The Slump de Dumps: How humbling racing can be

All good sports teams go through a slump in a season, even the championship winning ones.  Why they go through a slump is subject to guesses, analysis, and overblown conclusions BUT the fact of the matter remains that in order for a team to take the next step and become a better team and/or champion, they must face adversity.

And it is from this adversity that the team learns just how much they're made of as it is a test of one's mettle, soul, and their character. 

As for me, I am going through a slump which is making me learn and realize what I am made of. 

It all started back in August with a 3rd place finish in that championship followed by a September of discontent with at 5th place result.  Now fast forward to October's event and we have.....

A 4th place finish....Do I feel down? Yes.

Am I humbled?  Most definitely yes.

What am I going to do about it?  Race on and keep on until I get to first place again.

Hopefully, that will happen very soon as I will ascend to the next level...that is the best I can do. 

Where is the horse and the rider....somewhere out where.

Touke Drift Sept 17th: We Goin' Sideways Again

Well well well...another drift event BUT it's a TOUKE DRIFT EVENT!!!

A full-roster of 20 drivers signed up but unfortunately, some had to drop out due to mechanical issues and because some could not get their cars ready in time for the event.  That's OK guys- See you out there at the next event!  Besides that, it was another full day of instructing, drifting, instructing, hauling cars out of ditches, trying not to get sunburnt, breathing in various brands of tire smoke (Nexens don't have a sweet smell like Federals do) and having F-U-N.  And of course, getting sideways nasty was in full-effect too. 

- Smoking more tires the sideways nasty style-

"Tandem" drifting is something I have gotten into doing more and more and it's both a challenge and a rush to either follow or lead another car that's drifting with you. Mike in the white S14 has been my usual Tandem partner and he's good at it too; his lines are easy to follow and his drifting is nice and fast.  

 -Tandem with the S14, Awesome! -

Mike was drifting the S14 well all day until he got a little bit too crazy on the "manjis" on the back straight and stuffed the car into the ditch:

- I was the first one there: Guy running around with my helmet on while the Emergency Response guys rushed in -

- Yep, that's a 2JZ Cressida pulling an S14 outta the ditch!-

After we got the S14 out of the ditch, the drifting resumed although there was another car that found its way into the ditch again (a grey S13 coupe for the curious).  There were no really other serious stuff that happened and the day ended with good vibes and the drifters wanting more. Another Touke event in November maybe?? Bring it on!!!

- Another Touke Family Pic -

- Parting Drift Shot...Laters!-

TAKE a look at the Video here (Skip to 5:08 to see me in action!):

>>>Touke Drift at Willow Springs (by "Dino Images")<<< 

Fresno AutoX August 28th

So the day after I drifted, I decided to participate and compete in Fresno SCCA Chapter's autocross championship that weekend!  Talk about pulling double-duty going from drifting to gripping but it's something I've done many times before. 

Since there is no "California Street Tire" or "CST" class in the region, the only class I'd be eligible for without anybody crying foul was "Street Modified" or "SM" class.  This was the first autocross event/championship I would be competing in with my car since the recent modifications and changes I made so, I was both a little nervous and excited to see what she could do now...

AND, she didn't disappoint as I got 1ST PLACE with a best time of 51.759 over second place whose time was 53.458 (you drove great Kurt!)- I think I might have had top time of day out of all the cars there too! Anyways, I had a lot of fun and the Fresno Autocrossers are just as competitive as we are down here in the Southern Pacific Region; their passion and dedication for autocrossing is die-hard as well...Thanks guys, will come up again soon! 

Ready to Rock.

Link to results: August 28th results SM Class

Fresno Drift Part II: Hot & Humid Sideways Fun!

The Central valley city that is Fresno lies within the heart of California's rich and vast farmland area which is billed as "one of the world's most productive agricultural regions." So, what the heck does this have to do with drifting?  Absolutely nothing! 

EXCEPT for the fact that there was a drift event this past August 27th at the Fresno Fairgrounds again! WOO-HA! Got y'all in drift.

Hearing that this could be the last drift event of the year in Fresno, I figured I'd join in on the fun and make the 3 hour trek up north to get more sideways nasty and smoke some tires too.

Smokey, smokey, smokey

The new diff configuration (discussed in another post) worked very well as it was locking smooth and the drifts were nice and smokey as you can see from the pic above.

- Sideways Nasty-

Those poor 205/40/17s I was running in the morning session just had no chance as I was able to spin them at will and mercilessly produce smoke at full-throttle. I pretty much wore them down to the metal wires and decided to put them to rest at the skidpad as I popped them.  Thank you 205 Federal 595s- you served me well. 

More smoke, less tires!

The weather was probably 90degrees+ with the humidity turned up plus the track temp must have been hovering around near over 100degrees+ to top it off!  BUT the drifters and I still went out there to slide it all out, some with sweaty shirts and others just shirtless.  Above all, I had a great time hanging it out with the Fresno drifters- YOU GUYS ROCK!

Here's a vid a guy shot from that day:  Fresno Drift Vid

***SPECIAL thanks to Chonh Lee for the AWESOME pictures!***

Great Pic!

August 14th AutoX: Take me down to Understeer City where the tires don't grip and the girls somewhat look pretty

So far this year has been going good in terms of how the car has been handling BUT this weekend I experienced something for the first time in a long time: An ILL-handling car with UNDERSTEER...double ugh.

 

As you can gather from the picture above, I would turn the wheel either left or right (depending on the corner) but the car kept going straight and thus would not turn!  And yours truly was the cause of it because I decided to take a chance on a different alignment setup to see if I could be faster.  Well, I found out the hard way that it didn't work because there was a NEAR-MASSIVE amount of understeer which had me adjust my driving-style to where I was compensating for it by stepping out the rear end more than usual for a grip event.  Combine that with an LSD that locks too tight and you had "drift-exhibition" every corner exit and this is an autocross mind you!  So put all that together and it resulted in slower times than my competitors unfortunately. Back to the drawing board...  

The pic above is my own motivation for my stance on understeer which is NOT cooler than drifting!  Understeer is NOT your friend or your cute girlfriend- it's a nasty thing which should be dragged out into the field and shot ten times over.  To put it simply: F*CK UNDERSTEER. 
 
To top that off, I was reminded of another thing that DOES NOT really work for me: Co-driving for championships.  I am totally cool sharing my car for a practice day and having my friends take my car for a few runs BUT, it seems like things don't work out in my favor when I share my car with another driver for a championship.  And things didn't certainly work out for me sharing my car with my good buddy because:

#1: I Could not concentrate due to worrying about my co-driver and what he was doing to my car

#2: The Run-Group I ran in was unfortunately managed by an overly-excited grid master who rushed the cars through waaay too fast. And...

#3: I did not have enough time in-between runs to "cool-off" both myself and the car and thus, did not have time to think and figure out where to go faster on course.

SO, I ended up getting 3rd place which I really had to drive my butt off to do since the car was not handling well.  I can't totally blame my car though; part of it is on me since I felt that I did not read and drive the course well enough to be the fastest in my class. You cannot always be the fast one every event but I think you can come damn close to it...I'll drive my socks off to do so!

Just bring on the next event please...

Couldn't find a pic from this past weekend's event but here's a link to a vid taken with a go-pro during one of my practice runs:

PRACTICE AutoX August 13-14th: Roach Cam Angle! 

And event results are here:

August 14th Championship

July 24th AutoX: Pulling times out of nowhere (like my arse)

My former co-driver came up to me and said during our championship runs:

"Jon, I have this feeling you're gonna do the same thing you did at divisionals...."

And he was right.

There I was, behind the eight-ball and trailing in top time of class by a mere few tenths. I knew I had to nail my final run to beat my former co-driver and that is what I did; I was locked, loaded and focused and dropped my time from 70.604 to 69.614 on my fourth and final run- A WHOLE SECOND!  As my buddy Mike E. (who was there helping me with shock dampening setup) said: "Who the HELL drops and finds one second from one run to the next like that?!!!"

Apparently I do.

I won by 0.360 tenths. Take a look at this link for final results:  July 24th Championship

It's good to win but when it's that close, things are a lil too tight and uncomfortable, like a wedgie creeping up your butt.  Something must be done to spread the gap again between me and my competition. Muuhahaha... *wink wink*

FR Driving: Rear-end sliding out just a bit, trying to get the power down!

Touke Drift Event

The number "3":  A prime number...triple, trifecta, THREE'S company.  Point I'm trying to get to is that good things come in threes...or maybe not (think Terminator 3 or Aliens 3). 

The Touke Drift event on July 9th kicked off 3 straight weeks of driving events for me and what better way to do that than by getting sideways nasty with tire smoke. 

-My car in Drift Mode-

 

"You have to transition like this and then do this..."

My main job with Touke Drift is as "Instructor."  I can say that it is pretty fun and rewarding to teach newbies the ropes although it's not as easy as you'd think it'd be- there are times when you can't expect them to get it right away.  But when they do, it's great to see the look on their face and feel the positive vibe when they finally do get it.   

Most of my day was spent on instructing, staffing, directing cars, dodging the sun, and making sure that cars didn't collide in one massive heap which would not have looked beautiful to say the least...no real life twisted metal thank god.  I did get some runs in which helped me to setup my car on the new coilovers (more on that in a later blog).  So, the event passed by without that much of a hitch and everyone left happy and satisfied looking forward to the next Touke Drift event.

One BIG happy family.

TRIPLE D: The Solo2 Double-Day Divisional!

My former co-driver and main competitor said this to me on Sunday morning as he flopped out of his car: 

"Jon, I want to congratulate you now for getting first place because I'm hung the F*CK over..."

A Prediction? Foreshadowing? Predilection? 

Yep, 150 smackers and a nice gold (fake) medal.  Totally worth it.

   Whatever it was, he was right as I did take first place overall in my class for the two days of competition that this "Tirerack SoPac Divisional Championship" was all about. Basically all the Autocrossers from the Southern Pacific region of the United States converged at El Toro (the former Marine Core Air-Force Base) this past June 25-26th for 2 days of autocross competition with payouts and nice shiny medals handed out at the end of it.  And no, they were not chocolate medals either...so, starting off with what happened the first day...

DAY NUMERO UNO: "Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees..."

   SO, got to the venue a little after 7am and check in...walk the course and had a "social" course walk instead of a me, myself, and I walk.  And so because of that, I didn't get the course down like I wanted to (**NOTE TO SELF: You are better and faster when you walk a course mostly alone instead of with someone who blabs about "Yeah ya go herrrreee and then gasssss herrreee." Ugh.**).  The run-group gods smiled down on me and my fellow class competitors as he decreed that we run first in the morning before everyone else...not the most ideal of times since the track is dirty but hey, someone's gotta sweep up the track for everybody, right? Ah well.  

Course ended up being a lil tricky as it was visually kinda hard to spot out where you needed to go.  Because of that, I constantly felt like I was behind and couldn't get a good enough rhythm going to attack the course like I wanted.  Nonetheless, I still drove as hard and fast as I could.

Long story short, I end up placing 2nd behind my former co-driver by a mere 0.618 (95.929 vs a 96.547). Not that far behind though and in good position for the second day.

Me and the former co-driver doing the F&F sticker pose

DAY NUMERO DOS:  "Once more unto the breech, dear friends, once more..."

   Got to walk the course Solo finally! Was able to listen to my inner-voice and not have too many people speak in my ear about what to do and what not to do...I find I end up driving better and faster when I do that.

Fast forwarding to the runs: The first run I DNF'd (Did not finish) because I simply did not go through the starting lights! And I never do that....funny. I chalked it up to that I was A.) Being held at the starting line for a long time (while the sweeper car went through the course) and B.) I basically fell asleep and was "entranced" so much so that when the starter said "GO!" I just bolted off without looking where I needed to go.  Won't let that happen again. 

The 2nd run was much better as I posted a time and felt more confident about how to attack the course...at that point, I was sitting in 3rd place only a few tenths off first. And then came the 3rd run which ended up being like "Whoa..."

The course I attacked...

That 3rd run was magic because it felt like everything just came together; On my last run of the day, last run of the weekend and last run of the whole entire event, I posted my fastest time and got first place, beating out all my competitors by over a second.. My co driver placed second as he posted a 91.949 vs. my 90.239 in his shiny new white S2K.  

One guy in my class later asked me: "How the heck did you do that?!" And I replied, "I guess I just did...I knew I had to get it that last run and knew where I had to go faster to do so...." 

And so that capped off a great weekend overall...BRING ON THE NEXT EVENT!

Final Results, CST Class:

So Pac Divisional Final Results

Fresno Drift! (I fought the fence and the fence won)

Been a few weeks since my last driving event and what better to do than drift??? 

So on May 21st, I was up in Fresno sliding it out there with Fresno's drifters who were very nice and good at drifting too.

I had missed the first part of the event because I was attending my good buddy's graduation (Congrats Eric!!!) so, I made it just in time for the last few hours and made the most of it as I got in some good runs. Before that however, I had a nice run-in with the fence post at the entrance of the venue and let's just say that the post won...the damage wasn't enough to keep me from running (as it was dented on the passenger side quarter-panel) though. I felt like a putz but later joked around about it saying: "Hey, it's drift damage!" =P

Yeah, that's what you get when you rush...

The pic below is of my good friend Dante's S13 coupe. He's the "Drift Events Chairman" in Fresno as he organized, put on the event on, and was able to get in some runs as you can see.  Plus, I helped setup his S13 coupe's suspension along with swapping in the nice Dual-Cam KA it now is powered by *wink wink*.  His drifting has vastly improved from when he first started and I am honored that I have been able to help set up his car as it now "does whatever he wants" when he wants it when drifting or autocrossing. Brings a tear to the eye and makes me a proud tuner. =)

Anyways, I had a fun time up there and look forward to drifting with the Fresno Drifters again sooner or later!

Dante gettin' er sideways

The "DUSTY" Rhodes Autocross (April 30th - May 1st 2011)

The weekend started out good although Saturday's practice was bothered by the weather- even though it was nice and sunny out, the wind gusts were strong enough to push porto-potties and the supply trailer into one of those mobile defecation-cans.  Lots of dust and dirt was kicked up resulting in runny noses, teary eyes, and allergies galore PLUS, yours truly forgot to bring a pair of sunglasses and a hat to protect against the elements (thankfully, I did bring my sunscreen!).  Because of that, I got a ton of sand in my ears that took a q-tip shovel to remove along with raw-as-meat eyes from rubbing my eyes in vain to clear them up from the dust.

Besides that, practice went without a hitch and I got faster toward the end of the day as I pulled my fastest runs during that time...seems like the car keeps getting faster and faster because of the Hankook RS3s and the time I spend running on them.

As for the championship on Sunday: 

Won 1st place over the co-driver by .029!  A 70.767 vs. my co-driver's 70.796, too close for comfort I can tell you that! My co-driver is pushing me which is a good thing.

Like good ol' chrome-domed Dominic Toretto infamously said in the first Fast & Furious:

"You can win by an inch, you can win by a mile...Winning is Winning!"

And with that, I'll take it but I'm not shaving my head.

 Final Results: May 1st Championship 

Ready, Steady, GO!

The First Post

This being the first post,  I guess I'll start off with one of my favorite quotes:          

                                                

"They say you never stop learning but nobody mentioned just how much there's left to take in."

SO, here's to hoping much will be learned from the posts to come.

Circa 2004: The Adventure Begins...