Continuing on with The Chronicles Of Rick, we found ourselves at Castrol Raceway (no I’m not calling it Rad Torque) for the first round of the Spec-D Grassroots Series. As the name suggests, this is an entry level competition that allows amateurs to not only compete against each other, but also against the Spec-D pros. While the Pro Series is our main focus for the season, Rick also wanted to compete in the Grassroots series as well (which he actually won last year). This would allow the team as a whole to get more seat time, testing, and practice, all of which will certainly add up to valuable experience going into competition. That being said, the overall atmosphere (at least for us) is a bit more relaxed than an actual competition will be. As drifting is such a tight knit community, everyone was out having fun and just hanging out in the pits. On the track however, things were a total 180and the LS bois basically destroyed everyone except for the one guy in his SR20 S13 hatch. Someone remind me to bring ear plugs next time…

Without going into too much detail and revealing some our strategies, I want to take this opportunity to dive into one of the aspects that we as a team are looking into prior to the start of the Pro Drift Series: tires. Drifting destroys tires (obviously), and tire wear is something that we have to monitor closely in between runs. At the Stratotech Park Season Opener, Rick was driving on some used tires from last year which were good enough for both shaking down the car as well as for practice. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he completely destroyed all three pairs that he brought out with him that weekend. One thing that did surprise me however, was how one pair of tires still had an okay amount of life left before heading out to the next session. About 15 minutes later though and they were basically the same as Red Foreman’s head. Wow. “Okay, so this might actually be an issue if we don’t have enough tires” I thought to myself. The night at Castrol however proved to be quite different, as Rick didn’t even go through ONE pair of tires. The culprit for this drastic discrepancy we concluded would be the track surface itself (and of course the blazing heat we had at Stratotech). Stratotech is not only older than the road course at Castrol, but was also left unattended for quite some time after it got sold about a decade ago. This means that the track surface is much harsher than that of Castrol, thus chews through tires a lot faster than the Cookie Monster goes through cookies. Definitely something for us to keep in mind in the near future.

Rick ended up winning his first tandem battle, but sadly would end up spinning on his chase run in the quarter finals. Not the result we were looking for, but that’s okay as spinning is how learn exactly where the limit is (the same applies to all your grip drivers out there!). In any case, the first round of the Pro Drift Series is coming up soon (LS bois please be gentle on us), but before then, Rick’s car will be on display for everyone to marvel at in the RA Motorsports Booth at the Midnight Rev Up show coming up on June 3rd. See you all then!

-brandon.