Last week I drove out to Fontana to visit Falken Tires and get some new tires for Bertha (My G37). I put them on the car last Friday and wanted to get a couple hudnred miles on them before I posted my thoughts on the FK452 Falken Tire. I am running 245/40/19’s in the front and 255/40/19’s on the the rear which are placed on the stock OE upgraded wheels.
Upon my intial test of the tire I was shocked how little road noise they produced and the intial feel driving on the tire. The tires we removed off the car cost over double per tire if you compare MSRP (around $850 total) and the Falken’s in every aspect matched or out performed the old tires on the vehicle.
The biggest difference in the tire I found was the quality of grip and when you are getting maximum grip in a tire. My old tires I had similar models on my G37 and my G35 and got very use to a progessive loss of grip which I must admit could get annoying under spirited dirving. Basically at a normal operating temperature the tire held maximum grip which is great for the mini vans of the world but not a performance vehicle. As you started to drive in a spirited fashion the grip would slowly deteriorate as you were needing it most. You would lose grip with tire heat and it was rather frustrating but I kind of excepted it as the norm when it came to tires, especially street legal DOT approved tires mind you.
Now on the Falkens the grip at intial normal operating temperture isn’t it’s peak grip which is great because normal temp. grip is sitll amazing and it just gets better. As you the tire heats you gain grip in the tire providing when I am ready to go have some fun in any of the canyons around here of Sunset Blvd. I am gaining grip in the tire when I am wanting more of it and that has been a very exciting experiance, finding more abilities in the G37 than ever as of late as a performance oriented vehicle. I have not been able to test them in the rain yet due to the amazing sunshine blessed upon Southern California and that is something you won’t hear me complain about!
If your interested in the FK452 tire I can suggest you go make a purchase of them at Discount Tire Direct! That way you can support two companies that support Formula D and your sport of Drifting while providing yourself with a great product. The 255/40/19 on Discount Tire falls right around $199 a tire which is a great price point in the category and much cheaper than some other tires in that same category.
Check out my Flickr gallery for tons of personal content from my Redbull weekend. We even caught up with Yoshioka and went out with him in Hollywood. Sadly he was not a seeded driver over the Redbull weekend but he came as a spectator. During the event the wildfires ripped through Los Angeles and caused some amazing colors and look to the sky along with some ash all over everything.
So after all the Chris Rado drama that was started by this post http://wreckedmagazine.com/blog/2008/10/24/chris-rado-ready-to-leave-the-sinking-ship-spotted-drift-testing/ and left me and Chris as frienemies or something? I’ve been watching to many teen dramas and TMI weekly lately (sorry). We talked it out and I told him he could come on the site and say whatever he would like. Above is his 5+ minute interview where he told us he is building a Toyota RWD factory drift car that isn’t a “Scion.” This sounds pretty interesting, for those of you still bent out of shape about the Chris Rado incident, check out the interview, hear the guy out at least. I cared so much that I conducted the interview instead of Kelly. Truthfully, somewhere between the last booth and Chris Rado’s interview she quit for like 5 minutes so I suffered it out with no voice, sick, dead, and no sleep. So bare with me on that part. I cannot wait to see him in Tony Angelo’s S13 this weekend at Redbull for his first public runs at Pro Am. Don’t miss it this weekend.
So I have so much I need to talk about. SEMA 2008, the death spiral of General Motors, LA Auto Show, new content, and new features across Wrecked Magazine. We even have tons of new and excited stuff going on at Wrecked’s parent PM Lifestyle right now as well. So I haven’t forgotten about you blogites, great stories are coming soon. Right now I have to tackle some P/L charts, clean up the palace, and pay our 31-60 day late utility bill that was buried on my desk under some Fuze bottles and misc. credit card offers. And yes, that is me laying dead on Thursday at SEMA and Evan from Exedy sitting on top of me. I have no idea what is going on, who took this picture and why it’s on my blog. Ok this post is done.
Now that Issue 7 has come out I feel it is one of my favorites we have produced to date. While it is already special to everyone that has worked on Wrecked Magazine since it marks our one year anniversary issue. After some long late night talks and debates with friends and Industry people the Top 10 Wrecks in Formula D history was a very nice touch to Issue 7. Justin Pawlak’s piece was amazing and I learned a good bit about him in his interview including why his National Wave sponsorship is a passionate sponsor to him and his family. When you have a few minutes make sure you open up this issue and check it out.
In the new issue of Wrecked Magazine we launched right before SEMA we added an awesome looking advertisement from AEM. They used my photograph from Formula D Road Atlanta for the background of this ad. Our design team and the guys at AEM came together to make an awesome interactive ad. The parts on the bottom right all will take you to different sections of the AEM website which is very cool. If you haven’t read the new issue make sure you go ahead and check it out.
After this accident at HIN Nightshift Phoenix I have been in some debates on forums about the safety of media at events and I must say that some people’s replies have really blown me away. After watching this incident happen at HIN and witnessed other accidents in similar environments I think we need to grow up as a motor sports community already.
As someone who owns a company in the media business and does a ton of work around the automotive industry I just see something lacking in a major way. Don’t misunderstand me for a minute either, we have been to these same HIN demo’s and our crew has filmed them in the same fashion as the people above in this accident video. The link below is a video we made for NOS Energy Drink at Hot Import Nights: Nightshift New York. http://videos.streetfire.net/video/HIN-Nightshift-New-York_167950.htm
Now the shot you see from the Drifting demo seems very harmless because no accident had happened but that was filmed by a friend in film of ours who isn’t exactly an automotive media expert. If something were to of happened, he probably had no idea the danger he could of been in around that area. The other thing is anyone with a general credential can walk right up to that wall at HIN or into a hot zone of Formula D. Especially on the Formula D side I think they need to move into a teered system of media.
There is no reason many of the people cluttering the media pits at these events should be inside the area they are in and it just makes it generally more difficult for people who know what they are doing and have a purpose to get their job done. I have witnessed (especially this season at Formula D) some people just doing very dumb things on a hot track even though Formula D takes many great precautions for the media’s safety. Sadly Formula D cannot babysit everyone in the media section constantly observe them to assure they are not doing irrational things but they have to take the liability. Look at this perfect example from Formula D Long Beach. This kid during qualifying hopped on the k-rail and took photos for several runs until security ran and took him down.
This is the major issue I really see that is going on. When you receive a media pass at HIN, NOPI, BOTI, Formula D, Pro Am or any other organization no one delineates you from a official media partner, 5 year shooting professional, blogger, kid on Flickr, local forum or anything. This is where I think a teer system can help everyone’s headache and safety. I think bloggers and local forums/sites are a key and should never have to pay to enter an event but do they really need to be allowed inside the hot media area? Perhaps we need an approval/vouch system to get into the hot area or you have to attend an event first under a cold pass to understand more of what is going on?
Another main reason that got me motivated to right this post is the events that I witnessed at Irwindale Speedway this year. So Friday I woke up wayy early to attend a mandatory media meeting which was no problem. I was upset but swallowed my pride and rolled into this meeting even though I had to bolt out to LAX right after and then head right back to the track. Well after being told for a good amount of time the basics we left and were told we had to come to the meeting tomorrow. I show up to the next meeting on Saturday which wasn’t as early but seemed as brutal time wise. The basics were like don’t run out on the track, don’t be an idiot, stand here, don’t stand here. Well during the main event what does someone do? They jump right across the k-rail while track is hot. The course worker spots them and they did get yelled at immediately. It’s like really though? What if something happened to the guy? Was he really someone worth having the liability of being in a hot zone of the race track? Hopefully he will not be allowed to return after a brash action like that took place. With all of this being said, I want to hop off my soapbox by saying that most of these concerns I am bringing here because I hope we can get this stuff solved before a fatality is caused in the sport. That I feel would be tragic for all of us in the community. If anyone would wish to contact me I am open to help with any way to improve safety at venues from grassroots to the professional series. Just drop a line through the contact form and I will get back to you.
If you will be at Formula D Irwindale this weekend then please tag your twitter posts with #formulad (without a space). If you use this tag it will be picked up by our live feed and you can contribute to all the action we will be going over for the people who cannot make it around the world. If you cannot make it to Irwindale, you can watch the live updates from the Wrecked Magazine staff and fans by hitting the chat page.
After some re focus of Wrecked Magazine in recent months and the new 2.0 launch we have been looking for ways to help optimize our videos and our clients work that is featured up on our website. We are now optimized and searchable in Google video. Our whole library currently can be found and searchable within the Google video software which should provide huge traffic to our website. Each video even has a link straight to www.wreckedmagazine.com under the player that fans can click to drive direct traffic. It looks like Google reads our sitemap about once a day to add new photos into this program. We are very excited about this marketing implementation we did this week and will update soon on the success of this program. Thanks to the team for all the hard work we have put in to make this happen over the past few weeks.
So we picked up a new advertiser in Disc Brakes Australia for Issue 6 of Wrecked Magazine and Yoni called on me to shoot the photography for the spread featuring their sponsored driver Tony Angelo from the Drift Alliance. We actually shot the photo in the pre grid section of Evergreen Speedway right before qualifying at the Formula D Seattle event. The photo was created with my Canon 30D hand held with a Speedlite 580EX remotely fired on a stand next to me. The sky and some other elements really helped this piece come together. You can also click on the images below to open up a higher resolution version
Yoni then took that photograph along with a shot of Tony Angelo ripping it off the bank at Seattle and put some great design behind the ad to make it flow very well! If you want to see the ad in the magazine click here.
