It turned out to be an interesting week at the round 3 event. We came out early to get some testing done on Wednesday to make sure we had the right gearing and set up.
I had not been on that track with the viper sense 2006. So I wanted to make sure we had everything under control.
Then on Friday for the qualification it was raining and collected a lot of water on the track, so FD decided to move it forward to the same day as the competition. It was the right thing to do. So Saturday we all got on the the track in the early morning and it was still a wet track but after some time it started to get better traction.

Knowing the qualification was going to start right after the test session I was watching other cars on the track to make sure I knew where it was more slippery and where I could get on the gas hard. After the first qualification run I believe I was in top three. We usually have a second car as a rolling spare parts car but not this time. So I did not want to take any chances of hitting the wall. Plus loosing Mopar as a spare parts sponsor did not make it better.
After the second qualification run I finished 5th over all. I stayed safe from the wall but had top score for speed. Running on the BFG/KDW tires helped me to maintain the grip both on the wet and the dry parts so that gave me great confident.
My first competitor was Wagner. I had never ran against him before so I did not know what to expect. You just have to expect the best when you are competing in the FD series. I knew he was fast by checking his speed from his qualification run. Unfortunately for him he spun the first run chasing me. So when I heard that he spun I made sure to stay on a safe distance when following him incase he would spin again. I barely made it to the next round with out a one more time due to Ernie’s(Judge) judgement. He wanted us to go one more time.

After that run I was facing Tony Brakohiapa. He is definitely one of the nicest drivers in the whole series. One of those guys you just want to do well. When Tony was following me we had a tight battle but under the second lap when I was chasing him he came in to hot to the main clipping point and half spun, so the advantage came my way, I barely missed him and now we where in the great eight.
The problem now was that I felt the power steering started to fail. So Scott and Brad got on it and found out that one of the pipes for the power steering fluid had broke. We had around 20min till next round against Darren “D-Mac” McNamara. The guys got on it and managed to get the car ready just in time. D-Mac was leading the first run and was very fast. I was on him but could never get really tight to him. For the second lap when I was leading I knew I had to be fast and get a gap on him. But having a much heavier car on the slow infield gave him the advantage to get up on me. He actually came in so hot on me so he bumped in to my right rear. My natural reaction was to correct it and avoid spinning out. I don’t know if the judges saw this happening or not. I did hope for a one more time but they gave him the go, so I was done for this time. Right in the end of the run against D-Mac my power steering was out again. So even if I would have been moving on I would probably been done for the day. Darren did a great job and I’m happy for his victory overall.
The great thing is that we made it to the great eight and are still on forth place over all and are still in the battle for the Championship.
I WILL drift ya later.
Samuel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 3:12 am and is filed under Formula Drift. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.