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| I have never taken nor have I ever seen a normal looking picture of Ron Bergenholtz. I think few actually know what he really looks like. He is so energetic and animated, he never really has a normal look I guess. Ron is as blunt as a baseball bat, is opinionated as hell and is never afraid to speak his mind. He is also one smart guy. |
There was not one day that went by where I wanted to take a short cut in doing something and ended up taking the long road to do it right. On top of that I wanted every piece to look cool. If it looked like I took a short-cut I know people who saw it would talk shit. We performed most of the work at Steen Chassis in Signal Hill. Both Gary Steen and I were both obsessed in doing an excellent job because this Mazda RX8 would represent our work. Both of us agreed that we do not produce shit for work. We both went nuts. We decided to start at the rear of the car and work our way towards the front.
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| Ed Bergenholtz is the exact opposite of Ron, he is the reserved, studious, quiet computer geek that engineers the car’s Motec system, acts as spotter and is in charge of tactics. He also modded my daughter Christa’s PSP so it kicks ass. If you followed import drag racing you know the Ed has more Wally’s than people have fingers. |
The biggest problem in drifting was that we knew the car would get bashed. We knew all parts of the car are going to get hit especially the rear. With my experience with the A’PEXi Drift car, we were pulling quarter panels at almost every event. Bash upon bash. There had to be a cleaner solution to address this ongoing problem. On top of that, the judges scoring encouraged the Joons to scrape the walls. If he scraped paint, he was rewarded with higher points. I have a lot of pride for the vehicles Bergenholtz Racing produces and it hurts me to see any of them get damaged in any way.
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| Try as he might, this is the closest that Justin could get in taking a normal picture of Ron. Ron is looking pretty dirty as the team was fighting drivetrain issues all weekend at The Wall. |
We had to come up with a solution, so Gary Steen and I designed the spring/shock loaded bash bar. Instead of scraping the paint and ruining the body, we engineered a bar that would scrape the wall and help absorb the impact. After studying several drift videos I realized that in drift, the Joon would lightly scrape the wall for points. If the Joon were to push the drift further into the wall, he would run the risk of disrupting the drift. The quarter panel can only absorb so much impact before there would be no give at all. Roughly two inches at most of travel into the wall with a stock car. If the drift would go further than the two inches, the impact would force the front end to go into the wall. Especially on banks.
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| If you remember the pioneering days of import drag racing, you will remember that the Bergenholtz brothers are the ones that invented the FWD wheelie bar. Everyone went WTF until it was proven that the bar took several tenths off of the 60 foot time. Then the bars became the norm for FWD drag racers. Another Bergenholtz innovation is the shock absorbing wall slider. Sliding the back of the car along the wall is fan pleasing but risky as a little too hard into the wall usually results in the front of the car slamming into the wall resulting in a serious accident, much like what happened to Gardella Racing’s Ryan Tuerck in New Jersey this year. The Bergenholtz bar is more than a simple bumper, it actually absorbs the impact and makes wall riding a lot less risky. |
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| This gas shock absorber actually gives the bar over 5″ of travel and reduces both body damage and the risk of getting sucked into the wall at high speed. |
