Ken Gushi
Surprising Long Beach, the Scion community, and himself with a Top 16 finish, Ken Gushi went into Round Two in his new tC with points in his pockets and looming electrical gremlins.
For Round Two of Formula Drift in Atlanta, I had more confidence in the RS-R Scion tC, especially since we finished Long Beach in the seeded group. I remember telling myself that the car should be even better since its first event; however, things could not have gone worse.
I arrived at Road Atlanta early Friday morning, expecting a full day of practice and seat time to adjust to changes we had made to the car-power had been increased by about 160 horses, and the rear tire size changed from a 245 to a 255. As practice for the seeded group began, I noticed the car was not idling and the power was a bit low. I smashed on the throttle and flipped through the gears approaching Turn 1. As soon as I pulled the side brake up to initiate a drift, I noticed the engine was dead. I had no power to continue drifting and straightened out almost immediately. The car's electrical components were checked and I was given the green once again, but the problem persisted through my second practice run. It seemed as if the turbo didn't want to listen to what the engine was saying. Later that night, we noticed that there was a problem with the ECU. JW, my faithful Toyo mechanic, pulled out a few resistors from a home theater DVD player and had them soldered in place of damaged resistors in the car's ECU. Believe it or not, that DVD player saved our weekend...or so we thought.
During practice, I managed to drift the entire course once around, but with below average performance. I reassured myself that this was the first run out and I shouldn't expect to pull 100 points from the start. But my second run confirmed my fears that this was simply not our weekend; I only cleared half the course, before losing power again. I drove back to grid and was told by my crew that it was not the ECU causing problems this time, but the clutch. We burned a multi-plate carbon-fiber clutch. I guess my left foot is too heavy. Having no time to repair the clutch, we decided to throw up the white flag.
Failing to qualify for an event, without actually attempting to, is a very depressing experience. But, I remind myself that it's only our second event with this car and that we're learning the tC's bugs. There will be changes made to the car for Englishtown, and things should be better from here on. Drifting takes quite an emotional toll when things aren't going as planned, but I look forward to going in the right direction.
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