FD Texas Post Event 2014 – A Little Step Forward, A Little Step Back

By Carl Rydquist Racing

Family, Fans and Friends!
The car ran really well this weekend and we scored a Top 16 finish in Pro2 that brought us back into the Top 10 of the Pro2 Standings.
In PRO we didn’t manage to get the judges fully on our side this time so we suffered a step back. The challenge was mainly to dial in our all-new spring and suspension setup. These changes were a must-do in order to advance the car into a higher level of competition. We lost some important testing time when rain came in over the Texas Motor Speedway drifting track in the practice session before Friday’s PRO qualifying, and the qualifying session itself ended up being run in dry conditions. Tough luck.

Overall, everything ran smooth for the Road Race Engineering team and the Turbo by Garrett-powered 350Z ran very strong throughout the weekend and we are really excited about the progress with the car. Photos by D. Karey.

In the Pro2 tandem elimination we had targeted advancement through the bracket and compared to the past we now have a car that can launch faster, which helps win battles. Unlucky as we would be though, in the One More Time-battle against Jeff Jones our driver Carl Rydquist suffered a stuck shifter on the 2nd to 3rd gear upshift, a rare happening but it caused enough of a delay to create an undesired gap to Jones’ Nissan 240 in the lead position.
Even though Rydquist was able to close the majority of that gap during the run, and in addition laid down a very commanding performance in his lead run, Jones was given the advancement into Top 8.

Our main positive takeaways from Texas are the team work, the great crowd and all the fans that met us to show their support and ask questions about the car and the team. Additionally the much improved launch performance and the better overall traction are important factors to improve our PRO level tandem battle performance. With more testing in the next weeks, we are determined to counter the step back in PRO with two steps forward.
The 2014 Formula Drift finals take place on Oct 10-11 at Irwindale Speedway, CA. In the meantime follow what we are up to and see more photos from the event via all major forms of social media under: @roadraceengineering @berktechnology @carlrydquistofficial Thank you for your continued support! From all of us at Road Race Engineering and Berk Technology