The typical DSTROYR gear comes in black or a slighter darker black but to match the obnoxious look of Odi’s car the guys at DSTROYR went all out for this one. A great blue color is the background for Odi Bakchis insane wrapped S14 sliding down your shirt. We are sure you can find this shirt floating around FD Las Vegas/Irwindale later this year but if you have no patience like most of the world you can pick it up online at the DSTROYR storefront.
Buy It Now: http://www.dstroyr.com/store.html
It seems like this is the year to move your drift cars on the market. This one being sold by Taka Aono is the cheapest of the lot we have seen. This 1986 GTSR5 is a widebody with a seam welded chassis and aligned the same as his competition car when he was running N/A. All of this for sale in the local Los Angeles area for a cool $3,300. A great starter drift car owned by a Formula Drift legend at this price is a steal.
Check Out the For Sale Thread: http://forums.club4ag.com/zeropost?cmd=tshow&id=94785
The Gawker Network website Jalopnik published an article today written by The Daly Planet about “How NBC and Comcast are killing IndyCar.” The article spans out to make some valid points but glazes over some important facts. The reason people aren’t watching IRL spans far beyond the television network.
Everyone knows (or you should realize) that VERSUS is being used by NBC to do battle with ABC/ESPN. Being involved in a huge multi billion dollar pissing content can only help the likes of Formula Drift. Before I get too involved in this story let’s visit a topic that happened back on June 22nd, 2011. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts announced a new name or rebranding is going to happen with VERSUS. Rumors have been spreading in media circles something like “NBC Sports” will be the new name for the channel. If you notice the VERSUS website already redirects to NBC Sports micro site on MSNBC (source).
The branding of NBC within the sports channel network should make huge waves inside the community of supporters, teams, and advertisers of Formula Drift. The channel gets 80,000,000+ homes currently and slapping the words NBC in front of the channel is a statement that could help it grow to 100 million+ quickly and get sponsors taking a second look at team proposals.
Indy has one marketable driver that is a household name in Danica Patrick. She is also rumored to be heading over to NASCAR full time in 2012 leaving Randy Bernard and the Indy team in a huge pickle. They are looking for all kinds of gimmicks to ramp up the end of season. I don’t see how they can blame the television network on poor ratings when the series hasn’t been the buzz of anything in a long long time.
All it takes is a quick look over to sports like the NHL who love the NBC deal they struck and have received record ratings in the last season. The networks are going to do battle for sports supremacy over the next few years and frankly ESPN is chalked full of American football and baseball. After watching the MLS Game of the Week on ESPN we were sitting in a living room among friends and the television was left on.
Next thing I knew they were making predictions about college football rival matches that were ages away. Other than a rare soccer match (most of it is on FOX Soccer) I never tune into ESPN like I did back in the day. It lacks sports variety and actual sporting events. Most of the time they are just talking about these sports and not showing them.
The only other real option is SPEED channel but they have a one track mind for NASCAR that is beyond healthy. Recently they opted to not show part of a Formula 1 weekend to air something worthless like a RE-AIR of a Nationwide NASCAR practice. How they determined anyone would watch that instead of live Formula 1 racing is beyond me? So let’s not let IndyCar’s poor choices and $37,000,000 operating deficit over the last two seasons cloud the reality of why they have bad ratings.
So let’s not sound any false alarms as we get geared up for Formula Drift Seattle. The television network is going to be under a new name that can only do good for our sport and the sports television wars is a winner for all programming involved. NBC has rights to the Olympics for a good time period after winning a huge bid over rivals such as EPSN as well. The show can use some improvements and I think we all realize that but that is another post for another day.
Former Formula Drift driver Jodin Lejeune of Drift Emporium has been arrested by the Gwinnett County police force back on 6/17. According to the Gwinnett County office online docket he was charged with possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute. He was released on $5,700 bail according to the police docket. For those of you who don’t remember Jodin owned and managed the Drift Emporium team for several seasons. He also personally drove the blue V8 powered Infiniti G35 pictured below.
Before the 2011 season started they put up the transport rig and some of the cars (including the blue G35) up for sale on eBay. The orange G35 that was driven by Forrest Wang a few times got painted hunter green this year and was driven by Jodin Lejeune at Formula Drift Round 3 PBIR during the Pro Am competition. No word or update on if he will be back in the car soon but some of the other Drift Emporium cars we have been told are out in California currently possibly ready for some west coast drift action?
Adams Motorsports Park is the longest running weekly drift event in America and it goes down every Thursday night in Riverside, California. Many Formula Drift pros are in attendance on any given weekday and some even do shake down runs in their pro rides. We have heard that tonight John Russakoff will be in attendance at the track. It should be a good one so head on down if your local or make the drive out to Riverside! It is $5.00 to get in as a spectator and $20/hour to compete drifting all night at Adams.
Adams Motorsports Park
5292 24th st
Riverside, CA 92501
Formula Drift driver Dennis Mertzanis qualified 33rd at PBIR which has to be the worst qualifying spot you can score. It’s one slice away form the big show but Dennis has been constantly growing since his rookie season in 2010 and now carries a title sponsorship with Konig Wheels. The 33rd place was a tough blow but Dennis is focusing and getting ready for Wall Speedway this weekend. Check out his blog over on his Wrecked Magazine home.
Read his Blog: http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/dennis/2011/06/13/round-3-west-palm-beach-stayin-outta-of-florida/
In case your just in love with New Jersey and have no plans on leaving after Wall Speedway or you happen to live in the nice part of New Jersey with everyone else…. we have the event for you! One week after Formula Drift this weekend brings East Coast Bash presented by Clubloose. We know some non local Formula D stars have been building/sourcing missile cars to come out and join the fun at ECB this year. It’s going to be an amazing one over at Englishtown.
Source: EAST COAST BASH – June 25-26, 2011
Walker Wilkerson grabbed the attention of everyone at PBIR over the weekend with his insane backwards entry down the main straight of the new Formula Drift track. We captured in total 8 images of his “mantry” and proof he held on and continued to drive out of it. These are quite the snapshots from the weekend which you can finish watching by following the link below.
Wrecked Magazine blogger Dennis Mertzanis hopped on his Drivers Lounge and talked up his events at XDC Orlando at CFRC. Dennis is a privateer who is completing the Formula Drift series in 2011 and swung into the Xtreme Drift Circuit in Orlando before Formula Drift Round 3 kicked off. Sit back and enjoy his adventure.
Source: http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/dennis/2011/05/24/xdc-orlando-uggg/
The Saab 9-2X is a unique breed of machine produced from the years of 2005-2006 by the European automaker. The car is actually powered by a turbocharged Subaru engine and a four wheel drive system. Full confession is that I had no idea about any of this until I found the car on Wikipedia earlier this morning doing research for this post.
Dan Jenkins caught these images of the Saab 9-2x at the Clubloose Summer Moves event that happened recently. Back in February we did a local grassroots profile on northwest driver Jason Cancio with his Subaru WRX STI and people loved it. So when I caught this Saab sliding around Englishtown I just had to make a little profile of it sliding.
