On July 16th, Club Loose hosted Round 2 of Hold the Line Formula D ProAm. There was also drifting from B & C group guys going on at the same time. The competition was held on the Back course, one of the best parts of Englishtown’s road course. It is extremely technical and gets pretty fast between turns 1 & 2 as you come up a hill and transition Blindly at the peak into a left hand sweeper.
They took all of us drivers for a walk through the entire course and explained exactly what they wanted us to do and where they wanted the cars at on the course.
There was a ton of Practice since we had the back course most of the day. I was making a bunch of mistakes during practice but i was able to get it down before qualifying.
Here I over shot it and came into the sweeper way to hot and dropped my right rear wheel of the track where the is a deep trench getting me on three wheels. Made for a sweet picture. Good timing Ray!
I put on a fresh set of Kenda Kaiser Tires so i could really give it my best. By the time I got back to grid after the tire change, I was nearly last in line. That gave me an opportunity to watch and see how everyone else was doing. They broke qualifying down into 2 groups , 12 in the 1st group and the rest of the drivers in the 2nd group. I would say 9-10 of the drivers in the 1st group did pretty well which pumped me up.
During Practice, i was having most difficulty with pushing to the outside coming out of the first turn as I was coming up the hill so I could extend to the outside after the transition while gaining speed and angle heading into the left sweeper. I was able to pull it off on my 1st qualifying run.
Mike Griffith took those sick shots for OMGDRIFT
Here is raw footage from my 1st qualifying run
Having a good 1st qualifying run gave me the ability to really go all out and try for the top Qualifying position on my 2nd run. I was pumped and did just that.
Here is raw footage from my 2nd Qualifying Run
I managed to score a 92, 10 points above the #2 Qualifier Tanner Munson, and qualified 1st place! man was that an awesome feeling! Here are the qualifying results.
In my top 16 Battle I went up against Oneydo Diaz. He is a Club Loose regular just recently moving up in to A Class this season! I believe this was his first competition, and he did awesome considering!
Here is raw footage of My lead run
I still have alot to learn about tandem. I should have paced myself and left more of a gap on him since he was slower then I was. I ended up correcting a few times, but overall my runs were stronger and I moved on to the Great 8.
In the Great 8 I had to go against Canadian & DMCC Driver Brad Carlton. From what I hear Brad has an aggressive driving style and is known to clip cars in tandem. He is definitly a skilled driver, but it seemed he tried to close in on me a bit to early and it caused him to spin at the 1st turn while following me. I didn’t realize it until after i was coming out of the sweeper and i was driving full force. Here is raw footage from My Lead run.
My Follow run i think i did the same thing has he did but i stayed in it, poured on the angle and got on his door. I kept it safe with some space, as i only had to complete the course to move on. Here is some raw footage from my follow run.
In the Semi-Finals I had to go against good friend and driver Miro Ovcharik. He has been pretty much unstoppable this whole season. Almost every weekend he is on a podium somewhere. On My lead run I ended up spinning on the first turn. I guess I got phazed, who knows. I do know it felt exactly the same as it did last September at my first competition, Street Life Tour, when I spun in front of him. Here is raw footage of it
I knew the only way to move on I needed to really get up on him and cause him to make a mistake. He is a pretty consistent driver and I knew it wasn’t likely but i tried. Here is my follow run with Miro
Since I lost that battle, Miro was going up against Tanner for 1st place and I was going up against Rapper Dan for 3rd. Unfortunately, the battery died in my camera and Lou couldn’t shoot those runs. I believe they were the best battles of the day for me and of course, i didn’t get to watch them.
My good friend Brian Casse from Jerstystreets.tv threw together some raw that he had from the event which has some small clips of our runs.
My Cousin Lou came to the event to help me out. During Qualifying and Comp, he shot all the video for me to make posts like this one possible. He rode shotgun the rest of the day!
After the competition We went out and hit the front course.
There were a bunch of close calls like this one of me and Mats Baribeau from Canada
Here is the on-car from that run
Also had a close call with Kyle Landers
And one following Miro Ovcharik
I also had this on-car of one of my Faster / Earlier entries of the day
Towards the end of the day I had pushed it a bit to far around the bank and made some contact on my right rear, more of a bunp than a scrape which caused my front end to get sucked in a bit. It wasn’t bad enough to keep me off the track. I pulled back in the pits, pulled the front out and kept on driving!
All in all, the event was a great success!
Check out the Videos from the event
JerseyStreets
Chris Szczapala
Here are the current standings After Round 2.
The next Hold the Line Round (3) was supposed to be on August 6th at Monticello Motor CLub, but the venue is now changing. The September 11 date that was supposed to be round 4 is now round 3 and the Final Round will be announced in the upcoming weeks. This was taken from HTLDrift:
Hold the line, CHANGE OF DATES/VENUEEE
THE NEXT HTL EVENT IS THE SEPT 11th DATE!!
Englishtown 9/11 will be the 3rd round of HOLD THE LINE.
The HTL finals will be announced in the coming weeks!
October date-tentative
We are working hard to deliver more bang for your buck to wrap up the Northeast’s only Pro-Am series!
Working on a new track, and prizes for the winners!! Hold on to your ass!
———————————————————————————-
Please check out my Page on Facebook and Like it!
I appreciate the continued support!!
