JDM Ups and Desoto Drift ! Double Duty Weekend!

Saturday afternoon I rolled into Bradenton Motorsports Park to be part of the JDMUps.com Car Show. I have been friends with Greg, the owner of JDMUps.com for about 9 months now and he invited me to be one of the featured cars. The featured cars were placed next to the registration and JDMUPs store for the evening. As you can see, I brought a little of my car show-ness out and displayed products from my sponsors. My original Exedy HyperSingle, a brand new Nexen, and cans of Monster were all on display. I wanted to show my firesuit, but it was at the dry cleaners.

During the event, there was also Saturday night drag racing going on. I thought about runnng the deuce40, but I knew I had a drift event the next day, and didn't want to break something drag racing. I watched many street and some of the show cars, take their runs. A newer model silver Mustang, with a heavy dose of torque, had a scary moment doing a few slides and 180s as it passed the 1/8th mile (of the 1/4 mile strip) mark on one run. Luckily for him, he kept it off the wall, but we were guessing his seat was needing to be re-upholstered.

All in all the show was pretty sweet. Lots of cars made the trip and showed. There was a gorgeous Blue Pearl Infiniti G35 and a few nice Skylines and even a few domestics in the crowd. The drag line was always packed with cars waiting to run.

We arrived at 3:30pm and left the dragstrip at 11:00pm. Got some food, played some video games, had some 21+ good times with some cool dudes from Sarasota and West Palm (visiting for drift event), got some sleep, ate breakfast, and we were back at the same place, to drift the oval track at 10:00am.

This track is fairly fun, however the condition of it is nearing critical. We nearly catch air crossing over the center X, and there are tractor tires on the inside edges of the turns (this is why we don't run our front kits here). I clipped the same one twice; first time just the corner of the fender, and then the corner of the intercooler. This broke the mount and I tied the intercooler back on to continue driving.

We were breaking out in 3 and 4 car tandems on this small track. At one point, we were doing figure 8's and spaced out to where I was only crossing center X about 3 seconds in front of the lead car!! Ryan Kauffman (Miata), Gary James (White RX7 Vert), Jeremy Lowe (Black RX7), Dan Chilton (White RX7), and myself were all ripping up the track together.

The next upcoming event will take us back to Palm Beach International Raceway to perform yet ANOTHER demo this weekend! July 4th will have to wait till next year- we are on the road to South Florida to drift this beautiful road course on July 5th. This time we are rocking out for http://www.nscra.com/ ---**Check them out!**

Special thanks to John at All American Street Car Performance for fixing the car in a DAY to get her ready for this demo!! And as always, thanks for everyone's support!