Midwest Drift Union Round 2 @ Gateway International Raceway in St. Louis

I will start this event write up by saying that everything I had been working on over the winter and through the spring/summer finally paid off at this event. I ended up qualifying 14th and finishing 14th. I am currently 22nd in points for the series and although it may not seem like much I couldn't be happier. Lets take a look at some pictures/video and my story to 14th place.

Going into this event I had made several very important and significant changes to my cars setup. I ended up switching to a stiffer spring rate and was able to get my car corner balanced and properly aligned. I also did some fabrication to allow my to car get more steering angle. This ended up helping tremendously throughout the day. In addition I had upgraded to a dual rear caliper setup that includes a hydraulic hand brake in my cockpit for easy manipulation of my car during drifts. The final and most important of what I changed on my car is upgrading to a quicker-spooling turbo charger as well as tuning my car on E-85 fuel. This combination has put us at an estimated Horsepower of 370-400.

Having driven the track late last year I was more familiar then a few of the other competitors.
Here is a video from the first practice session of the day.

After several very successful practice runs my spotter and I were feeling super confident with how the car was handling. We then decided it was time for some tandem practice.

I had some awesome runs with Charlie Quatmann in his green Lexus SC300. 

I also did a few runs with Charles Litterst who has a LS V8 Powered FC Rx7 ,we had some really close tandems and it was super fun to run with someone who is almost equal with your own speed. 

A video of my lead run. 

Picture of my follow run 

 I really wanted to see how I would pair with someone who was much faster than me, so I pulled up to the line with top MDU Driver Andrew Lewis in his v8 powered s14. At the end of the run I missed third gear, my shifter had been giving me problems all day due to it being really loose. 

Going into qualifying I was really nervous but in my head I knew if I could just do what I had been doing all day I would be able to make it into the show. My first run I threw it in hard and ended up dumping my transmission into 5th instead of 3rd gear. This threw off my entire line and caused me to straighten during my run.

Because I only had one more chance I was super scared for my second run but being really conservative I was able to throw down a solid run and qualify 14th. 

During the top 16 drivers meeting I was informed that I would be going against Brian Peter in his Toyota powered 2jz rx7 FC. Brian is an amazing driver who won the MDU championship in 2011 and is a Formula Drift Licensed driver. 

With this information I was a little bit shaken up and really nervous about my battle with Brian. 

In our first run I threw it in super hard trying to keep up with his 700hp rx7. I can honestly say this battle was the hardest I have ever pushed that car and the hardest I have ever driven. 

I ended up grabbing too much angle and scrubbed off a lot of speed. 

Soon after this photo he widened the gap and in my scramble to close the gap I ended up blowing off a turbo coupler. 

I figured that hastily putting it back on in my allotted 5 minutes would only cause it to come off again, so I decided to call it and Brian Peters got a "bye" on his second run. Being the great guy that Brian is afterwards he came by to check out my car and make sure nothing too bad had happened. I was really content with myself, I had made it to the show, I drove the best I had at any event and my car held up awesome, that's all I could ever ask for. 

Next Events

 July 20th Drift Indy Practice!

Midwest Drift Union Round 3 Streets of Detroit August 17th