The 2010 Formula D season is coming to a close, with the penultimate event held September 10-11 at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, CA. It's the heart of wine country-sleepy, quiet, laid back, but for these lords of lateral labor, it was anything but. The battle for First is still very much alive, and who will stand on those three podium steps is anyone's guess.
Chris Forsberg
It's not looking like last year's champ will be repeating this year. But that's not going to stop Chris Forsberg from fighting tooth and nail for every single match-up. And that's why everybody loves him-he's passionate to the end. That, and the fact that he's a super cool dude; a real class act. He's the nicest guy who'll ever kick your ass drifting.
Sonoma was a short weekend in comparison to all our other events, being that it is just a short drive up to San Fran, and Thursday practice wasn't available at this track like at the others. That being said, I'm glad we debuted our new Nissan Motorsports engine at the previous round in Vegas because we would not have had the time to make adjustments with the few runs we had on Friday before Qualifying.
Our first lap of Qualifying is always pretty straightforward-push hard, get a clean run in, and go nuts on the second lap. However, our first pass put us in Second place, and held all the way through the second round! I still pushed hard on the second run, trying for a backwards entry, but went slightly off course and threw off the run, along with our hopes for claiming the top qualifying spot.
But landing in the second spot put us in a great position for tandem, because we would pretty much be leading first in all our runs. Our first match-up was with Matt Field, who is a rookie to Formula Drift this year. He was driving the course very well for his first time out, but made a few mistakes on his lead run, which gave us the win to move onto Top 16. Our next pairing was against my Drift Alliance brother Joon Maeng. His new ride with Bergenholtz Racing has proven helpful to his recent success. He has adapted to the new car rather well and has been much higher in the rankings since he parked his Nissan S13. Our first run was smooth and simple. I lead and stuck to my line. I knew Joon's driving style was similar to mine, so on the chase run I pushed to drive close and not let his car get away from ours. We stuck together through the course and took the win. Our third match-up was with James Deane. He was driving very well and had a high entry speed. We both ran a good lead run and close chase runs, so the judges ruled a One More Time. Our next lead run was solid and James stayed close behind, so to get an advantage, I would have to get even closer. On my chase run, I entered into the first corner with only a few feet between our cars. I was able to slowly pull in closer to his car through the braking zone, and with only inches between our fenders, we both jumped to the throttle and cleared the rest of the course. The judges gave me the win! We were now in the Final Four.