Formula Drift has a couple of forms of competition drifting events that they throw. The main championship series in the US, international competitions and demos, and a Team Drifting Competition that piggybacks the former Champ Car, now IRL Grand Prix’s. For this 2008 season, I formed a team called Team Drifting Performance that will compete in the 2 team drift competition that is scheduled for this year.
Besides from competing in team drift competitions, we also perform drift demonstrations, instruct Drifting Performance Clinics and hold personal, private drift instruction sessions around the country. Our drift instructional clinics will follow some of the points that are outlined in the Calvin Wan’s Drifting Performance Handbook.
After a dramatic first round of the Formula D - Team Drifting Competition at Long Beach Grand Prix, Team Drifting Performance was able to pull off a 2nd place finish out of the 6 drift teams competing at the event. Team Drifting Performance consist of, from left to right, Dan Pina driving the Griggs Racing / Drift Patrol ’90 Ford Mustang, myself, Calvin Wan driving the Falken Tire / MD-R ’93 Mazda RX-7, and Tony Brakohiapa driving the Cooper Tire ’05 Ford Mustang who are all from Northern California.
This first team drift round consisted of 4 days of drifting on
the full Long Beach Grand Prix course. The judged portion of the event was on
the last day of the event. Drama happened after the first day of practice when
I blew up my transmission towards the end of the session.
After searching frantically for a spare transmission from several different venders with no luck, Apexi came through and allowed me to use one of their spare newly rebuilt factory FD transmissions built by Bergenholtz Racing. With the help of both the Falken Motorsport and Apexi R&D Staff, we were able to get my FD back up and running to compete in the final 2 days of the competition.
It is amazing how they can make some city streets feel like a full blown racetrack! It was such a blast being able to drift the full course at such a prestigious event. Especially with this event being the last Champ Car race weekend in history.
Dan Pina chases us down with the lights flashing in the Drift Patrol Mustang. It’s funny when I look in the rear view mirror and see the lights. It really feels like a cop is trying to pull me over.
Here is our team and crew posing for a group picture holding our huge 2nd place champagne bottle that the crew ended up finishing. It would have been nice to give us some trophies after all of the work we all had to do to make this event happen. I guess next time we have to finish first at the 2nd and final team drift round of the year on July 25th -27th at the Portland Grand Prix.
-Calvin Wan
www.c-wan.com
www.youtube.com/driftpatrol
www.drifting-performance.com