather some data I will be participating in RTA out at Auto Club Speedway (ex California Speedway) this weekend already, which is the Redline finals of 2009. The 2010 season start sometime around Feb-March again so the winter break will be short.

Redline is a qualifying competition with essentially three classes: Street, Modified, Unlimited. These in turn have sub-categories for FWD, RWD, AWD. On Sunday I will be in Modified AWD since the car I will be driving is a 911 Turbo with just above 500hp.

The car is only slightly modified with GT2 suspension arms and aerodynamics, Endless brake pads for the Porsche Brembos, a half-cage from GMG and some shock and swaybar upgrades, however it definitely is fast enough to serve its purpose as a practice car.

Usually a lightly modified car like this belongs the in Street class, but by the vehicle classification in the rule book most Porsches automatically transfer to Modified - modified or not.

Tires for the event will be these:
Hankook RS2 and RS3 - thanks to City Tire Online for hooking that up!

Photos of the event to come. See ya at the track!
/Carl

Royal Purple Need for Speed Challenge

2009-10-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

Here's an awesome summary of the Formula D Irwindale event on and off track by Speedhunters.
http://speedhunters.com/archive/2009/10/22/gallery-gt-gt-so-cal-speedhunting-_2D00_-drifting-and-gaming.aspx

As can be seen I was invited to do a Need For Speed: SHIFT video game contest sponsored by Royal Purple, to which I qualified 2nd on the Thursday before the events.

Brands Hatch Indy, BMW M3 GT2
1 Quoc Ly 45.300
2 Carl Rydquist 45.500
3 Darren McNamara 45.830
4 Tony Brakohiapa 45.930
5 Tyler McQuarrie 46.620
6 Vaughn Gittin Jr. 46.660
7 Chris Forsberg 47.850
8 Daijiro Yoshihara 48.310
9 Michael Essa 48.340
10 Tanner Foust 49.790

For the finals I was to compete in a Maserati MC12 in Time Attack mode at the Nurburgring against two other FD drivers. Could it be any better? Sadly I was a bit thrown off by having to stand up(!) and play and I had already had big problems during practice and qualifying to manage to adjust to even use a game controller at all, I never raced a car standing up and I always used a steering wheel in all racecars so far...

The Nordschleife is my 2nd home and I can drive it mentally with closed eyes more or less spot on the second for each reference point if I am visualizing racing it with a Porsche 996 GT3 RSR. So that part was easy. The game is even so realistic that a few spots really reward you for taking the right line - or hurt you a lot for taking the wrong line. Impressive.

In practice I ran 6.53 at best and most of the time around 6.55-6.56 playing it a bit safe. However came the race challenge, the others got an important advantage as DMac was late and I had to go first; they could see me backing away from the screen several times during the first 3rd of the lap. The radio cord we had to wear was too short and the default standing position was too close to the screen so the perspective got really skewed and resulted in a couple of off-road excursions. Eventually got back enough to get a flow, almost snapping the radio cord off.

The few seconds lost didn't worry me yet, I had reference points and was still going for around 6.57-6.58 which I know would be hard to beat under these conditions, however a few additional errors with the game controller from standing up to play, were enough to loose more important seconds. Not good... I went all out towards the end and manged to limit the damage, but only took a 7.05. That hurt a lot.

It took almost a full day to accept such a lousy performance from myself. It had been easier to handle putting something like a regular 6.57 or so and then see Quac put a 6.56 and lose to that, then I would have at least did a decent job myself. As it was now, I gave it away and Quac took it easily with a 7.00. I am not used to performing poorly in a racing situation and I am incredibly competitive, which also has made for all the success so far, so this was tough to handle, especially in combination with a broken engine on the City Tire drift car.

Anyway, the Royal Purple sponsored Need for Speed: SHIFT competition was a brilliant idea and I am in a way proud after all, it was a super close qualifying between gamers and racers who are all very good Formula Drift drivers and Champions, so very cool to know that even though I suck at game controllers, my real racing skills made up for it.

It was a really good adrenaline rush, competitive action and great for the overall show. Jarrod DeAnda, the FD regular commentator came down from the FD booth to do a good job by entertaining the audience and making it sound authentic and exciting, giving facts about the drivers, the NFS: SHIFT game and also doing his share to be in our ears during our laps.

It also definitely served as even further motivation in my preparation for upcoming racing events, added to Formula Drift. I really missed competitive racing lately so I am glad I have some upcoming stuff already planned.

FD Round 7 - Irwindale: DNS despite huge team effort

2009-10-18T08:17:00.001-07:00

Practice on Thursday started out well, better already in the first run than we ended practice last time out at Irwindale so quick fast learning curve as usual. The new exhaust is really good for the throttle response in the City Tire/Kallusive Clothing 350Z TT, which helps a lot especially up on the steep banking of Irwindale Speedway. I played around a little with lines, started to move higher up on the bank and in general felt very good about the precision of the car setup and the track layout. Traction as always hugely improved since we got the Carbonetic diff in the car and very smooth, saw a lot of jerkiness/shifty behaviour on the bank from other cars on the banking. Our City Tire/Kallusive Clothing Nissan 350Z TT was also looking good with Sam's Autoland having taken care of painting some new AIT bodyparts for us.

To our great dismay our super strong engine started dropping oil pressure and making noise in the middle of my 5th or 6th run, I just had to abort and as I was rolling into the pits, there was some serious clonking going on, not good. We towed back to the team area and loaded up on the trailer to do some diagnostic work at the shop. At the end of Thu night, after discovering a pinched/seeping oil line and trying with the engine full of new oil we concluded this car won't run without a new engine.

Fri morning the team gets started with the very able hands of Technosquare to swap the engine. Work progress went really well, by lunchtime the old engine was out and the new one about to be dropped in. By this time I had to head over to the drivers meeting and then just wait at the track for the team to show, worst case for 2nd round of qualifying but at least a shot to get into top 32.

It was a loong afternoon. As my fellow FD drifters were lining up to qualify, the team was reporting from the workshop - "wastegates on", "exhaust on" etc and I was keeping them up to date with the progress of the qualifying which actually started a bit late. Ready with suit on and helmet in hand, I got to watch a lot of qualifying runs...

As 2nd cycle rolled around and the team was loading up over at Technosquare with the car now ready to rock again with a new engine, we all realized there's no way they'll make it through traffic on a Fri in LA in time to qualify. Anyway who knows, maybe someone releases a ton of oil on the track delaying the qualifying for clean-up - so the team kept moving anyway. However, 2nd cycle of qualifying went really fast and all of a sudden session is over - and our FD season is over. Not a great way to end it, sitting next to the track instead of in a car flying around the track, but absolutely nothing to do about it.

The team rolled in just as the autograph session started right after qualifying. After signing a huge amount of programs, helmets, t-shirts, bags etc - the line of fans was huge! - I head over with the team to setup our pit area, for the fans to see our car, and we stayed to watch and support our friend drivers at the track both Friday and Saturday.

Props for Matt Powers and Michael Essa for really doing well this event, I was sad to see fellow Z-drifter and Hankook driver Robbie get knocked out after some solid runs taking out already crowned 2009 FD Champion Chris Forsberg (congrats!).

Now, silly season is already at full speed. Even though most people take a week off from thinking too much about drifting after a busy season, it's the big topic now who's driving what car on what tires for what team next year. The FD Awards Banquet is tonight, it will not only be about trophies and awards but for sure also a huge gossip event...

From my side, there's one or two more race events coming up this year before this motorsports season is fully ended, more news on that soon.

Thanks to FD for a well run professional show and thanks to all fans for showing up and just being great and enthustiastic at the races - it rubs off on everyone!

Thanks to everyone who supported our first year in FD and made our car really competitive already by mid-season, Hankook, Kallusive, Carbonetic, AIT Racing, APR, Technosquare, South Gate Collision, Sam's Autoland, Endless, Zeal, Everitt Boles Motorsports Insurance, all the people involved - Chaz Kallusive - Justin (building on the car) - Carey (gearbox swap Atlanta) - Howard (engine swap).

Additionally from my side a huge huge thanks to City Tire Online!

See you on a track soon. Keep your eyes on this blog to know when and where.
Carl

FD Round 7 coming up

2009-10-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a video from shaking down the City Tire/Kallusive Clothing 350Z and drifting for the first time at Irwindale Speedway. Wise from Vegas wall love I took it a little conservative and it was a good test of the car and good to feel out the course. It's a very fun layout with a nice fast rhytm to it during the mid-section, and the car behaves really well, we really did great improvements from Long Beach until Vegas and now we are only needing fine-tuning. I look fwd to next practice which is just before the last Formula Drift event of this season - this weekend. Stay tuned! Aiming for another good qualifying result to start.

CTO_Z Irwindale Practice from City Tire Online on Vimeo.

APR and AIT part 3 of 3: The Reward

2009-07-28T20:32:00.000-07:00

Ok boys and girls, after having done two Formula D events, we took a great step forward in my 3rd ever Formula D event which was Las Vegas, by qualifying 7th(!). I think we can be pretty proud over how fast this small team, with great support from friends and sponsors, has gotten a whole lot of things right with the car.

It was a truly eventful weekend again, just like at Long Beach when everything was new but made top 32 first time in FD, and at Atlanta when the gearbox was completely gone by qualifying (I was lucky to pull it off anyway with some creative driving to make top 32). That time we swapped the gearbox until 5 in the morning and made some good tandem runs against Darren MacNamara who went on to podium.

By the time Las Vegas came around, we had developed and setup the car to a level where it was finally like it should be to drive. We had an amazing team effort just before qualifying, as the rear camber and toe arms snapped when I was scrubbing off the tires for my first qualifying run. Just like that. Wow. Glad that didn't happen during a run on the course.

To fix it before qualifying run 2, evveryone went in different directions to get stuff or get hold of people. Not easy with almost everyone out on the grid! Forsberg offered up one arm, we got a welding machine from Rene's Motorsports, but where is any sufficient power to run it??? Dynamics came to the rescue on that one. Now, who can weld aluminum..! Rene himself showed up, clock ticking fast now. Most cars had done qualifying run number 1... With express speed our super tech Oskar got the arms on, I barely had time to get the helmet and seatbelts sorted out. In my head - one shot only, zone out everything else.

Like mentioned, with the APR and AIT parts and a well needed diet on the car, I was finally able to make full use of the grippy and smoky Hankook RS3-tires we run on, and drive like I wanted to in Vegas, not just trying to overcome difficult car behavior. This was also a new track layout - for everyone! This gave equal chances to all newcomers in FD when the teams and drivers who have been in FD many seasons before had no setups to get a head start with, or any previous track experience here.

Didn't take long for the qualifying score summary to come up and there we go, 87.5p! This was a big reward for all the work so far, finally. Now we know. For SURE.

Here's a video of the second half of the qualifying (if someone has a full video from qualifying including the 86mph entry let me know and I will post it up).

Carl Rydquist Las Vegas Round 4 Formula D qualifying run from City Tire Online on Vimeo.

Later; ran some practice, followed a slow car who lost the drift, later lined up with Dai. Left some space, but grip had rapidly disappeared and still being close to the edge, I tapped the tire wall. The team got some work on their hands but car was fine for warm-up.

Next day - warmup. Now it was pretty well known it was getting slippery out there, many cars had brushed or hit the wall. This fact and rememering the close call last night I took it easy, lower revs and initated really early... but believe me I was seriously surprised over literally no grip at all, not just low grip, really really no grip. Couldn't get speed to scrub off enough. A mix of factors left me needing an additional 2 car lengths, this would have been enough to avoid hitting the wall...

Very sad moment, no chance to get the car fixed fast enough to make the competition rounds, to be able to follow up on a very good qualifying and car setup, so that was our end of that FD event.

Moving forward, we brought home some pretty cool statistics after only my 3rd ever FD competition, a pretty nice reward for the work done to make the car competitive;

Qualify in top 8 - Check.
Qualify ahead of reigning World Champion - Check.
Qualify ahead of reigning Formula D Champion - Check.
Qualify ahead of a 2-time Formula D Champion - Check.
Qualify ahead of 2009 points leader - Check.
Qualifying speed full points - Check.

These facts bring some pretty solid determination to our upcoming efforts and expectations. You can easily say we have raised the bar and from here on drift life with the City Tire / Kallusive Clothing Formula Drift Team will get even more exciting.

Next stop and season finale is: Irwindale Speedway! To this round we will come armed with a new open lightweight straight single pipe exhaust (another 50lbs lost on the car), raw engine sound and more torque. Don't miss it!!!!

APR and AIT - part 2 of 3: The photoshoot

2009-07-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's the deal: The official pics from this shoot, with all the new AIT Racing parts and the wicked APR GTC carbon fiber wing, with slightly expanded Kallusive graphics, will be coming out later (I'll let you know when and where), but how bout I post a sneak peak from the shoot here, right now (caught by Kallusive)...
Next stop Las Vegas!

APR and AIT - part 1 of 3: The Next Level

2009-07-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

The City Tire / Kallusive Clothing 350Z Twin Turbo got some good work done to it after Formula Drift in Atlanta. We cancelled New Jersey to work on getting the car up to top notch; City Tire went on a weight loss mission on the car and AIT Racing fitted carbon fiber doors (they feel like they have the weight of regular post stamps - amazing), a new hood and hatch, new sleek sideskirts and a new front. Even more panels to come from them in the future so watch out as we're getting lighter!

All in all a very noticeable reduction in weight, the car got much better to drive, more agile and definitely much more responsive to any input. I very much recommend doing this on any Z used for grip or drift, the performance improvement is just huge.

From APR we got another great performance improvement - a GTC carbon fiber rear wing. A lot of people have been against the usage of a wing on their drift car, however I guess it all comes down to the overall setup of each and every car, weight distribution, spring, shock, swaybar settings, suspension design, tire choice. On our testing session, I was so happy I can't even tell you, it was such a relief to get this thing on the car, finally getting the car to behave like I want it to! Definitely leaped forward to the famous Next Level.

The GTC wing itself is very impressive, pretty huge and with great aerodynamic data on paper already, and when using it in real life, only minor changes to the wing attack angle completely changed the behavior of the car and therefore it got very direct and easy to setup since it is immediately noticeable when we got too much downforce on the rear end, or too little.

Also props here to our buddy Justin who made a very serious chassis mounted wing installation, with the mounts going through the hatch. Here's a vid from one of the testing runs with the new parts, this is before we cleaned the car up and got it ready for a cool photoshoot ahead of Vegas (pics to come from that one).

07.05.09 El Toro Test Day from City Tire Online on Vimeo.

Sportscar driving basics

2009-06-30T23:29:00.000-07:00

Went to a Speedventures track event at California Speedway with my good friend Danny, it has almost become a traditional event, celebrating 3rd year in a row this summer just kicking back at track, lapping and making some videos.

This year I made a quick instruction video for all track fanatics; sportscar driving basics for having more fun on the track.

Sportscar driving basics with Carl Rydquist from City Tire Online on Vimeo.

Let me know what you think!

Supercar Sunday

2009-06-28T23:18:00.000-07:00

Went out to Calabasas to check out an informal car show, "Supercar Sunday", that was started around sportscar people making stopovers during Sunday cruises at a nice little coffee shop. A pretty good turnout, cars coming and going. Some rare stuff as well, like some oldschool Vector supercars, Ultima GTR. Show up at 9 to not miss anything.

Germany tourism part 2: Porsche museum

2009-05-28T23:02:00.000-07:00

Words unnecessary?

Ok, done talking, let's drive, please.

Sweet line-up.

No one does it better (911 Turbo).

Germany tourism part 1: Mercedes museum

2009-05-26T23:06:00.000-07:00

After a (too) long summer break from the blog, I'm thinking it's time to post up some pics from my trips and race days lately. First up something really cool - The Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart.
Museum or space station - you tell me. Really awesome.

However, back in the days there's not a lot that make you go "Oh, that's Sci-Fi". Anyway, it is pretty amazing to see how cars and trucks were invented and developed starting in the late 1800th century.

Racedrivers of the time were depicted as hard. Really hard.

Ladies choice - still the same today!

Poster featuering Silver Arrow, driven by Juan-Manuel Fangio and Karl Kling.

Very nice ride.

Pretty amazing line-up. A lot of motorsports heritage in MB for sure.

24H: Saturday, race (onboard video)

2009-05-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

In the race it was immediately obvious that our camber adjustments had done a massive impact. All of a sudden it was possible for me to hang on to and pass several cars that we were behind in qualifying. Very fun.

In short I did 1,5 stint to start, handed over the car in 25th place. Within the next two hours we had an oil/water heat exchanger that broke (almost new), the team fixed it in the shortest time possible and we went out again. Then a few hours later the clutch/bearing somehow jammed and/or started leaking, also a new assembly, and we decided to withdraw from the race and focus on upcoming races.

I can't believe having these misfortunes this year with all parts attended to, replaced, all the really careful preparations of the car. Incredibly disappointing for everyone on the team.

Pics to come. In the meantime here is an onboard video from the opening laps of the race (turn it up and use the fullscreen mode!):

24H: Friday, second qualifying

2009-05-22T23:34:00.000-07:00

Photo: J. Shin.
I was doing the qualifying, and as mentioned before, there is only one shot to get it right before the track is full of cars from slower classes.

We had made some changes to the car compared to the first practice, but obviously since it rained on Thursday night it was difficult to know how good they were for dry conditions.

The team had the car out early on the qualifying grid. Pretty predictable the most hectic part of qualifying was the formation lap when everyone battled on cold or semi-cold tires, to be the first around the GP-lap, before entering the Coca Cola turn around the pits that leads out to the main straight again (this is how a timed lap at the 24H is started - so that we don't have to do a full lap on the Nordschleife to start a timed lap). My Hankook tires were great during the formation lap and I had a pretty good position to hit the Nordschleife.

With the setup changes I couldn't really push 100% on the Nordschleife (the GP track is very easy with wide margins comparably), but still had to go for it pretty hard in the fast sections and hope that the car would swallow any bumps and be balanced enough to stay on the track. Still lacked grip in low speed turns but the car was definitely alright compared to before on the bumpier parts.

Photo: J. Shin.

Some car caught fire after Schwedenkreuz and I was both lucky and unlucky to be the 3rd car behind. The first one went off on the oil, the second car sneaked by. As car number 3 behind that broken car I wanted to sneak by as well but the first Porsche that went off was aggressively working his way back onto track and I had to hold back. Good thing I did since he came flying in over the kerbs diagonally over the whole width of the track (it's not too wide) - I would have had him in my door if I had followed through behind car number 2. The logger showed 3.0 seconds lost in this section compared to a later lap.

The rest of the lap was undramatic and I came in with a 9.16, decent and a good bit closer to the fastest in our class last year. I knew though that there was still a lot to be found since I had lost a lot to the cars I followed in smooth low speed turns and in the high speed sections the car was just not as good as it could be.

I did two more laps directly following the first one just to see how grip developed. Early in my third lap I started getting oversteer in 200+ km/h turns. Back to pits to adjust the setup.

As long as there is time, there is a chance to improve the setup. Photo: J. Shin

We adjusted aero and did more work on the alignment and suspension. Looking at the data logger from a couple more test laps we first had the 3.0 second accident avoidance I mentioned above to knock off for a comparison, and we could also pick several sections on the track where I had major improvements with much higher highspeed cornering speeds.

After the final analysis of the overall lateral G we discussed with the Hankook representatives about what margins we had on the tire wear and decided to do a good bump up on the negative camber all around the car.

Our grid position became 32, just like our car number. 8th in class and 13th looking at SP6, SP7, SP8 for a reference to our position last year, means it was the team's best qualifying result so far at the Nürburgring Nordschleife (the FIA GT class SP9 GT3 that was added for this year saw several very fast cars merging in between all SP6-SP8 teams, as well as clinching pole - Ford GT SP9 GT3 - ahead of three time winner Manthey Racing's Porsche 997 RSR. Interesting and racing star-studded field to say the least.