Chris Forsberg
Second Place finisher for the '07 Formula D Season and the winner of Round 1 at Long Beach, Chris Forsberg is looking to increase his lead in his Orange Z33.
Atlanta has always been my favorite stop on the Formula Drift Championship. It is a beautiful circuit with a huge entry, and the spectators can see every inch of the track. But returning to where we won last year, and with a points lead from our win at Long Beach, we felt the pressure to maintain our position.
Our familiarity with the track meant we had very little trouble adjusting the car for competition. We went straight into running serious tandem practice by Friday, where I focused on closing the gap to within a foot of my lead car after the second turn, through the horseshoe, and down the hill. After a few more hours Saturday morning, I felt ready. Time to do it. Qualifying came and it was hotter than ever. Combined with the humidity, the drivers seemed to be wearing out as the day wore on. But as soon as the OK came to fire-up, the adrenaline brought us to our toes. Before I knew it, I was rolling downhill into Turn 1, pulling the handbrake, and setting adrift. After two runs, I felt confident; no spin-outs, no tire off-track...but the score wasn't as high as I'd hoped. No matter, we'd made Top 16-mission accomplished.
My first match-up in competition was to follow Takatori and his ER34 Skyline. He's a newcomer to Formula Drift and all I knew about him was that his car is fast-so I wanted to get as much speed going into Turn 1 as I could. The flag dropped and everything went as planned until my engine stalled heading into the second turn. Almost as quickly, it re-fired and started burning tire again, but the hesitation slowed my roll and I was unable to catch up to Takatori. I felt as if there was no chance we were going to win. On my lead run I did exactly what I remembered during qualifying, and was met with good fortune-Takatori straightened out hard and came up short in points, necessitating a "one more time" run.
As the flag dropped, Takatori seemed to be hesitating off the line-I knew he was just playing me, so I stayed as close as possible, even as he gunned it flipping into the first corner. Sliding around the second turn and into the horseshoe, I slammed the car into gear and started closing in real hard, bringing me door to door with the Skyline. At this point I was struggling to keep the car drifting without hitting my competitor. I lost some momentum on the big downhill link, allowing the Skyline to pull away a bit. After the run, I remember feeling unsure as to how the judges were going to score us, but it came back 7 to 4 Takatori. We were beaten. I gave my lead run all I had, but the deficit was too great; we were out.
We were disappointed, and I wished that I could have done better. But as the night went on, all the top drivers were knocked out very early on. It was very surprising, if not a bit of cold comfort that we couldn't place higher. At the end of the day, our points standing left us tied with Samuel for First, which was the first time ever that the championship lead was tied between two drivers. We look forward to regaining the lead on my home track in Englishtown, N.J.
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