Whew! Finally I have a chance to breathe. Formula Drift always puts on a show and is always a good time but this year they outdid themselves. First off, let me remind everyone who I am. My name is Sid and I am the man behind the StanceNation Instagram. I also do features here and there but my bread and butter is Formula Drift. Living on the east coast, I get four (yes I am counting Texas as the “east coast” for the sake of Formula Drift events) Formula Drift events and I plan at being at all of them this year as the StanceNation representative and I am looking forward to covering all of the events for you all!
Photos By: Sid Fligel exclusively for StanceNation.com
I arrived on Saturday at Road Atlanta with intent to watch some Global Time Attack but my friend Kevin Parlett of SOHO Motorsports was already finished so I decided to scope the track out to see if anything has changed. To my enjoyment the track layout was exactly the same. With the same layout every year, drivers have to think of better and better ways of entering and exiting the drifts to get the most style points that they can. This opened up the door for a world of backwards entries. I have seen them before in videos but never in person and never so close to the action.
After I got my media pass I headed up to where the drivers were going to be staging for their runs. If you have never been to Road Atlanta then let me tell you that you better be in shape. It’s nothing but up hill and down hill then up hill again. Nothing is close and when I got home, everything hurt.
One by one the cars rolled in. Tuerck, Aasbo, Gushi, Dai, and the rest of field came screaming in with one thing on their mind, the podium. As of Friday, Daijiro Yoshihara was in the points lead after winning Long Beach with Vaughn Gitten and Chris Forsberg right behind him. As of today, well, it’s a different story and we’ll get to that later.
As fast as they entered the staging area they left to practice their winning performances. Some started slowly but others just came out red hot. A few just never got going and then there were those who just had car trouble. As they returned and waited for qualifying to start, everyone had the same thought on their mind, who would win round two?
Qualifying this year is being done a bit differently. Unlike last year, this year, if you score high enough on your first qualifying and lock up a top 16 spot, you do not have to run again. Drivers like first place qualifier Fredric Aasbo enjoyed that as he manhandled the track and locked up that top spot. Others needed both runs to qualify and no one felt happier than the young guns like Will Parsons and Walker Wilkerson. One driver that really surprised me though was Forrest Wang. Boy can he make some smoke and look good doing it. Keep on rocking it Forrest!
As the night came to an end, I retreated back to my hotel to get whatever sleep I could get before I returned to the legendary track in the morning.
Come the morning I decide to get to the track early to check out the Slammed Society show being put on by Fatlace. Once I had my fill I headed to the paddocks to see what all of the drivers were up to as well as what vendors were here.
As top 32 began I remember thinking to myself what will happen this year? What will make this event stand out? Too my disappointment nothing too crazy happened in the top 32 but there were some unexpected mishaps with a few of the cars leaving some top drivers on the sidelines.
Top 16 created some great match ups. Gitten vs Field, Saito vs Wang, Tuerek vs Pawlak, all great drivers and they did not disappoint. Despite the great match ups nothing really crazy happened in the top 16 either.
The top 8 on the other hand, well lets just say there are memes about some of the runs now. Lets touch on the craziest match up of the day, Vaughn Gitten and Fredric Aasbo. Everything was going just fine and dandy until Vaughn ran over Aasbo…well not really but close enough. Amazingly, both drivers just kept on going and it turned out to be one of the best runs of the day.
The top 4 is where second place finisher Darren McNamara really shined. He really put on a show and proudly advanced to the finals to face Daigo Saito. He would eventually have car trouble and Saito would get the easy win.
Now the drivers move on to round three in Palm Beach, Florida. I will be down there covering it for you all. You can also tune into the live feed right here on the website. Before I leave you, here is how the points standing looks:
- Gitten – 172
- Saito – 161
- McNamara – 156
- Essa – 141
- Yoshihara – 137
I’ll be back tomorrow with a few photos from Slammed Society.