BensonHsu.com

previously the sileightymania.com journal.

Browsing Posts tagged drifting

Well for some reason all 3 of our cars have had problems this week. What the heck! Alex’s car spun a rod bearing last week, busted a turbo coolant line… Nadine’s car experienced an electrical short and burned her wiring harness right before getting tuned at Blast… and the Yellow Thing is not ready!

Well, Marco from SR20Store.com was super awesome and he replaced the rod bearing… and with the help of Ken Flores, also found and fixed Nadine’s short. Richard is letting me borrow JDM Rice II for the demo, and Marc made 2 tire trips for Alex and I… we have awesome friends, and now the drama is all over! We just need to pick up Nadine’s car from Blast, and everything is set!

Mark Hutchinson is going to be joining us for the demo, and I’m pretty excited… Man, I remember back in the day like in 1999 when I saw drifting footage and thought Mark was awesome at drifting. Now we’re going to be doing demo together! Anyway, it will be cool to see all my buddies drifting all around me… I can’t wait!

If you aren’t doing anything this Saturday come out and watch us!!! If you’re a personal friend of mine, bring your helmet!!!!! Go here for more info! 6:30 PM!!!
Rim of the World Rally

Oh yeah, it’s my birthday today! And Richard’s too! Happy birthday to us!

Yeah okay! So Nadine, Alex, and I are way busy getting ready for the Rim of the World Rally drifting demo this weekend in Lancaster… last weekend we did a little practicing, although Alex had car problems, and I was practicing in my sileighty instead of the Yellow Thing.

Bad news… I just found out that Yellow Thing won’t be ready for this weekend’s demo! Ahhh! Luckily enough, Richard is letting me use JDM Rice 2 (I am going to call it Pink Thing) for the demo… Richard! Thank you so much!!!

Nadine is getting her car tuned at Blast… it will be running way better and with more power! I can’t wait… my birthday is coming up this Friday, and I don’t even feel like I have time to celebrate! I mean… it’s just a day… I guess I can celebrate any day I want to, especially if it’s more convenient!

Hmmmmm… drifting…. drool….

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!

Practice Run
Qualifying Run

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.

Man, it’s been awhile, huh? Well Houston was a fluke… the people were nice as always, and I had a great time meeting new people and getting the chance to drift in a new state. The course was in a REALLY small area, but I guess it wasn’t too bad considering the area restraints. I found it really difficult trying to find my own angle of attack for the course because it seemed like everybody either had less or more power than me (mostly more)… this meant that my strategy for the course was different than everybody else’s. I guess it’s one of my problems that I haven’t really realized until Houston… instead of listening to what people are telling me, I should go with what I feel is right, since I know my car better than anybody else.

I was doing fine during the first day of practice… I was able to go pretty fast considering that some of the people that I was doing tandem with had double my horsepower weren’t able to pull away from me or stay too close either. The second day (competition day) turned into a huge mind game for me… the course changed slightly, and I let it get to me… I spent the entire practice time trying to adjust to the new course. My 4 practice runs were up… and each time I went out, I realized a new thing that I had to adjust in order to perform the way that I wanted to. By the last run, I knew exactly what I needed to change to run the way I was the day before at practice. During my first qualifying round, I did pretty well and I was happy… I was in my zone and my confidence was high. The second round, I did something pretty stupid… my friend suggested that I should get closer to the walls if I wanted to get into the top 16. This totally messed me up, as I was confident already and now I thought everything that I was doing so far was wrong. Well I tried to get it together as well as I could, and I was determined on getting close to the wall. During my practice run, I took notice of the wall and tried to get closer, and I did. I finished my run… not pushing 100%, but then again it was just practice so that I could get closer for the next two laps (which were the judged qualifying runs). On the next run, I went in really fast and approached the wall at the top of 2nd gear while my throttle was floored, and my rpm needle was bouncing off of the rev limiter… I felt the wall getting really close, and as I looked at my clipping point, I realized that getting close to the wall changed my line, and my initiation was too early for this line… my car didn’t have enough momentum or horsepower to bring me around the clipping point… I was about 5 feet short. So realizing that I had to initiate later to clear the clipping point, I went out for my last qualified run… I initiated later… flooring the accelerator again… this time I felt like I had a lot more speed into the corner, and then I flicked the car throwing the rear end towards the wall. The tach was bouncing off the limiter again and this time when I looked at the clipping point ahead, I realized that my car had much better momentum this time and I was going too fast for the corner. I stepped on the brakes and the car immediately went to full countersteer and the steering wheel locked… but I was in good shape… I was in perfect position to approach the clipping point. My line was pretty decent and my adrenaline was high… I clipped the apex of the corner and I was doing better than I did all weekend! Then… I choked. I was having such a good time in my car that I screwed up at the easiest corner of the course! I spun at a low speed 2nd gear corner, and the competition was over for me.

What did I learn? Don’t try new things during qualifying rounds… at least not yet. I also learned that I know the limits of my car better than I thought I did. AND that playing with the walls is a great rush and it makes drifting 10 times more exciting! I love it… and I’ll be doing it a lot more often!

In other news, KAAZ USA has offered me a spot on their drift team! It’s a 2 man team, along with Barry Wong from Hawaii. I have high hopes… the car that I’m going to drive has a lot more horsepower than I have now, and now I get to start saving up some money again… paying for Formula D out of my own pocket has really put a strain on my lifestyle outside of drifting. Being a privateer is really hard work! And my car was never up to par with the other 400hp monsters drifting out there! This way, I get to live a normal life outside of drifting… Kristy, Nadine, and I all need money for our futures. Anyway, we are currently working on sponsors for Team KAAZ… I hope to bring Tanabe on as a sponsor… they have helped me so much that I want to have them with me wherever I go… as long as I’m drifting competitively. If anybody interested in sponsoring us is reading this, please e-mail me!! Well, it’s time to go to bed now… hopefully I’ll have some videos from Houston up soon! Good night!