I haven’t written a non-automotive related journal entry in a while, but I guess since a lot of things have been changing lately, and that I USED to do this all the time, I thought I would write a new one. Well first off, I got a new job! I’m no longer at Overboost… Now I’m at Southland Credit Union. Now I have to dress nice to go to work everyday, now I get to work a normal 8 hour day without having to be complained to… now I have a real job like a normal adult! It’s been strange how my life has taken a detour because of the slump in the economy in 2001. But I’m starting to get back on track now… this job isn’t as glamorous as my first job out of college, but I think there’s a lot of promise here. I’m happy to get this new opportunity. I have so many goals OUTSIDE of drifting and car stuff, and this will finally allow me to accomplish some of them. It feels really good… especially since I have Nadine and Kristy specifically in mind. As for my drifting situation for 2005, I’m both excited and kind of uneasy about it. I’m unsure about sponsorships, the different season series, and my involvement in events. I love drifting… the competitions are fun too, but there are things about it that get me bummed out. I hate selling myself to get sponsors, I hate the seriousness of it, I hate the politics, the secrets, the deals. It stinks. Plus, it takes so much time out of my life to deal with all this stuff behind the scenes and to prepare and to fly out to all the events. There’s always been a seriousness around me since drifting started to get big… a feeling of people watching… a feeling that you have to prove to people that I’m serious about drifting and that I want to get good and stay good and be committed to the sport and its supporters. All that SUCKS. I just want to have fun and I just want to drive. I’m completely happy once I’m in my car and I’m drifting… but the other 95% drama associated with drifting gets me down. That’s why I’ve informally decided that this will be my last year of drifting competitively. Will I drop out of people’s minds when they think about the popular drifters in the US? Yeah… but I don’t care. I’ll also lose all my sponsors… no tire support, no anything support. But I’ll still have fun, and I’ll still be drifting, and I’ll still be teaching people and giving them the awesome gift of learning how to drift too. That’s all good enough for me. That’s what makes me happy. I wonder if quitting the competitions will keep me happy? I still love the challenge of courses that mostly only competetions can bring.
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Nadine’s grandfather’s funeral was last week. It was the most touching funeral I’ve ever been to. Not because of how the ceremony went… but because I understood how much of a loss the entire world had suffered because of his passing. He was easily one of the best men I’ve ever met… and I think it’s because of my age that I can fully realize and appreciate that now. My grandparents passed away when I was young… my grandmother passed away when I was in elementary school… my grandfather passed away when I was a senior in high school. My great grandmother passed away a few years ago. I guess when I talk about age, I mean in a sense of maturity and awareness. I’m hoping that the medical bills didn’t end up being too high… I’d be willing to give my RS-R prize event winnings to Nadine’s grandmother to help pay it off. Nadine was soooo strong throughout the whole ordeal. I’m so proud of her and I’m glad to know that when times are tough and the people around her are weak, she will be the crutch that everybody can lean on.
Anyway. RS-R Chicago!
As you might remember, the KAAZ car was sitting around with a blown engine… I couldn’t compete in that. So Ron, offered me his car… you might have seen the car before… it has a lot of history. Anyway, Ron did me a HUGE favor and put in a lot of work and money so that I could drive the car. He installed a cage… installed some cams… did some tuning, etc… all at the last minute. Ron is such a cool guy… he’s done so much for me this year. I haven’t even known him for very long yet he’s come through for me like I’m an old friend, and I really appreciate that.
Nadine was at home taking care of her grandfather who was in the critical care unit at the hospital. We decided it was best for her to stay home because I wouldn’t forgive myself if something happened while she was half way across the country. So I flew in early early Saturday morning by myself. It was a really strange experience flying into an unfamiliar city/state all by myself… renting a car… and then finding my way to the track so that I can wrench on the car by myself. I was lucky that I have a friend Rob in Chicago… he is a very nice guy, and I was glad that I was able to call him to get directions on how to get to the track, and what to order from White Castle. Haha! If you’ve ever wondered what White Castle sliders taste like… you don’t have to travel far far away to taste it. Just go to your local grocery store and buy a box from the freezer section. They taste EXACTLY the same… except the bread doesn’t get hard when it gets cold.
ANYWAY… after finding grabbing a bite to eat and finding a Walmart to buy some supplies, I headed over to the track… The reason why I flew in a day before the event was because I had to work on Ron’s car and make some changes before it was ready for competition. We forgot to put the rocker arm stoppers in, so that was one thing… the other thing was changing the B&M short shifter that was in there… that thing was so hard to shift, I was constantly mis-shifting. That’s not a good thing when you are coming into a corner really fast and you need to downshift to keep from going too wide. When I pulled up, I met some of the local guys, who were awesome, by the way. Really friendly people… I had so many people offer me their help and even people who kept me company while I was working on the car. Rob was super generous and offered to change my shifter for me while I was installing the rocker arm stoppers. Which was a HUMONGOUS help, since changing that shifter is rediculous, and it would have taken me another hour or so to finish working on my car in the dark. Thanks Rob! To my surprise, RS-R was there… with FOUR cars!!! They were busy working on the cars too… can you imagine? That’s A LOT of cars to get into good running condition when they all just came from Japan. The sun began to set as we finished up. Jerry, Dai, and I were in the same hotel, so we drove over to the hotel to check in and clean up. Ron flew in late that night also.
So the next day was pretty cool… there weren’t many people at the competition, and it seemed a lot more like we were there just having fun and hanging out in a new place. I was AMAZED at the talent I saw in Chicago… I was thinking that it would probably be like our first drift day competition in LA, being that this was one of the few drift events that they’ve ever had. I was wrong!! They were all very good and maybe a year, they can be as good as the guys in LA… it was awesome seeing that… and it was awesome seeing how closely knit they were… it pretty much reminded me of how things were for me a couple years ago. It was nice. I was able to sit with some of the drivers and go for a ride… which is always fun. The part I loved best was that most of those guys never had instruction from people who have been doing it longer… so I was totally honored to introduce them to proper line and help them to get better. I sat with Rob and was impressed… he did really well in such a difficult car – a Miata. After I rode with him, I told Ken and Dai “see the black turbo miata? He’s going to the finals!” and he did. He got 1st place! Congrats Rob!
As for our competition, I was driving the car pretty much for the first time. Since the last time I drove it, it had a new engine, a new turbo, new tuning, a cage, new shifter, cams… but the interesting part was that the pilot bearing decided to take a crap on us. It didn’t seem to bother me while I was kicking the clutch, but it was horrible trying to shift in a straight line and mid-drift. The powerband always dropped off when I missed the shift, and it really affected my entry speed. We went out for our introduction runs… Ken went out and played with the wall… oops. He hit pretty hard and wrecked his front tie rod, wheel, fender, and bumper. I went out and did my introduction run really quick and then came back to help Ken out with his car… he was frantic and went out looking for tie rods and stuff. Turns out that the generous guys at Tiger Racing crashed too… and donated their parts to Ken. Gushi san and I went to work and swapped all of Ken’s bad parts in a really short time. Then we went out for qualifying round!
I qualified 4th, and I found out that in the first round of tandem… it was me and Taka. Oh great. Somehow, I pulled through and won the round. For some reason, although I wasn’t making awesome runs, I was super consistent. Maybe that got it for me. In the next round, it was me and Hiroo. Oh great! Hiroo is always super super good at tandem… very consistent and very aggressive (no matter what kind of car he is driving against). In our first two runs, we both made mistakes, and we had to go into sudden death. The next round, for some reason Hiroo wasn’t able to initiate into the first corner, and I won the round.
As I was running, I was watching to see who I would be paired up with for the final round… Ken went out against Dai… and beat him, and put him into 3rd place. Holy crap! I realized that it would be Ken, Dai, and me on the podium together! It’s been ages since I was last on the podium, and I didn’t even care about that… it was the fact that we were all good friends. I was so excited to run in the finals against Ken… in the past 4 years of me drifting, I’ve never had that chance, and it made me not care how it ended up. I just realized… a year or so ago, Ken, Dai, and I would always be drifting together on Gran Turismo 3 at my house. How geeky is that! Haha! ANYWAYS… Ken and I went out and had even runs… sudden death. The next time I went out, I went out way too wide and missed the clipping point… my line ended up to be really bad, and Ken got a lot of distance on me. Ken was right on my ass when I was leading… that didn’t help either.
I ended up placing 2nd with Ken and Dai beside me. It was a lot of fun, but in the back of my mind was always Nadine and her grandfather. I wished I could fly out that night
but I was way too tired and it was a long flight. I went to dinner with Ken and his family to celebrate, then hung out with Dai and Ron for a little bit and went to bed early so that I could catch my early flight in the morning. He ended up passing away while I was in the air flying back… Nadine was with him.
Nadine’s grandfather passed away while I was rushing home from Chicago… R.I.P. Mr. Edwards. You are one of the greatest people I will ever meet. I looked up to you in many ways, and the world is a lesser place without you. It was an honor to know you.
JDM Option DVD vol.6 has been out for over a week… the one that has coverage from the California Speedway D1 Drivers Search… and I haven’t seen it. It’s making me crazy. I want to drift.
I placed 2nd at the RS-R Drift Festival at Chicago a couple weekends ago! I’ll post up a recap soon.
I’m amazed at what my life has turned into since I first started this journal… My life has been so hectic this year, that I can barely have a weekend to just relax and do nothing. It’s been so bad, that I never update this journal until there’s a big event or something, and even that is when I have some time to breathe! I’ve been reminiscing of the “good ol’ days” back when I would write about nothing… just a thought I would have at the time, or about spending a day with the friends doing silly things. Life has changed a lot, and so has the American drifting scene. I’ve been thinking a lot about things lately, and as soon as I finish these crazy event updates, I’ll be sure to do a better job of speaking my mind even if it’s not an event recap!
Here’s my recap of D1 Driver Search at California Speedway, 2004:
Getting ready for the D1 Driver Search was kind of strange to me… Because I’m one of the KAAZ drivers now, I didn’t have to prep the car. All I had to do was prep myself the day before (i.e. – get enough sleep, eat well, drink enough water, etc.) For some reason though, I was really relaxed as if I had no driving event the next day. I’m not sure if it was because the event was at California Speedway and I didn’t care what kind of course they’d throw at me, or maybe I was kind of skeptical of participating in D1 with all of it’s politics, or maybe it was because prepping a car the night before was more stressful to me than I thought. Maybe it was all of the above. Anyway, I showed up to the event and met up with KAAZ. It was cool seeing Barry again… that guy goes through so much to get over here for all these events. I don’t know how he does it! So all the drivers went through the normal procedures… getting the cars tech inspected, unloading the cars, getting everything ready. Keiichi was there, so was Nomuken, Daijiro Inada, Kumakubo, Tanaka, and Chunky Bai. I watched Keiichi and Nomuken set up the course… it was interesting. They would walk the course and then move a cone here or there and when they were finished, they jumped into Bai’s car and did some slow laps in it, with Keiichi in the driver seat. The interesting thing about it was that he wasn’t going very fast… and would initiate late into the corner. I wondered if it’s because he doesn’t need to go fast to figure out if the course is good, or if it was other reasons? Maybe it was because it wasn’t his car and he would put it at risk by drifting it at higher speeds? Well, the course design made everybody mad pretty quickly. It was narrow, and had a long straight into a right hand reducing radius corner, with a chicane at the end of it. At the end of the long straight, there was a plastic barrier filled with water on the left hand side at the entry point was, and the judges table was straight ahead… with concrete barriers in front of it. Looking to the right of the judges table was a nice big light pole with concrete barriers in front of it as well. I knew the barriers would present a problem for a lot of the drivers that day, mostly because the range of experience in the people driving were from beginner to advanced. To make matters worse, they designed the course so that there were huge bumps on the ground right at where the initiation point should be on the first straight. Out of all the places to put the course, they put it THERE. Most of us reacted in the same way… that D1 wanted to see some crashes today, and it would be us.
I was to trying a new setup on the car that day, because I wanted to experiment with more grip on the car. That day, we used 225 Yokohama ES100s in the front and 245 Yokohama ES100s in the rear. The tires were too grippy for the power of the car… It was almost like I had to stay full throttle all the time or else the car would stop drifting… What a time to be testing a new setup! We had about 5 laps as our practice session… The first couple of laps I screwed up. One problem was that the car wasn’t running very smoothly… and whenever I got back onto the gas after letting off, the car would hesitate… and then a split second later the rpms would start moving again… it was frustrating, and I had to learn to try and guess when I’d need the throttle a split second before I actually needed it… and hope that when I got back on the gas, I would actually need it. The next 3 laps were better, but still needed some work… the bumps didn’t seem to bother me, but according to Alex Pfeiffer, my speed and line were good, but I wasn’t coming in with enough angle into the first corner. That was great advice, because I was thinking about so many things that I didn’t notice. I was thinking about what to do during my break time… because the next round was already the qualifying round. If I initiated BEFORE the bumps, I would be able to get more angle. Another thing that helped out a lot was that Keiichi clarified what he wanted for the line… in the morning, he said out out out out, in. To me, that means you stay outside all the way around the corner until you get to the apex! Of course, it seemed very strange to me, because when I originally walked the course, I thought to myself… this is a double apex… it goes out in out in. I was trying to use Keiichi’s line during practice and it just wasn’t working for me… Before our qualifying lap, he said something about a double apex and it clicked… I was practicing the wrong line. I thought about that as well as my initiation point during my quick break. It was a lot of changes to be making for a qualifying round… Usually I would stick to whatever I was practicing, because it’s usually a bad idea to be trying new things during qualifying. I didn’t want to go home unsatisfied, so I did what I thought I should do… take the correct line and come into the corner with good angle… even if it meant making last minute changes to my attack. I guess at this point, it was about self satisfaction instead of satisfying the judges.
So qualifying started… MULTIPLE cars crashed… at least 4, maybe 5. My first run was my practice run, and I let off throttle too much and the fat tires in the back took over and I lost too much momentum… I had to use my ebrake to make it to the apex okay. On my first qualifying run, I did better, but I for some reason, I spun at the very last (easiest) corner. I don’t know why I do that… And on the last qualifying run, I entered at a good speed, initiated early, extended the drift a little bit into the first apex, downshifted to 2nd, and carried it through the rest of the corner… kicking the clutch when I started to lose some speed. My line was exactly where I wanted it to be… the only problem was that I was steering too much with the steering wheel instead of using the throttle to steer the car. This is a problem I’ve noticed a lot with other drivers, and now I find myself doing it every once in a while too… I just have to stop myself before I do it and stomp my foot down on the throttle instead.
Anyway, they called the drivers meeting and announced the top 11… I was suprised to hear that I made it! That was a pretty big accomplishment… since it was out of 83 drivers. To our suprise, we found out that we had to go out again and go through another elimination round! We went out again… and I got it pretty good. We came back to another drivers meeting, and I found out I made the cut again to get to the top 8! But ack… another elimination round. I went out again… and totally repeated my runs over again… it was weird… like a carbon copy of the round before. Feint away from the corner… kick the clutch and start sliding out towards the wall, over the bumps… towards the first apex… lock the rear brakes for a quick second to maintain the line… drop back to 2nd gear and floor it EARLY to compensate for the weird hesitation… continue flooring all the way around and as I approach the 2nd apex, use the brakes and tighten up the line… and get back on the gas to go through the last chicane. Anyway, I was RELIEVED to
find out that this was the last round. I made the top and final 5… I got my D1 competitors license. And I got it the right way too… I know that D1 is a little sketchy when it comes to the way they run things… and originally they wanted me to just be qualified for the D1 competition without qualifying the right way. I told them “no thanks”… and that I would qualify along with everybody else. Well now I have it, and it feels good to earn it. And I’m going back to 215s and 235s haha! Marc just told me that the DVD just came out… Man… they can make a DVD faster than I can write a journal entry. Sorry!
Okay, so here’s the continuation from the Sonoma event…
There’s this feeling I get… when I see a course or walk it, I come up with a plan of attack. This includes line, speed, angle, initiation points, etc… this is the plan of attack that, if I could pull it off like how I imagine, would make me happy, and should also qualify me at the same time. During my qualifying lap, I got pretty close… because when I finished, it felt really good to me. I was happy. At the next drivers meeting, they announced me as a qualified driver in the Top 16 round. I think I placed #13… I was confused, because, by the way it felt, I thought I would qualify a lot higher. I found out later that it was because my feint had too much angle. If I wanted to do it better, I should use less angle on the first feint.
So that was it… I was up against Ken Gushi. On one hand, I was happy… because it meant that I could drive hard… I love driving with Ken. He’s easy to read and I can trust him. And if I lost to anybody, I’d love to lose to Ken. ANYWAY, we go out, and he leads… damn, his car is fast! He gets away from me, and his entry was way different than mine. Instead of feinting, he went straight into the corner. I, not being very experienced in competitive tandem, followed him when I should have stuck to what I knew… and I spun and went off course. Ken’s advantage. Next lap, I lead. I ditched my idea of going straight into the corner, and stuck with what I knew. I feinted. This, however, threw Ken off, and botched up his entry into turn 1. My advantage. We had to do it “one more time”… Ken lead, and I did okay following him… man… he was driving fast! I made some mistakes and I was falling behind… We went into the last left hand sweeper together, and I was coming in really hot… going towards the wall… going too fast… Ken kissed the wall with his rear bumper. I let off the throttle and I was coming in for the wall too… I got pretty close, but I missed it. After getting closer to Ken’s car, I realized that he ricocheted off the wall and hit his front end too. He busted his oil cooler and was leaking all over the place… Well, after trying to figure it out, we realized he couldn’t drive his car… so Rotora brought out Ernie’s car for him to drive. Ken seemed pretty upset… I think because of what he did to his car. Well, we went out again, this time I was leading… Ken messed up on his entry into turn 1… but as I exited and went into turn 2, Ernie’s car and its massive amounts of grip totally took over… and slung shot ken right towards me and my door. It was amazing… however, I guess because of Ken’s mistake, they gave the round to me. Next round was me against Calvin. On the first run, Calvin was having problems entering into turn 1… it looked like he or the car was hesitating to stay sideways. Anyway, he spun into turn 1, and if I was in the right mindset (like I should have been), I would have seen the opportunity to pass him on the inside. Instead, I let off the accelerator and let him get back on his course and I followed him into turn 2. It seemed like it was nobody’s advantage there. 2nd run comes, and I’m leading. I went too wide going into turn 1 and Calvin started to come in on the inside… before I knew it, Calvin was too close to me and was trying to get inside at the corner… I needed to transition to the left for the next corner… If I continued on my line, it could have meant a crash… Calvin would have been where he shouldn’t have been and I would have hit his front end with my rear end… or I could have just assumed he would get out of my way and I could just keep going anyways. It didn’t matter… my initial instincts were to avoid the accident, and instead of maintaining my line and my drift, I straightened out and got out of his way. It was my biggest mistake of the day… But it’s another hard lesson learned… I won’t do it again. Calvin took the win from that round. And now, here’s the videos!
Hey guys, sorry for the really late update. Life is so busy!
A quick recap of Drift Association’s second annual drifting competition (I think they called it DC 2). The Formula D competitors weren’t allowed to compete, so that we could make this more of a beginner style competition… but the cool thing was, we were allowed to judge! This was an AWESOME experience, because it really gave me some great insight on competition. All of the judges had to pair up with another judge so that we can save time on vote totalling at the end of each round. I paired up with Ken Gushi, and that was pretty cool because for the most part, we were scoring the same amount of points for each person anyways. In the beginning Ken and I had to decide how to judge… should we judge relative to the skill level in the competitors that day, or should we judge as the D1 judges would judge us in Formula D or D1? Ken and I thought it would be good for the competitors if we judged them the way we were judged. 0 to 5 points… 5 being a pro level run and 0 if there is a spin. The most consistent guys out there were the ones that ended up placing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. These guys ALL scored 4s all the way across our scoring sheets throughout the day. Hiro secured his 1st place position in the final round, when he drove his heart out on one of his runs… Ken and I scored him a 5. Quoc and Alex were both ultra consistent and scored 4s on their final runs. They placed 2nd and 3rd.
The day was long but I had so much fun. It was also my first day to drive the KAAZ car. It wasn’t yet tuned, and there wasn’t an alignment on the car, so instead of learning how to drive the car, I was pretty much just making sure that nothing would break when I drove it for Formula D.
Anyway, Sonoma for Formula D Round 3 was pretty interesting. It was the first time I’ve ever competed along side my friend Barry Wong… my new teammate for Team KAAZ! This was our first competition as Team KAAZ, and I think that we figured out a lot of things… like what it takes to support a 2 car/driver team, and that teamwork does wonders. Before the competition, the car was tuned. We had so many problems tuning the car because the car kept overheating… It has a bad radiator setup. So the tuner had to keep letting the car cool down before he could continue tuning. Anyway, in the end, he didn’t have enough time to finish the tuning because of the overheating problem. So the map wasn’t perfect… but it was good enough to run. The car makes 270 horsepower to the wheels at 1.2 bar of boost, but doesn’t start making power until 4300 rpms. Eeek! I’ve never driven a car like that before (except for JDM Rice 1). I didn’t know how I would do in the competition while trying to figure out the new car.
On Saturday, we had a couple hours of practice time on the track. I had a lot of car problems… the intercooler piping busting off, the car overheating… and one of my biggest fears – the course was wack. AND it had a high speed 3rd gear entry into turn 1 with a very low speed exit. The huge boost lag in the car would really challenge me at that corner. Practice session started and I was all over the place… going off course, spinning, putting the car where it shouldn’t have been… It’s really strange what a competition will do to you. All day we were pairing up with whoever we happened to be next to in line… sometimes the person in front of you spun, and you got a screwed up practice run, or sometimes you spun, and you screwed it up for the person following. All day I kept messing up… I couldn’t get the first corner right! I think it might have been the pressure combined with the high speed entry of that first corner. Towards the end of the day, Barry and I talked and started giving each other advice, when we realized that we both see things the same way. So we started doing our practice runs with each other only. You have no idea how much it helped!!! Barry would give me advice when he was following me, and I gave him advice when I was following him… it was awesome, and we started to get it… and we started to pull off successful runs at the end of the day. This was so important, because once we were able to finish the course without spinning out, we were able to focus on certain parts of the run and clean them up for the competition the next day. Our method of attack was doing a feint… drifting away from the corner and then transitioning our drift into the corner… This is always hard for me, I don’t know why… but I was getting consistent, and as I transitioned into the corner, I was practicing using the entire track… and getting up close to the cones and dirt area.
Sunday came around, and I was pretty happy… Saturday I was worrying that I wouldn’t have the course figured out by competition time, but because of Barry’s help, I knew I wasn’t THAT far off. Practice began and I started to get comfortable with my speed and initiation… so I tried to go faster and earlier. Qualifying session rolls around and Utsumi does some demo runs to show us what he’s looking for. Utsumi has a really unique style… He has great control of the car and can go into the corner with very low angle and very high speeds. For some reason though, I disagree with the line that he takes and suggests at every event. Anyway, that is something I’ve been struggling with for the past year or so and can have it’s own journal entry. Anyway, we start our practice runs… I said to myself… okay… I’m going to try something new (a stupid thing to do on a qualifying run) and initiate EARLIER… First run, I initiated early, and it felt pretty good. It felt like I was driving at 70%… That was the practice run, and I felt confident… next run, it was on, and I decided to drive closer to like 85%. I initiated even earlier and I decided to get close to the tire barrier at my initiation point for style points… I got pretty danged close… as I got near I said to myself “oooh, this is going to be a close one…” I made it past the barrier and came in towards the first corner, except this time I got back onto the throttle a lot earlier… I came around approaching turn 2… and I decided to clean up my line… I used the throttle to tighten it up at the last minute to make a nice late apex, sending me out along the wall, just like I would while grip driving (I still think that racing line is the proper drifting line). It felt really good and I thought I would do pretty well in the qualifications.
Okay… this took me long enough to write… I’ll finish up the story next week, along with videos and some details from last weekend’s D1 Grand Prix US drivers search.
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