AK Racing 2010

Wow where to even start…last week from Monday (March 15th) – Saturday (March 16th) was just an incredible experience from beginning to end.

Monday morning we’re on our way to go pick up Blair (Jiinkz!) from the John Wayne Airport. I noticed I had a voice-mail from Ernie @ XDC. He tells me “you’re going to love me or hate me but you’re on the XDC rig for the whole series…” Awesome news! Except we’re 4 days away from practice Friday (March 22nd) I haven’t gotten any days off work and the car isn’t even close to done. At this point it needs:

Paint + Hood/Hood hinges/Hood Pins not installed
Alignment
Safety equipment (helmet, arm restraints, battery box, kill switch handle,tow straps, 5 point harness,etc)
Catch Can
Headlights need to be wired
Oil Change
Tires (i had ZERO rears)
Race gas (no gas at all, 110 octane)
No trailer = no way for me to tow the car to the track.

I had already put a new s14 kouki steering rack, new energy suspension steering bushings, MA motorsports knuckles and new 5 lug front hubs.

How she sat as of Monday.

After making about a 100 phone calls on Monday by 3am I had thanks to my wife and DA bro’s:

Alignment
Arm restraints
Nomex socks
Helmet
12 tires
Tow straps

Tuesday comes around and while I’m at work my wife and business partner run around and grab:

Race gas (15 gallons of 110)
Tires
They tried to get a 5th point for my harness but no avail

When I get home I make a few phone calls and Richard Rabe @ R.B Body & Paint gets on board to spray the car in my garage the next day. I stay up til about 4am cranking on my car and get some more stuff pulled off for Richard.

Wednesday I had to go to work again to make up for not being able to go on Friday and Saturday. During the day Richard picks up the paint and starts prepping the car for paint by taking off panels/lights and by the time I get home its pretty much ready to go. We mask the whole garage off, soak the floor, clean the car and he wastes no time and lays down sealer @ 8pm. Last coat of Porsche silver metallic w/ blue pearl and blue frost goes on @ 12:30am.

Wednesday also led me to an old friend Victor @ Emergency Hookers Towing. He really knows his stuff and offered his hand in getting my car up to the track on Friday morning on his #1 Hooker (flatbed.)

Things are shaping up for sure! Except I need to work again on Thursday. So we are less than 14 hours to driving up to the beach @ Normandy. So when I get home Thursday Richard had wasted no time and had the bumpers and roof wing sprayed and drying. We get on reassembling the car, headlights/tail lights/etc etc.

We bang out everything except the battery box by about 1130pm, car is assembled with bumpers and all! Photo shoot time. Photographer Neil Reola came over on super short notice and did a real deal photo shoot with proper lighting etc. By 1:00 we were done with the shoot. Then my roommate/new mechanic for a couple event’s helped me make a battery box, adjust my arm restraints and some other little odds and ends. By 4am I was asleep and 6am I was back up loading my truck up and making sure everything was prepped and ready.

Day 1 @ Irwindale: (boat lands on the beach @ Normandy)
Practice and Top 32 Qualifying

Probably one of the most nerve wracking day’s I have ever had in my life. I really haven’t drifted in 3 years besides the test day I had with Forsberg and Tony. And the last time I had driven Irwindale I totaled a freshly built car into the outer bank front driver’s side corner in and the only thing I could think of was that damn wall. Definitely a bad mental block to say the least.

So I take it slow…very slow during practice, learning the car, understanding the car, understanding the track. First I started with the inner bank and just getting comfortable. Kevin Wells of LS Auto and CFR was on hand and with his and my roommates help they did some minor changes that made a HUGE difference in the way the car drove and felt.

I was still getting used to the car and they started tandem practice, at this point I hadn’t even cleared the bank yet, but there’s no better way to do it, then to have someone else next to you pushing you. As I was following Forrest Wang he started the bank about 3/4th’s of the way in and I just kicked it. Everything felt awesome! So next run, I asked for a solo run and just blasted on the bank. From there on out I would enter at the nascar sign at the flat before the bank started, riding as high as my car could and would on the bank.

Skip ahead to switching to a new set of tires and back on the track while everyone else was changing tires/fuel/etc 3 or 4 of us were just hot lapping the track, so we would all be in rotation and waiting less than 30 seconds to drive. I was getting more and more comfortable.

Finally time for qualifying. Really the whole week had come down to this, so far the day had been a success and I was having more fun than I ever had in my car. I was the FIRST one on the track, suited up, in line and ready to go. I LOVE going first or last for qualifying, it helps take a ton of the pressure off for me.

First Lap of qualifying:
I didn’t heat up the tires, I had no grip and made a pretty big mistake coming down into the lower bank off the starting line clip. Well that wasn’t going to work.

Second Lap of qualifying:
At this point the tires were heated up (along with my car running at almost 220F) and I just nailed it. The run felt great, definitely good enough for top 16 in my head. I was really excited at this point, as I started watching the rest of the field drive I was getting a bit nervous as I realized I was driving against some stiff competition.

Results:
Qualified 7th out of 23 drivers!
Unreal feeling especially after coming back from not driving for 3 years, crashing at this track and against a lot of people who literally must drive 2-3 time’s a month while I was on a hiatus.

I was clocked @ 62mph coming off the outer bank during qualifying, I definitely know now what I can do to make the car faster on entry so next time I’ll be more prepared.

Night time was spent with Jess, Forsberg, Mich, Jarod, Tim, Petty, and Nabil. Got some really good pupusa’s and beers @ a hole in the wall place near the track. Went home and got some SLEEP!

Day 2 @ Irwindale:
Practice and Top 16 Qualifying into Top 16 Tandem eliminations.

Practice
1st run: No drifting just warm up.
2nd run: Drifting the bank, flip past the starting line to lock and use the ebrake to slow down some wheel speed, go to drop the ebrake and pop it back into gear and the ebrake handle stay’s up and it all goes BOOM when I let the clutch out. I come to a skidding halt. Damn, I screwed up.

Now we’ve got less than an hour to get a what I thought at the time was broken changed, so that was 2 axles and a diff.

Problem: we have no replacement diff. we have ton’s of axles, a transmission, etc but no diff.

Thankfully Joon is such an amazing friend and drove ALL the way home, grabbed a spare welded diff and while he was doing that Nabil, Richard and Jess ripped the diff and both axles out of the car. By the time he was back they had started pulling all the cars on the track and in less than 10 minutes they had the new diff in the car and both axles. Car was on the ground and I pulled it back on track.

Qualifying:

1st run: No heat in the tires, welded felt INSANE. car snaps at the end of the bank almost right into the outside bank as it snaps up into the wall, the back starts to come around and i just rail the gas…off the bank. spin. 0 points. whew, still have a car!

2nd run: Heat in the tires, car feels just crazy on the bank, it’s wavering all over the place, etc. Not a good run at all.

Day end’s early. Did not qualify which was completely understandable. We figured out at the end of it all it wasn’t a diff but 2 bad rear wheel bearings that were making the rear brakes drag on the bank and the wheels wobble excessively. Hub’s are already on order and we’ll install them along with my Tomei diff into the car @ the next round. I take a lot of my mistakes as they come and I feel as though I can only go up from where I am right now.

To me the whole week/weekend was a HUGE HUGE success and under the circumstances I couldn’t be happier, to have that much fun and come out in 1 piece. The support from everybody the whole week/weekend was amazing and I couldn’t have done it without them! Not even close.

The day ended earlier for me but Dave Briggs DMCC Champion last year went on to win the event. Big congratulations to him.

At day’s end I loaded the car into the XDC Semi Truck behind James Evans ls1 powered 350z and that’s the last I’ll see of her till May 21st in Vegas 2 months away.

BIG BIG Thank you to the following people in no particular order (if I forgot anyone, I’m sorry):

My wife Jessica, All my Drift Alliance brothers, Mich, Jack @ Simple line, Nabil, Richard @ R.B Body Work & Paint, Kevin Wells @ LS Auto/CFR, Jack aka Azndoc, Larry Chen @ Drift Fotos (awesome pictures!), Ross Fairfield @ Dead Pirate Productions, OMG Drift, Victor @ Emergency Hookers Towingg, and work for letting me have 2 weekend days off with 3 days notice…

PS. – I could probably type about 30 more pages of what happened over the week, but this is about as short as I could make it. Next entries will probably be shorter…but I doubt it.