This last Formula D Round was held at a new competition
track at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park's roadcourse, in Englishtown, New Jersey. It was my first time I
have ever been on that track, but it instantly became my new favorite Formula D
track. I love drifting on technical road courses that have fast accelerating,
first corner entries and that was exactly what this course was.
The course started with
a long straighaway, which requires 3rd or 4th gear entries into a
long, left-hand sweeper which began with a slight cambered incline and ended
with crest into a tight, off-camber 90 degree left turn. The judges required an early
initiation marked by a cone and the first clipping point for the course was the
outer portion of the sweeper at the crest of the first turn. After the first
corner, a narrow short downhill straightaway lead to another even more off
camber left which featured the main inner clipping point. The course finished
with a right hand turn linking the previous left.
This course was definitely a horsepower course - something
that I was lacking since my FD's engine made 356whp when I first built it four years ago, who knows what it
still made at this event. I was having some difficulties during practice
because I was having some ignition / boost issues that took all day Thursday
and most of Friday to figure out. After finally getting the engine running
right, I struggled with too much rear grip which prevented me from initiating
early. I ended up having to set the rear at full loose setting; maxing out the
shocks, tire pressures up to 80psi cold, toe-out adjustments, wing tilted back…
to finally get the car to be loose enough to hit the first corner right. After
that, I felt solid. I ended up qualifying 10 out of 18 during Friday's first
round of qualifying, achieving the second fastest entry speed (77mph) out of all the drivers.
During Saturday practice I felt really comfortable and was
having fun with the track and running close tandems with people I lined up with. I
felt good going into Top 32 qualifying. I was able to initiate the first corner
at the initiation cone, which during the driver's meeting the judges stated
that points will be deducted if initiated after the initiation point. But most
of the competition cars nowadays are producing around 450-700 hp. So they are
all able to initiate earlier than the initiation cone which looked more
impressive. But I was maximizing what I had in my car and if I initiated any
earlier, I would not be able to hit the outer clip at the end of that first
turn. So I ran my qualifying runs hard, maximizing the potential of the car,
started at the initiation point and stretched it out to the outer clip and hit
my other clips on both runs. I may have been slightly off either one of the
clips by a foot or so, but either way they ended up scoring me low for both
runs. Much lower than what I thought I should have received for the effort I
put into the runs. But I guess the standard keeps going up, and as time goes on
and people need to build cars with more and more horsepower to impress the
judges.
I remember when they used to judge drift events with the mentality
that if you are pushing your car to the max even with low horsepower, then the
judges will compensate and judge you accordingly. I guess nowadays, if you
don't have the power then you won't make the cut. This is straight up knocking
the grassroots competitors out of competition. Not sure how I feel about that.
I understand that impact has a lot to do with impress the judges and audience,
but it takes more skill to drift a lower powered car at the same level than a
high horsepower car on the same track. I think the judges are forgetting that.
Either way I will have to conform and make more power out of my engine to be
more competitive.
I felt that this last Formula D round in New Jersey's
Englishtown Raceway ended bittersweet for me. This event marked the last
event that I will run my FD with my original engine/ turbo setup from the
initial build of the car back in 2004.
This engine is a stock unported 2000
Type RZ motor with only 10,000 km that I originally got for the previous red FD
that I competed with in 2003. After the red FD's famous D1 crash in 2003, I built
the new white FD from scratch, but used that same motor. The Apexi AX75F82 turbo
setup I'm using originally came from Apexi USA's FD back in 2003, the car that Ryuji Miki now drives in Formula D. Henry Chung from MD-R in Sacramento California built and
tuned my current FD back in 2004 and have been running strong and reliably ever
since.
But now it's time to run a more powerful setup for competition purposes. I was waiting
for the motor to blow up before pulling it out, but it never did! (I think this
should sway people's thinking that rotaries are unreliable, right?) Because of the way Henry Chung tuned the engine, this motor has
lasted longer than most other engines at the same horsepower level that are being used in Formula D competition.
For the next round, I will be installing a rebuilt ported
engine built by Rotary Engineering and installed and tuned by Garage Boso in
Gardena. I will be running a new version of the same Apexi turbo setup along
with the new motor. Hopefully it will be enough to impress the judges from now
on. We'll see how it goes next round in the crazy, desert summer heat of Las
Vegas.
-Calvin Wan