The great thing about LS Fest West is that it welcomes drivers from all levels of competition. During the drift demo portion, FD drivers Aurimas “Odi” Backchis and Matt Field brought out their cars to put on an exciting show for the spectators.
MotoIQ brought out their ProAm LS3 350z to the competition for the second year in a row (piloted by yours truly). The Z had recently gotten tuned and made an extra 25 hp, so this was the first time the car was driven with the upgrades. Stay tuned for an upcoming article about how we were able to squeeze out more power.
Rather than giving you an exact play-by-play of each battle that transpired during the Top 16 competition, we thought it would be interesting to give our readers the perspective of the competitor who took home the win and $1,500 cash from Holley Performance.
The winner of this event makes for an impressive story. 14-year-old Branden Sorensen of Sorensen Motorsports is a Las Vegas native who fought his way to the top of the podium.
From the words of Branden –
Holley LS Fest was one of our first big drift events so we repainted the cars to make them look good for all of the fans and spectators. We decided not to change the set-up on the car from previous events because the car was doing great with similar track conditions.
During practice I lost 4th gear in my transmission and I had to make small adjustments to my driving going into qualifying, but my car was feeling excellent. My plan for qualifying was to throw down a very dominant lead run and to qualify high. I was able to qualify 4th and that put me up against Rathyna Gomer for the top 16 battle. Going into the competition, my plan was to just throw down my qualifying run as the lead run and try to focus on proximity for my follow runs.
My top 16 battle was with Rathyna Gomer and I was able to throw down a very good lead run and hit all of the clipping points. During my follow run I was able to maintain very good proximity and was able to advance to top 8.
During my top 8 battle with Nick Gross I was able to throw down an almost perfect lead run, I was also able to keep up and put pressure on Nick Gross in my follow run and was able to maintain a very good line and lots of angle.
