As the season is rapidly progressing, the new grassroots level autocross series known as StratoCross has been steadily gaining traction, or in the case of Rick seen here, defying traction. Wait, what is Rick doing here at an autocross event?

If you’ve been following me this year, you’ll have known that both myself and RA Motorsports have teamed up together to help support local drifter Rick Selinske as he competes in the Spec-D Pro Drift Series. At the end of the second round of competition, the rear differential is Rick’s S13 decided that it didn’t want to be a differential anymore, so some maintenance and repairs were in order. As I am writing this, we are just under a week away from the final round of competition, so a shakedown was in order after a replacement rear differential was installed, as well as a brand new front bash bar made by Zombie Fab. As you’ve probably guessed from the opening photo above, Rick didn’t exactly grip drive for the night, and instead did his best at gymkhana while giving all the spectators a show that they probably weren’t expecting at a DMS Timing event. Special thanks to Dan for encouraging the sliding!

Sadly for us, the night ended a bit prematurely as the newly installed diff called it quits sooner than we would have wanted. It sucks for sure, but at least it didn’t happen during competition. That being said, yet another replacement has to be sourced and installed in a rather short timeline now, and this time with minimal/no testing prior to the final Spec-D round. It be like that sometimes.

Congratulations to all the class winners of this round of StratoCross and we’ll see you at the last round next week on August 17th!

-brandon.