Tengku Djan

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for the delay. We we’re very busy during the weekend. 2 events back to back. Here’s a summary of what went on during the weekend.

D1GP USA FINAL ROUND: Saturday’s event was pretty straight forward. As mentioned we pre-qualified and were part of the 30 cars for D1GP USA final round. In a D1 event, there is no difference between Turbo & NA cars. All participants must drift according to the criteria set by the judges. If you made the cut, you are one of the best in the world. One of the toughest for NA cars was the bank. All NA cars HAD to drift at the ENTRY to the bank. The rest as usual, 30cm from the inner and outer clipping points. Now this is DRIFT. The outer clipping point was the WALL. Not tire barriers, or water barriers, but a CONCRETE WALL. Definitely adds to the excitement for the spectators.

We had the opening ceremony, introducing the judges and the drivers. Qualifying was tough. real tough. I gave it my best and my highest score was 98.8

16th position score was 99.85. Although i had a really good 3rd run, it wasn’t enough the qualify. Oh well, main event for us is tomorrow anyway. So time to do some vehicle maintenance. We’ve been experiencing some clutch issues since yesterday. So we took this opportunity to change the clutch, main pump and slave pump. Thanks to Taka for selling us his spare clutch!

D1GP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 2007: So, here we are at the main event. This is why we are here! “The World Championship Of Drifting”. A total of 12 countries took part. Holland & Mexico couldn’t take part due to custom issues. So their positions were replaced by 2 other Japanese drivers.

I went out for morning practice and realized my diff was playing up. After 2 runs it was fine again. We decided to carry on and i practiced tandem with the other drivers. It’s an opportunity of a life time to drift with the best in the world. Millen, Kuma, Nomura etc. I was amazed with the competitiveness of our car. Even JR wanted to tandem with me. Though I didn’t give him that opportunity. The car was quick exiting of the bank into the main corner. So I had to make sure i capitalize on this advantage i have.

D1 had a new format for the World Championship. A total of 26 players without qualifying to determine our tandem positions.

First up was me against Quoc Ly representing Vietnam. It was an easy run. He put the car in to the wall on our first run and couldn’t continue. Next up was Rhys Millen. He fell into mechanical problems which gave me a walk over. Here i am in the Best 8.

Next up Kumakubo. I knew i had a chance and was going to make sure i gave him a run for his money.

I made sure i didn’t lose out on the run to the bank. Controlled the amount of angle i had to make sure i carried enough speed to close up on the exit. We were side by side on the exit of the bank. I had to readjust my line going into the main corner or else we would have touched fenders and maintained that gap till the last corner. It was a good run for me giving me a 7:3 advantage. Yeah! now to keep it together in the 2nd run. BUT! as i switched into the main corner, the car wouldn’t stay in drift! I had it on full throttle in 2nd coming into to main corner but the car started to push into understeer. I had to pull the handbrake to initiate the drift again which allowed Kuma to overtake me. That was the end of it! It’s not normal though. It felt like when we had diff issues last year.

I discussed this with Taka and the banking adds alot of stress especially on the diff. It can only last 3 events max due to the load & must be rebuilt after to maintain reliability. We learn something new every year.

I’m very happy with our result this year. We made it to Best 8 with 26 competitors and losing out to D1GP 2006 Champion, Kumakubo. I believe our final position is 5th again. Mana-P was impressed with my performance throughout the weekend and has requested our team to be present in the 2008 World Championships. We proved our performance last year wasn’t a fluke by producing spectacular tandem battles and earned a spot among the best in the world.

This jet lag is really getting to us. I was up till 230am. managed to get about 3 hours worth of sleep. Seng had it worst. He was up since 3am! His eyes were rolling back during dinner! hahahahah

Anyway, we got there @ 7am to setup the pits and for tech inspection. Car passed with flying colours.

I went out for the first practice session only to realize the banking is completely different to last year! It’s not a symmetrical oval. The main bank is wider, longer & faster with less gradient, and the inner course radius is tighter & track width narrower. That really threw me off. I went out without NOS for the first 2 practice sessions and i felt like a real beginner. Couldn’t drift the bank even if i started midway & the car was pushing to understeer on the exit of the bank.

The crew came back later in the day with the NOS bottles all charged up. We rigged it up into the car and straight to practice. The character of the car totally change. With enough power to drift the bank. You really need horsepower to run at Irwindale. No doubt about that.

I was clocking about 125kmh@ the speed trap. Big improvement. We’re up with the big boys now. Average speed was about 128kmh. Fastest was clocked by the HANKOOK Porsche @ 139kmh.

I didn’t have to do D1 Driver Search as i acquired my license during World Series ’06. But I still had to do pre-qualifying for Saturday’s D1GP USA Finale. Only 19 cars will be selected out of 50+ entries. I qualified with 98points in 19th position. hahahaha! Talk about scraping the barrel!

Anyway, time to get some rest for our big day tomorrow. D1GP USA FINAL ROUND. yeah!

Since T. Djan is too busy to post due to obvious reasons, We have decided to put up the Tandem Chart. There is no qualifying this year. Everyone goes straight to Tandem Battles. Best of 26. Updates soon to come.

Regards,

Admin

Today is Thanks Giving. EVERYTHING IS CLOSED. Literally everything. Even Chilli’s (the restaurant) is closed! Thank god i’m still jet lagged and stayed in bed till about 2pm.

After lunch, we went to AUTOLINK garage just to make sure we know where it is. We have to go there first thing tomorrow morning to fill up our NOS bottles.

We couldn’t do much today except drive around looking for places to eat. The only place opened for dinner was this chinese restaurant. Most fast food joint closed by 4pm today.

After dinner we headed down to IRWINDALE SPEEDWAY to checkout NASCAR midget racing. The event , “Turkey Night Grand Prix”, USAC Midget Racing. http://www.irwindalespeedway.com/story.asp

The grandstands were packed! and the atmosphere was awesome. The smell of rubber & race fuel stinging your eyes, thousands of people cheering on the drivers. Now this is what i call racing. Back home all we get is 20 miserable spectators on the grandstands for our Malaysian Super Series! hahahahahaha.

Checkout this Hot Rod on display!

And Race Simulators!

It was almost 11pm and based on our schedule, we should be able to register ourselves for the weekend. But the midget race was delayed and registration was postponed till tomorrow morning 7am. So, back to the hotel. Long day for the team tomorrow.

I check in at central this morning & took the train with Shan to KLIA to meet up with the rest of the crew. We arrived ar half past 8 only to be greeted by Azman, Najib, Haiding Dong (hahahahaha) and Azman’s sis (I always forget her name! sorry!). Thanks! you really made my day

We had breakfast at Mc D’s in preparation for the loooong flight. Total of 18hours! 4 hours flight to Taipei, transit another 4 hours and then 10hrs direct to LAX.

Here are some pics of the team BEFORE the 10hr flight. I wasn’t in the mood to take pics after touch down

Transit @ Taipei Airport

Now the climax. US CUSTOMS.

Last year we all wore team shirts and the customs officer knew about the D1 Grand Prix event and let us all go hassle free. So we decided to do the same again.

BUT, this year none of them knew what the hell was D1 and drifting! We had some drama with Seng’s custom officer but he let us off finally. Phew! Next year we’ll just walk in plain clothed

We then got our rental car, Chevy Blazer, Mid size SUV, which is a heap of crap. It’ll do the job though. We’ll need it to lug around tires and tools to and fro the pits and in the circuit.

Anyway, today is rest day for us. The action starts tomorrow. We need to go down to Motul USA to get our lubricants, find out where we can get our NOS refills etc etc. Tomorrow night@ 11pm is registration and unloading of the race car.

I’m sorry about the short downtime due to miss configuration on the web server and still uploading some pictures when I was on the plane at the moment. Stay tuned!