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First of all, hi everyone! I was asked to put up a blog about my experiences at XDC, and I'm more than happy to do so.
I am lucky enough to be competing in the entire XDC series this year. Thanks to companies like NEXEN TIRES, Stance Suspension, Non Stop Tuning, Spec Clutches, D-Max, and Fabricated Motorsports for making this possible.
Some of you might remember me from past series such as Nopi and D1GP USA. I basically love running series such as these, where I can play with talented drivers and have a great time. These series just fit drivers like myself who are very limited in their budgets, and just want to go have fun and drive with awesome people. I had great success in the Nopi series, winning lots of money and getting good exposure, then got a serious beat down by the D1 Japan drivers in the D1GP USA series. But the opportunity to play around with those guys was amazing!
So fast forward to this season! My team mates and myself headed out with our race rig to Cali for what should be the start of an awesome year.
We get into town and head straight over to the Nexen distribution center and meet up with a bunch of really nice guys, who get us setup for the XDC event with some 275/35/18 N3000s, which are going to be our drift staple this year. These tires last so much longer than anything else we have ever drifted on we can get away with traveling with less gear, and taking less wheels too! I love walking through tire warehouses too, literally MILLIONS of tires lined up perfectly in amazing rows!!!! Then we headed over to In and Out burger since we don't have those in Texas. I like the fries. Oh yeah, we drove straight through from Texas and it is about a 26 hour drive. Always makes us super tired for the rest of the trip lol.
Next, we move on to practice day. We get to the track and start unpacking. I have never been to Irwindale before so I go take a look around. Hmmm, smaller than I thought it was going to be. Shouldn't be an issue. We have a bunch of work to do to my car though, as it literally just came out of paint and we were putting it back together in the parking lot, since I hadn't seen my car in months and it was in a different city. I had a list of stuff to do.
1. Put body panels on car, drill holes, ziptie stuff, put it together.
2. Find sway bar stuff. My front and rear bars were both unhooked because of a fiasco.
3. Change out an axleshaft that was broken.
4. Figure out why my brake lights aren't working.
5. Mount tires and get a bunch of other crap done.
Chelsea ( one of my team mates ) goes out and does some media runs and gets a magazine shoot while I'm working on my car.
Practice starts. I'm still working on my car and miss some of it. I'm not worried though, Ovals are pretty easy. I get my car working and go out for my first practice lap. First clutch kick out I break another axle, almost puts me into the wall on entry. DOH! This isn't an issue I normally have at all. Get towed off track and go work on the axle. I miss practice and get to do a couple laps of tandem practice, but I still don't have sway bar endlinks, and I think at this point I start having something short out in my car. With about 2-3 practice laps I go into qualifying, and qualify somewhere in the top 16, I don't remember where. This is just to get into main day though, not final top 16. We go home for the night.
The next day Quoc brings me some free stock swaybar endlink stuff, thanks Quac!!! He is an awesome guy, always super nice! Now I have a shot putting my swaybar stuff back on my car, because without it, my car was super wonky. Dangerous wonky on an oval, since my suspension wasn't dialed in for it, and I had no time to do so.
So here we go, main day. Everything should be cool. Wait, electrical short. OMG, I'm bad at those lol. I buy some packs of fuses and start looking for the problem but it is intermittent. I can't get through a whole lap without the damn thing dying, but I get to practice a few laps. When the car doesn't cut out, everything is fine and should be good to go, but when it does cut out, I just roll off track, or the car goes into limp mode. During qualifying my car just cuts off and I coast back to the pits, needing a little bit of pushing to make it all the way off track. I go fiddle with the car and finally find the wire that is grounding out, but it is too late. It sucks too, because there was some really great tandem I would have liked to be a part of, but instead I looked retarded driving a broken car around. I hate doing that. But when you drive upwards of 50 days a year, your car is going to break. Last year alone I went through over 200 tires and a ridiculous amount of making my friends fix my car. Hopefully I can get it dialed in and reliable early this season, much like my 2008 season.
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