(FEEDBACK) FORMULA D New Jersey

[david_kay]

let me start off by saying i had a great time at this, event. it was cool to see the guys run a new track, and it was nice the car show area was so much larger.

but obviosly there were a few bugs.

The "Reserved" seating was a joke, and quite frankly a rip-off. it actually kind of p*ssed me off every seat was filled up, and if you left when it got crowded, it wouldn't have even been worth the effort to see if you seat was still there. and why give out the wristbands if you still needed to have the tickets? honestly, what was the point of that.

I have to say the judging was a very big let-down, and as many have said, the whole One-more time situation has really caused people just not to care. i remember when the whole crowd would chant "one more time". but now only a few groups of people will chant it when prompted by j-rod. i think the the judging system needs to be re-worked, or the judges changed out.

and then there's the track set-up, i did like how they came flying into the first turn. and the overall set-up was good, but you only really got a good view of the first turn and after that it was kinda hard to see the cars due to smoke and dirt. i think nopi did have a very good track set-up when they came here.

these are just some of the things i noticed though, overall it was a great event and i cant wait for it next year (even if it's exactly the same). hopefully though some of the kinks can be worked out.

at least they didn't drop the ball like D1 and NOPI

i went to nopi in E-Town, and i persoanally thought the judging was perfect. not to mention the track set-up was good too.

[ROK]

i went to nopi in E-Town, and i persoanally thought the judging was perfect. not to mention the track set-up was good too.

dropping the ball was referring to event cancellation but thats great news, a benchmark aways helps

[Inferno]

I thought over all the event was very entertaining and fun to watch. Most states don't get FD at all, so I am just happy that it comes to NJ and I really hope they come back next year. I just enjoy watching the cars, but I never take the judging to seriously because it has never been that great in FD. The system used in D1 is much better and more precise, I mean in D1 they even have a person standing at each corner of the track to judge each specific corner and give input to the main judges. The course may have been a bit short, but it was still fun to watch.

My only real complaint, and pretty much is always my only complaint, is the one one-more-time rule. That rule just doesn't make sense and in the event that the drivers truly deserve an equal score the judges are forced to pretty much let a driver win for no real reason. Plus, they brought up the event of when Taka's car overheated, but that is fault of Taka's car or how it was engineered. In a road race, they don't reduce the number of laps because some cars might overheat or break something, the people who design the cars just have to take things like racing duration into considering. I love watching D1 when they start going into multiple one-more-times, because it turns it into an endurance match and a real dogfight where each driver is being pushed to their mental and physical limits, and the audience is on the edge of their seat waiting to see which driver's concentration will be the first to snap and cause them to make a mistake somewhere. Things like that just make the matches so much more exciting, both for the audience and for the drivers.

[Jason62]

long time lurker and I had to sign up and comment on this. I went to the E Town event and it is my 4th NJ FD event I have been to. Overall it was a decent event but could have been better. This is my overall break down of the event:
Pros:
+Track Layout-I wasnt in the bleachers I was at the BP lounge so I saw the whole track and it was nice.
+Timing of events-I got there for 12 and saw everything and the 2 hour break didnt bother me cause it gave time to go to the pits and cool off in my car with the ac.

Cons:
-Reserved Seats-I was pissed since the website didnt say much about it and I was aggrivated once the final 16 started and the "standing area" was packed with people so if you showed up late you had to stand back.
-Speaker setup-Apparently the only speakers that were working were next to the stands and everyone else got silence. The speaker in the "standing area" worked for 10 minutes the whole day.
-Track Entry-Maybe people in the bleachers could see when the cars would start but over where I was I had to guess when the cars were going or listen to when the cars started going. Guess it helped that I couldnt hear the announcer then.
-Time between runs-There was a decent chunk of time in between each run which really hurt the pace of watchin the event. I understand that they had to go all the way around the Red Bull arch thing behind the motox track but it just came off as boring.
-How far away the pits were from the track-It sucked and it just made going there worse until there was a break.
-Not Letting Gittin race-This was really bad seeing as he was a close area fan favorite and would have put a hell of a show against his friend Chris.
-Only 1 1 more time- yea pretty lame but its already been talked about enough.

And Tanner won again. But can somebody tell me why Rhys moved on when he spun Conrad? and it was nice to see Angelo and Petty make it into the top 16, but would have liked to see Gush in too.

[ReDc0aT]

conrad def spun out before rhys pushed his asss out of the way.

i thought that track layout.. parking and paddock were the best englishtown had to offer. bleachers were fine for spectating. im not gonna feel sorry for the people that didnt by a ticket for bleachers which was only a few more dollars and especially if you showed up late. i got to the bleachers 45 min before top 16 started and i got a great seat.

i was just mad at the lack of excitement... such as no practice. no team drift. anytime there was close tandem, the judges made bad calls. ruined JR's day... time between runs was too too too long.

i think J-rod does fine. not his fault pretty boy cali judges suck at life.

D1>FD

GO DA!!!!!

its the same every year. go excited. come home pissed. see you next year!

on another note. why didnt taka make main day? how were his judged runs?

[Lord_EJR]

i think J-rod does fine. not his fault pretty boy cali judges suck at life.

D1>FD

LOL! and +1

[NJDK]

Etown Formula D lowered the bar

I have been to every Drifting event in NJ that I can remember back to 2003. I have to say that this event should have been much better. I was excited to see how the track would play out as it should have been muhc higher speed than Wall. The whole layout was not quite right and with all the other factors that have been already mentioned, I felt this event was much less catered to the fans. I think we should write a group letter to Jim and Ryan stating some of the things that went wrong. If they could improve this event and provide more seats, with a little promotion they could easily pack 10-15 thousand into an NJ/NY drift event.

[Jim @ FD]

Obviously, a lot of talk about FD NJ. Before I get into all the things everyone is posting about let me state a couple of points...

1. There are tons of issues, obstacles, etc. behind the scenes that you do not know about. So don't assume things about a situation when you do not get have the full perspective. You have to know that sometimes it is just the cards we were dealt with and we make our best attempt to make it work.

Example...
"…afford stupid Flip a *Censored**Censored**Censored**Censored**Censored* " - Do you even know what that is? GTChannel.com filmed it. They paid for it. They wanted to create a fun spoof for the fans; for all of you, for your entertainment, to make you laugh.

2. Putting these events on takes real people. So if you want to critique fine, let’s have a dialogue but if you want to blast them personally, then maybe you should try doing that they do.

Example... Are you able to talk 8 hours straight and try to keep the crowd entertained, hyped and not get bored? Are you able to handle the pressure of making multiple, tough judging decisions and then to back up any complaints you get from teams and fans afterwards? Are you able to handle 3 straight 16 hours days in heat, humidity, rain, and blazing sun?
So give the entire staff; Jarod, Judges, etc. a pat on the back at least for their effort. They pour everything into this to do their best for you and personal attacks on them are just not cool. Cameron, completely appreciate your outlook on all of this.

Event Schedule:

Don’t compare to other events or we can go on for days. Our schedule is posted for all to see. The competition part of the schedule is harder to handle. We’ll make a note of it in the schedule. You have to understand that if everyone is very smooth and fast, qualifying goes by really fast, especially if there are no wrecks or oil downs, etc. So what’s better buffering time for possible accidents and delays or not and having to push everything back including the start of the event? You guys also know that we did open the gates up an hour early because, we do care about the fans and saw that people were already waiting. Also know that sometimes there is lag time between runs is because teams are squeezing in a tire pressure check or dropping in a bit more fuel, etc. so from the stands it may seem like we are unorganized but we are simply waiting for teams to get back onto the line.

Reserved Seating:

For this event, there were standing room only tickets and bleacher tickets. Yes, the whole “you can save your spot, walk around” part should have of been removed. But do you not feel that having a seat was better than not having a seat? Do you even know how much it is to put of those temporary grandstands? If we don’t have them and make everyone stand, we get s*** and if we do and pass a bit of the cost to the consumer and we ate a bunch of the cost, we get s***. All part of the game but again give us ideas of how to improve versus just being negative.

Wall Speedway:

Some of you think Wall Speedway is way better, then why don’t you guys call over there and ask them how they could abandon us. Or ask them about how we got strung along for months and that’s why we didn’t make a call to move to ETown until about 2 months out. So have a different perspective and say thank you to ETown for squeezing us in the weekend before they huge NHRA race. FD wanted to keep the event in NJ instead of canceling it all together.

Rules are Rules:

Yes, exactly. FD will NEVER compromise track safety merely for entertainment. If you want us to throw it out then see how fast drifting will disappear in this country. Talk to some of the driver and teams, some people actually think we don’t have enough rules and need to implement more.

One More Time:

One more time, not 2 more times or whatever the judges feel like. If you guys think it is a big deal to get it changed, ask the drivers and see what they think? If they really want it I bet we can make it work.

D1:

Please. I don’t even want to spend time on this. Just ask them why they don’t let their drivers run in our series when FD drivers can run in theirs.

Judging:

First you have to be at the drivers meeting to understand what the judges were asking for. Then if you heard what they said and still disagreed, cool, that’s where the conversation should begin. By the way, how does Tsuchiya (pretty much the only judge anyways) come up with some magical random score like 96.23, how does that happen?

Course Setup:

Again, don’t assume. Did you know how many FD drivers gave their input of how the course needed to be? Quite a few. Start was out of view and I agree that seeing the start line is better but everyone wanted to put on a show for the fans so having a longer, faster entry was what was agreed on.

ETown:

Don’t count us out too soon. And NJDK, you are partly correct, imagine if we had 6 months to work on getting everyone to ETown instead of less than 2 months trying to tell everyone we moved from Wall. Again, thank ETown for moving so fast to squeeze us in.

Finally, if you want drifting to grow then provide ideas to make it better not negative bashing on the only people that put their lives into providing a championship series that spans most of America while other have come and gone and come and gone. Like I always say, FD’s doors are always open and that’s why I am here to have dialogue not arguments. And we know we are not perfect and don’t do everything to your exact liking but give our crew some credit for getting to his point in 4 ½ years. We do listen and we do try to make things work out better.

Thanks East Coast, have a great rest of the Summer! Next month we start our West Coast swing.

[MonkeySlide]

Dang...you guys pissed off Jim! I didn't think that was possible.

Well...no matter what happend this year I think it's a safe bet to say that next year in E-Town will be much better.

We had problems in Long Beach at first too but eventully things got MUCH better.

[Formula D]

Hey guys, Jim pretty much got it, but I thought I'd offer my perspective too. It's nice to have a healthy dialogue with people that do not jump to conclusions. Lets keep it like that. We all love this sport. There isn't Wizard of Oz behind a hidden wall doing the, "Moo-haha.. Let me see how I can piss people off" thing. This is a legitimate sport and business and we all care for it to keep it going as strong as it has.

Thanks for taking the time to write in and express your concerns. Anytime anyone has a less than stellar experience at our events we take that seriously and try to fix those issues rather than compound. I think most people will agree with that statement as it is that attitude that has lead FD to where it is today.

First off, as many of you know the Englishtown event was something that came together last minute. We went to extreme measures to try and lobby both Wall Speedway and the city to lets us have our event that we had agreed to have at Wall. The powers that be did not allow it and so we were essentially in a situation where we did not have an event for the North East, one of our favorite areas. We had already planned on a worse case and had made calls to other surrounding tracks. We knew that that track would have to fit the minimums that we require for sponsors and competition. To make a long story short, E-Town had what we needed and we move forward. This was around 1 month ago. Note: We generally start marketing locally around 2 months out so we were behind the eight ball big time.

Anyway, preparing for this event was nothing short of a herculean effort, possibly on par with Long Beach which logistically is unbelievable. It is impossible for most of you to know what goes into things like this so I am not mad if you don’t understand certain things and therefore get certain things wrong. The point is you were upset with some things and that is all that matters. However, often times and explanation helps. Back to E-town…. FD is not a parking lot event anymore and we have a minimum competition level that is needed to fulfill our drivers and media. That being that case we, for the first time at this track were able to implement an extremely fast and challenging course. I think most of you will attest to that and the drivers absolutely loved it. By doing this though created some challenges. For one, there are not grandstands in that area and two, the finish and start line are quite a distance from each other so tandem drifting and re-griding can take longer than usual. Anyone that knows us knows we hate slow competitions. We are constantly trying to keep the flow moving. This one was tough.

Grandstands are not cheap. I wont say how much they are but the cost per seat is almost the cost of one of our lower priced tickets. There were nearly the same number of seats that there are all Wall Speedway. Do the math. Now, we are not required to bring in grandstands. Grandstands are generally cost prohibitive. This is something we chose to do so that if people wanted to they could sit down. Makes sense right? Well it makes sense for the consumer, but not for FD. To put it plainly, if we decided to not hold a NJ event, it would have been financially better for FD. We already knew what we were getting into, but we moved forward with the event and the HUGE expense of putting in grandstands anyways. Those are not the things you guys are privy too and we don’t make an effort to let it be known. We scheduled an event and the drivers, teams, sponsors and fans are expecting it so we did it, even if it hurt us from a revenue stand point.

A second note regarding the grandstands. Since the only way to be able to guarantee individual seats is for consumers to be able to pick their seat online on a chart and then buy that seat, we decided to error on the side of caution and under sell the grandstands by about 10 percent. That means that the grand stands, according to our pre-decided limit, should have never been completely full. This would allow people to have decent room. So if there was a lack of seats why would that be? Switching of wristbands. No amount of security can fix this either. Thanks to those of you that were honest. For those that weren’t, well…Honestly I don’t really think the wristbands switching was that bad however. I looked at the grandstands all day and saw that ten percent buffer pretty clearly. Anyway, it takes about 2 months to build a system like we have in Long beach and for those of you that have attended that event, you know it is pretty cool to be able to pick the exact seat you want to sit it. We will likely have this next year.

Rules and Regulations. If you guys don’t like certain things like only 1, One More Time or the 5 minute rule then you need to tell your drivers. Unlike every other motor sport in the world FD operates in a the general confines of a democracy. Meaning that the rules that we have instituted are because we have been pushed to do so by drivers and or teams. We consult with our teams all the time about things that should be done and things that should be changed. Of course not everyone agrees. You will find that often drivers want rules that favor their car. I know they don’t do this intentionally but because it is their experience that they have to base their opinions on. However, rules like One More Time and 5 Minute do not favor one car or driver over the other. These are fair rules that help keep the sport moving along and not drag and AGAIN, have been pushed by the drivers themselves. I agree they are good rules however so don’t think we are pushing it off on the drivers. A winner should be able to be chosen after 1 OMT and 5 Minute rule is something that has been instituted for a while. I hate having to push a driver our of the competition because of that. Everyone wanted to see JR and Chris go at it. Seems like they have a curse when facing each other. They never get to see it all the way through. Why would FD not want to see them run? Even with the 5 minute our Chief Steward gives the benefit of the doubt for the sanctity of the competition. JR’s teams called 5 minutes and it had LONG expired after he had been disqualified. Period. No one wants that but that is what was more than fair to the other teams.

Now on to logistics. The event was scheduled to open at Noon. So for you that got in around 10am, you got a couple extra hours of fun. NOON was the time that everything was to be operational and it was so just keep that in mind. Ticketing and Will Call I will admit need work. It was not the standard that is acceptable to us. We were not working with in the system that we generally work. There were some definite issues on how we like to operate, but I have to give it up to the track who problem solved issues that could have been way worse. Anyone that knows how we do events know that is not how we roll so please do not judge us on this. There are so many things going on all so complicated that its not even worth going through it or putting the perception that anyone needs to get thrown under the bus. FD will take responsibility and make it better like we always have.

It’s not a fluke that we are where we are today. We have been the only series to operate a national tour for five years. This going against the originators of drift and many other series trying to do whatever it is they think they are doing. Not any other league has accomplished that. This is because all aspects of out series: Drivers, Teams, Sponsor and Admin have worked together in relative harmony with many of the same goals in mind.

FD has always had an open door so feel free to keep the comments coming.

[EverythingDrift]

Well stated Jim and Ryan!

We always feel well received at these events, and although they may not be 100% perfect, they are the best events we attend each year. Keep up the good work! see you in Vegas!

[Jim @ FD]

Dang...you guys pissed off Jim! I didn't think that was possible.

Well...no matter what happend this year I think it's a safe bet to say that next year in E-Town will be much better.

We had problems in Long Beach at first too but eventully things got MUCH better.

HAHA, no I am not pissed off. I don't mind critiques. I don't mind the fans and participants pointing out areas of improvement. All of this is healthy to have so that we can make thing better for everyone. Just wanted to make things as clear as possible regarding some of issues addressed as well as making it known that it is not cool when people make their attacks personal.

Thanks for reading our 52cents worth.

[ReDc0aT]

D1:

Please. I don’t even want to spend time on this. Just ask them why they don’t let their drivers run in our series when FD drivers can run in theirs.

Judging:

First you have to be at the drivers meeting to understand what the judges were asking for. Then if you heard what they said and still disagreed, cool, that’s where the conversation should begin. By the way, how does Tsuchiya (pretty much the only judge anyways) come up with some magical random score like 96.23, how does that happen?

D1 is a better atmosphere/ event from a spectators point of view because you get to see EVERYTHING you want to see. my idea would be to make formula D 2-day event to spectators:

Day 1/sat- Top 32 qualification, team drift/practice
Day 2/sun- normal competition.

doesnt yoshioka compete in both? hmm.

as for judging. your example covers D1's 32 to top 16 scoring... not tandem. the only arguement we have is towards your judging during tandem. i've been to your driver's meetings due to being media a few times so i know exactly how that works. how good was the judges view of the 2nd clipping point because there def was a run where tanner was following, lead car slowed down too much and tanner completely straightened out and HE GOT THE ADVANTAGE!!!.. next year judging stand needs to be in the middle of track.

as for JR's issue. rules are rules. from a spectator's point of view. i want to see an official clock running on the jumbo screen. i wanna see a camera man at the starting grid just like d1 to cover that stuff. especially if the starting grid is out of view from the grandstands.

as for one more times. i know some drivers like it. some don't. i like the way someone pointed out like an endurance race. if you went up to any other racing series and tried to explain that you race in a series that claims they have the best drifters/ most professional series in the whole wide world with major team and manufacture backed vehicles you cant drive your car for more than 4 laps (one run and a one more time) in one session... i think they would laugh in your face. except drag racing. that is just another notch on D1's belt to add to excitement.

i know you guys want the best for this sport.

englishtown was awesome. you have to understand that when people on east coast have generally 1 event a year they can afford to get to, they have high expectations. i spent $200 to get there and back with gas, entrance fee and food. its not like westcoast where people can just wait till the closest one gets to em.

need an event in florida, atlanta and englishtown or wall.

[Calsonic]

Thank you FD for the responses. This info should've been posted on the FD official website. The website is pretty much the 411 for the fans, yet the website for the Round 3 event didn't have much info, incorrect time schedule, and confusion on tickets & reserved seating. Better communication to the fans is all I ask.

This post is not meant to be negative, it's only a suggestion. Thanks for all that you do for us. I can't wait for the next FD event!

[BRUTAL KONG]

Reserved Seating:

For this event, there were standing room only tickets and bleacher tickets. Yes, the whole “you can save your spot, walk around” part should have of been removed. But do you not feel that having a seat was better than not having a seat? Do you even know how much it is to put of those temporary grandstands? If we don’t have them and make everyone stand, we get s*** and if we do and pass a bit of the cost to the consumer and we ate a bunch of the cost, we get s***. All part of the game but again give us ideas of how to improve versus just being negative.

Either way, you guys promoted false advertising for the reserve seating even during at the ticket booth of the day of the race. I understand your reason about the temp. grandstands but people were pissed they paid for a reserve seating ticket before the day of the race and on race day that the word "reserve" means shiot. I too, wasted +$100 to go down to E-Town just for FD. I will still support you guys cause I, too am a avid fan of this sport but this past Sat disappointed me.