Our inspection starts with the roll cage to make sure all mandatory bars are present, the welds are full circle and safe and the floor plates are adequate. Surprisingly a few cages had missing bars that are part of the main cage structure! This is a case where some very basic rulebook reading would save some grief and time!
We recommend that the FD mandated footwell intrusion protection bars be part of the cage. Next year we will be requiring them. Fortunately quite a few cars in our series are already running them.
We carefully checked under all of the cars. Although the rules clearly state that cars must have either the stock bumper or a bash bar, a few cars had nothing! Another case where some simple reading of the rules would allow for a pass.
While inspecting under cars we look for stuff that is in violation of FD rules. Since this is Pro-Am we are more likely to let these kinds of things have a waiver if they are not an unfair performance advantage. This car had an illegal tubular subframe which we did not allow.
If you have some things that may not be illegal, it helps to contact us ahead of time and we can discuss the issue and give guidance beforehand, many drivers did just that and it helped their tech go by much smoother.
Most cars passed the engine compartment part of our inspection. We require that the cooling system has a catch can and any engine breathers that are not closed circuit like OEM have a breather tank as well.
Another cause of inspection failure was poorly mounted batteries. The safe way to mount batteries is clearly stated in the rule book.
This BMW had its inner pivot points for the lower control arms relocated but they were within Formula Drifts 2″ relocation rule so it was fine.
It also had some chassis reinforcement where the subframe bolts to the unibody but since BMW’s crack here, Formula drift has an exemption for reinforcing here and so do we.
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