Nikolay Konstantinov is bringing this S13 hatch to Las Vegas this weekend for Round 6. He hasn’t been a frequent presence this season but revamped the whole car for LVMS. He was in Seattle but had some car troubles which kept him out of the event. What do you think of his new look for the rest of 2011?
You might remember Tommy Suell who drove a nitrous powered AE86 back in the day through the Pro Am and Formula D ranks while being a Las Vegas resident. Tommy had to take some time off drifting but still continues his day job as a commercial airline pilot. He posted this up showing the k-rail layout for Formula Drift Las Vegas next week. It looks identical to last years layout with a huge first turn entry (on the left of that long k-rail line) into a big huge left turn and then into a little set of S turns before coming to the finish. While rumors are flying around about a change at Irwindale Speedway it looks like LVMS is setup for its old tricks.
Fredric Aasbo unveiled this new rear wing that the Team Need for Speed Scion will be running for Las Vegas next weekend. The duckbill spoiler looks pretty good on the car and shows they are making constant improvements/upgrades to the program. Fredric has been clearly improving throughout this season and we do know his crew chief Stephan Papadakis knows a thing or two about winning a championship.
With the Las Vegas heat playing a huge factor, Round 6 in Vegas is a night event and that subsequently can make things a little harder to see. If you recall in Vegas last year, Charles Ng took to fixing this problem with his Nitto Tire Mazda RX7 which was one of the most visible cars on the grid when he wrapped V-LEDs around the windows and hatch for the event.
Charles Ng is back at it again this year with even more V-LEDs, but this time on the body of the Nitto Tire/Evasive Motorsports Mazda RX7 in what looks like something right out of Tron. We’re all excited to see how this is going to look moving at 100+mph in the Las Vegas night at Formula Drift Round 6, but in the meantime check out this snapshot we found floating around Facebook of the car testing at Sonoma Drift.
Formula Drift doesn’t have any rules on “active” aerodynamics in the sport that we could find in the rulebook currently but this “modified” roof seems rather interesting which we caught on Tyler McQuarire’s Nissan 350z on the bank. Every single practice run in the morning the car did this consistently. This is quite an interesting new modification and we wonder what everyone else thinks about this going on?
Otto Graven and the MonsterMob 350Z received a complete makeover in anticipation for Formula Drift Round 5. The White and Red livery was scrapped in favor of a full wrap of the South African flag. What really caught our attention though was the engine popping out of the hood. The turbo VQ was swapped out, and a 700whp naturally aspirated V8 LS-x was wedged into the Z’s engine bay.
The LS-x V8 under the hood looks to be outfitted with just about everything out of a Summit Racing catalog and we’re receiving reports of 700 horses to the rear wheels coming from this beast of a powerplant. How do you think Otto will do in Seattle with this new setup?
After all this talk and speculation from Joon Maeng’s hand made track layout someone was kind enough to send in the document that Formula Drift sent out to all the teams. It looks like quite an interesting track layout. The pink lines at the end of turn 1 represent the grand stands which I know is hard to read with the image shrunk to fit in the blog. Judges will have final approval of the track layout as always but this is a tentative look at what is in store for you next weekend if you attend the PBIR event.
Joon Maneg threw this “track layout” up on twitter representing the potential layout at Palm Beach International Raceway coming up in 12 days. This really doesn’t give us much to go with other than the track could be a big letter S. That was more of a hint than we had before so we’ll take it as we start to get excited for Round 3 of Formula Drift coming around the corner!
Walker Wilkerson could of sat around and thought about how well he did at Streets of Long Beach this month but instead he went to work before Road Atlanta. The car has a new graphics scheme and an engine refresh from Intec Racing. In fact, we provided a break down of his engine build from the Motormavens announcement post. I actually acquired Walker Wilkerson from free agent status in our Fantasy Drift league and dropped Toshiki Yoshioka for Road Atlanta. That is how much confidence I have in this northwestern rookie rolling into Round 2. The car has a great new look and some insane steering angle.
Engine Breakdown:
2.3L stroker S14 SR20DET built by Ray at Garage Autohero. The engine has a Brian Crower stroker crankshaft, CP pistons,Carillo rods, ACL race bearings, custom port and polished head, APEXi headgasket, BC valves/springs/retainers, BC 272 camshafts, DOC Race turbo manifold, Garrett GT3076R turbo, Tial 44mm MVR wastegate, Tial BOV, Garage Autohero custom intercooler piping, APEXi Power FC D-Jetro and APEXi AVC-R. The car is tuned by Lawrence at Intec Racing making 480WHP and 436TQ.Source: http://www.motormavens.com/
The Pontiac Solstice that Ryan Tuerck tapped into the wall during Long Beach Media Day now has a new look and driver for Road Atlanta. The car features some repeat pattern Gardella Racing logos on blue with a ton of flat white compliment the offset. This thing looks great and has white wheels to finish off the look. EOS will be running Nitto Tires and is supported by Mobil 1 and ACT clutch from what we can tell moving into the 2011 season.
