BMI Racing Needs Your Support for Formula Drift R3 New Jersey

[BandwagonS13]

I want to wish you guys the best of luck. I know first hand how tuff it is to run a full series out of pocket. Drifting at the formula D level is not easy at all. I was involved/ran championship teams in drag racing and drifting is just as much work if not more.
Last year I heard that Takatori didnt have a car to drive. So loving the sport as I do and his passion to drive I offered up my car. With no major sponsors it took everything we had as a small team made up of me and friends working for free to get the car to every event. We had our fair share of problems and took longer to dial in the car than I had hoped. We spent a lot of money! A lot of late nights! We didn't do as well as I thought or know that we could have. But through all the pain I loved every minute of it. I have no regrets other than not giving Takatori a better car to drive.
My point is I think I know exactly how this team feels and I respect them for what they are doing. I wish you guys all the best of luck and hope you find a way to make it out to NJ. With out some last minute help from Embertek Brakes and Victor Reyes we would not have been able to get the car to east coast. That would have been a shame because some of our best times were on the east coast.

[Jeff Abbott]

Good luck Adam, Sarah and Brian..
I have talked with Adam and Sarah. They are legit. Brian is also a stand up dude. He really helped me out in a jam and didnt know me at all. Just help because I was trying to get to the track.
This drift bidness is disgustingly expensive. Thats why people like me, Tommy, John ect.. dont see the Eastside tracks or WA.. We do what we can because we love it. Its a great time, and people like the BMI team and Brian make you want to go back for more.

Good luck everyone. I hope to see you all as soon as I have some cash too

[chrisfb]

I support sponsors... I'm a consumer. I worked in the industry ages ago... don't know if I made a impact..

If it wasn't for people like BMI there would be no drifting, no drag racing and no motor sports at all. Period. Everyone started somewhere right? You support sponsors? If there was no drifting or racing for that matter how would you know that DBA makes "the best brakes in the world"? Or what K and N makes. You probably never would have heard of them if they didn't have a sticker on something, whether it be a 4 rotor RX8 or a golf cart. Its all about progression man. Drifting wouldn't be where it is today if people like BMI didn't have the passion they have for the sport, no sport would be where it is if there was no passion for it.

Kudos to BMI for trying to make it to Jersey to give the fans an awesome show, every one needs to hear this thing, its nuts!

[blu808]

Conrad and I first met Sarah at the SEMA show last year. She has always been a very cool person, and their passion for racing is what drives them. The Blu808 team has their back, and hopes to see them in NJ.

[Bebop]

If it wasn't for people like BMI there would be no drifting, no drag racing and no motor sports at all. Period. Everyone started somewhere right? You support sponsors? If there was no drifting or racing for that matter how would you know that DBA makes "the best brakes in the world"? Or what K and N makes. You probably never would have heard of them if they didn't have a sticker on something, whether it be a 4 rotor RX8 or a golf cart. Its all about progression man. Drifting wouldn't be where it is today if people like BMI didn't have the passion they have for the sport, no sport would be where it is if there was no passion for it.

Kudos to BMI for trying to make it to Jersey to give the fans an awesome show, every one needs to hear this thing, its nuts!

So I shouldn't support the sponsors??

LOL I'm kidding.

But looking at the bigger picture, this is just a team using the fan base as a direct sponsor for there own passion in hopes of progression. Now with that being said the old fashion idea of promoting your sponsor is out of the window obviously. Some have given up this point with the mindset of "well if I cant gather up enough sponsorship support, I'm going to have to sit this one out". Now a passionate person would probably think of a another idea....maybe a fundraiser. Throw a track event, sell some T-shirts, advertise some side work, conjure up some sort of promotional deal with remaining sponsors? Anything to stay on the track! Now in this case BMI is kinda saying "yeah, we need some support guys... does anyone have any spare ends to get us out to Jersey?" I can throw 10,20, maybe 50 bucks... but what would that buy... couple gallons of race gas and a half a tire for a team that might not qualify? I much rather see them develop the car a bit more and or figure out a way too gain more sponsorship support. I honestly wouldn't come close to frowning down upon them.

Then again as of right now they have $640 and counting... that's a good chunk of change in exchange for some decals.

But back to the companies that support drifting. Drifting is essentially racing on the cheap for sponsors. So much exposure for so little amount of support. But still at the end of the day I think we should all be more grateful of the sponsors we have. We got companies like Full Tilt Poker, Del Taco, Metro PCS, Etc. Companies that have commercials on TV on a day to day, and most likely wont even see a 1% raise in revenue by supporting drifting..... Now, why do theeey do it?

Progress and Passion.

[MonkeySlide]

Blaze, this is why people were in such a hurry to lecture you when you showed up at the tech day. You saw this and your knee-jerk reaction was to pick it apart and be negative when you really didn't have to be.

I will conceed that I do see where you are coming from...to a point. They're a new team, and as such you are iffy about them and that is fair. However, there are some inconsistancies that I think I need to point out.

might want to stay in cali and keep on developing the car

They've spent plenty of time developing the car. They aren't neophytes who don't know what they're doing. It has already been shown in Brian's test video that the car can and will run and has the potential to be competitive.

The issues that BMI had at Long Beach and Atlanta were both related to broken parts that they couldn't replace at the track. In Long Beach the fuel pump gave out. In ATL the diff mount broke. For a bigger team these two things may not have been huge issues but again BMI are priviteers running one of the most technically complex cars on the grid. Issues like that are going to hurt them a lot more than they would bigger teams. Since then BMI Racing has replaced the fuel pump and fab'd up a new diff mount that will hold solid.

We've seen many priviteer miss events because of broken parts...in fact that is probably one of the biggest differences between a priviteer team and a team like Falken. Both teams will break parts but the bigger team can afford to change them on site. Heck sometimes even the big teams can't replace things on the fly. I think we all remember the infamous "tow-strap suspension mod" that Forsberg's team pulled off last year. Just because BMI has broken parts doesn't mean that their RX-8 is incapiable of qualifying as you are kind of suggesting.

And in this situation, it almost seems unprofessional and is obviously not original.

So wait a minute, just because Taka asked for money first and you know him better...him doing the exact same thing isn't "unprofessional"?

You can't fault BMI Racing for doing this just because Taka did it before and you like him better.

I am a huge fan of Taka (he was my instructor for a day!) and I had no problem when he reached out to his fans for support. There is no reason for me to have a problem with BMI Racing doing the same thing when they are just as passionate and driven as Taka.

Taka did what he felt he had to do and BMI Racing is doing the same. Why does that make them unprofessional?

But looking at the bigger picture, this is just a team using the fan base as a direct sponsor for there own passion in hopes of progression. Now with that being said the old fashion idea of promoting your sponsor is out of the window obviously. Some have given up this point with the mindset of "well if I cant gather up enough sponsorship support, I'm going to have to sit this one out". Now a passionate person would probably think of a another idea....maybe a fundraiser. Throw a track event, sell some T-shirts, advertise some side work, conjure up some sort of promotional deal with remaining sponsors? Anything to stay on the track! Now in this case BMI is kinda saying "yeah, we need some support guys... does anyone have any spare ends to get us out to Jersey?" I can throw 10,20, maybe 50 bucks... but what would that buy... couple gallons of race gas and a half a tire for a team that might not qualify? I much rather see them develop the car a bit more and or figure out a way too gain more sponsorship support. I honestly wouldn't come close to frowning down upon them.

Blaze look at this again.. you're saying that a more passionate team will do "Anything to stay on the track" but you're knocking them for doing this?

Also you suggest things like selling T-shirts or throwing a track event. Um don't you think if they had the money to produce and sell shirts or rent out an entire track to throw an event they probably wouldn't need $4k to get to New Jersey? They have no budget!

All the "side work" they're doing right now is to live off of.

Also they aren't "just saying" anything. They aren't some lazy team kicking back just waiting for dollars from the fans to roll-in. Just because they're reaching out to their fans directly for support doesn't mean they've given up on trying to find sponsors. Also just because they are doing this doesn't mean they haven't tried to reach out to the sponsors they already have for more support. That was the FIRST thing they did.

Do you really think they wouldn't have already thought about that??

They even put together an extremely generous sponsorship one-off package and pitched that to several companies before they resorted to reaching out to their fans directly.

Also they still support all the sponsors they currently have on board they haven't stopped mentioning them nor have they removed any stickers just because their current sponsors haven't provided money on top of parts. So the idea of them promoting their sponsors has not "gone out the window" simply because of what they're doing here.

You have no idea of the lengths they've gone to try and find a sponsor to help them get through the 2010 season. They've done everything from changing their sleep schedule so they can follow-up and sometimes even cold call sponsors based in the east coast to tracking down Jay freaking Leno and putting a team proposal in his hands..not asking him for money but to tell him their story so that he may pass the word onto one of his contacts who may be interested. And all of this while raising a kid!!

Sure it would be easy for them to give up on New Jersey and just write it off because it looks very unlikely that they'd find a corporate sponsor to fund them for the event but their goal is to make it to every round no matter what it might take.

They are fully aware that their ability to pick up a sponsor next year relies on what they do this year. Even if they make it to every round and fail they can at least say they made it to every round. As they demonstrated in Atlanta..if they fail to perform they don't just pack up the truck and head home they stay behind for the fans that they have and they reach out to people to make new fans. They talk, they interact, and they share.

They are one of the few teams that understand that its the people connection that makes a sponsorship VALUABLE.

Anyway. Bottom line Blaze is this, if you'd rather not support them monetarily than thats fine no one is saying that you're wrong or a jackass just because you aren't donating any money to their cause. However I think you are being a bit unfair for knocking on them just because they're doing whatever it takes...and making assumptions on what they have or haven't done just because of what you see here.

I understand that you instinctually want to judge based off what you see but as we tried to tell you at the tech day, try to dig a little deeper before you make a call on where you stand on something.

You may have noticed that a recuring theme among the support post in this thread are from people who have spoken to them and have personally gotten a gauge of just how passionate this team is.

I would be more than happy to arrange a meeting between BMI and yourself so that you can do the same. You know how to find me bro.

[boxmod]

2 years ago i got to Leno's personal assistant and producer, but couldnt get him directly from there. It was close one though hahah.

I was ahead of my time it seems.

[BMIRacing]

I actually went to the location where is warehouse is, and personally handed over the letter and proposal. At the time he was working on his steam car. If anything it was great to meet him, he certainly is a great guy and loves his cars.

Thanks again to everyone here for there positive comments!!!

[Bebop]

Monkeyslide, your coming in at the end of the debate and mixing my words up quite a bit.

The issue with taka was totally different, you and me and everyone who has been watching in drifting grow in the USA over the past 7 or 8 years knows that. We owed Taka for all the blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice he made over the years. It was pretty acceptable, just like saying yeah thank you... and at the time he was kicking major a$$. Again think of your self as a sponsor, you want to put your name on a successful car. I really don't believe that they have no budget, but if they really really don't maybe they should just....skip a round?

Not for one second do I not think that they lack the passion for the sport. And there are are alot of other teams I feel do.

Blaze, this is why people were in such a hurry to lecture you when you showed up at the tech day. You saw this and your knee-jerk reaction was to pick it apart and be negative when you really didn't have to be.

I did not want to bring this up publicly but YOU were the only person who said anything negative about me in person to my face. You were the oooonly person who seemed a half way distraught over my presence. And I will be honest, I totally thought you were a different kid who owed me and my friends some time and money. Thats why I said, hey bro I'm sorry man at Long Beach.

On the other end Monkeyslide, unlike you who was telling me not to post and or not to publicly show my face. Saying that certain people in the industry want to harm me? Several other drift teams, while walking around long beach were just like "hey your that funny dude on drifting.com, thanks for standing your ground about ______", they gave me alot of support and told me to keep doing my thing. No one gave me a lecture or told me to stop, but you.

I dont know man, you might want to look up the definition of Forum.

[INFO]

Update;

$690 out of $4000 in 2 Days (14 Contributors)

[rmj_drift]

It's been a long time since I posted on here. I have had the pleasure of getting to know Sarah and Adam over the last year. I am the tech rep for their brake sponsor, which is not DBA.

I am glad to say they are very professional and have a deep passion for drifting.

I hope you make it to NJ guys, and keep at it.

Wilwood wishes you the best.

[BMIRacing]

It's been a long time since I posted on here. I have had the pleasure of getting to know Sarah and Adam over the last year. I am the tech rep for their brake sponsor, which is not DBA.

I am glad to say they are very professional and have a deep passion for drifting.

I hope you make it to NJ guys, and keep at it.

Wilwood wishes you the best.

Thanks for the support Miguel!!!!!

[tewtone]

There is clearly not enough passion in the above picture!
Keep up the good work!

[INFO]

Update;

$765 out of $4000 in 2 Days (15 Contributors)

[driftstream]

Update;

$765 out of $4000 in 2 Days (15 Contributors)

DriftStream2010.com will give special Shout outs for any company's / brands that help out w/ this as well.. I will include logo placement prominently placed in our stream..