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| Ross Petty’s SR20DET packs around 540 hp from a 2.4 liter stroker with a wide fat powerband. It is also reliable and can hold up to the pounding delivered by drifting. |
Our own Mike Kojima is Team Falken’s Dai Yoshihara’s chassis engineer and he was on hand to take me through the setup of his car Saturday morning, including the four-legged “doggy-style” roll cage. Mike likes to inform people that it was designed this way to help the car stay rigid and turn in more aggressively around the corners but I think it was actually added to because they wouldn’t pass Dai’s S13 in tech otherwise. I think the 4 legged cage is either some sort of insiders joke or deception to hide the magic that is really going on back there.
The S13 was built in just two weeks at the hands of Scott Dodgion from SPD Metalworks.
Check out the in-depth article on the build here: and here:
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| Dai’s S13 has a 409 CID Chevy LS2 engine that puts out “only” 509 hp. This is one of the lowest powered cars out of the top seeded drivers. The car’s secret is its highly developed chassis. |
Scott and Mike both agree the car has close to the ideal setup at all times with various setup configurations figured out during testing days. The car only needs a few minor adjustments during the events, such as to tire pressures, shock damping and sway bars to dial it in for changes in the track due to temperature, who the opponent is or even rain. Some teams will make major adjustments after each run.
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| Scott Dodgion and Mike Kojima at work on the S13. |
What an exciting event! It came down to the Top 4 rounds. With the capacity crowd on their feet, Darren “D-Mac” Mcnamara crashed into the wall in a One More Time run against Dai Yoshihara. Amazingly, the ASD crew was able to put D-Mac’s car back together including major suspension component replacements both front and rear in less than the allowed 5 minutes and he came back to duel Tanner Foust for third place. They crashed into each other in their last run but Foust held on for third in his Rockstar Energy Drink Scion tC. Dai and Vaughn Gitten Jr. battled for the final two spots. Dai’s tail was only about 2-4 inches off the wall at every run and he ended up placing first for the 2nd straight event in his Discount Tire / Falken Tires Nissan S13. Vaughn Gittin, Jr. in the Monster Energy / Falken Tires Ford Mustang visited the podium for this third time this year and continues to lead the Pro Championship. The final results can be found here:
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| KW Suspensions Chris Marion changes a tire. |
Video of the final run, it is exciting!
Results for the 2010 season so far:
Round 1 at the Streets of Long Beach:
1) Vaughn Gittin
2) Rhys Millen
3) Tanner Foust
Round 2 at Road Atlanta:
1) Daijiro Yoshihara
2) Vaughn Gittin
3) Chris Forsberg
Round 3 at Wall Speedway (NJ):
1) Daijiro Yoshihara
2) Vaughn Gittin
3) Tanner Foust
Mark your calendars: Round 4, “Throwdown,” will be held July 9th and 10th at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Washington. Tickets are available online. More info is available on the Formula Drift website at: www.formuladrift.com.
If you want to look at the rest of my photos click here!
What I Do
By Mike Kojima
A lot of you that visit probably know that I work for Team Falken. Probably just as many of you wonder what I do so Sarah wanted me to take a few paragraphs to describe just that.
First off, being part of a pro motorsports team on the road isn’t fun or glamorous. It is pretty darned hard work. You have to really like this stuff to be able to work at a job with no hours except long. The Formula D family makes it better. The whole group is sort of like a traveling circus and most of us are friends with each other which makes life on the road more bearable. You have guys from the “Works” teams that are well funded to the privateers scraping and giving it there all just to be out there around the country. Although these guys typically get eliminated or don’t qualify you have to give them complements for there heart and passion. They help make the show better.
I am the chassis engineer for Dai Yoshihara, who I consider to be one of the best drift drivers in the world. The entire Falken team consists of some of the world’s best. Vaughn Gittin Jr, Darren McNamara, Tyler McQuarrie and Justin Pawlak. All of these guys are my heroes and are simply amazing drivers.
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| Scott Dodgion is Dai’s crew chief and builder of the car. As you can see we end up changing a lot of tires in drifting. We go through about 10-15 sets of rear tires per event. At The Wall this was more like 25 sets due to the tracks highly abrasive surface. |
Of course my primary job is set up. I am really busy in the pre-season, especially with a new car. Scott Dodgion of SPD Metalworks is Dai’s crew chief and master fabricator who builds his cars and I work with him to figure out what we think the baseline spring, shock and alignment settings will be and where the suspensions pickups will have to be moved to optimize the suspension geometry while still staying with the rules.
We usually have a few private test days leading up to the start of the Formula D season in Long Beach. Unfortunately this year it rained on our test days so we have an awesome rain set up but we didn’t get to really figure the car our. I blame this for our mediocre performance at Long Beach. I hope it rains in Seattle. We did find the cars sweet spot in testing before Road Atlanta.
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| Here J-Rod interviews me for the TV coverage. If you want to see it check it out here! |
