What an amazing weekend in long beach. Formula Drift produced record numbers across the board and even the live stream was descent. The weekend started off with 30 drivers but circumstances left some of the drivers at home and others broken down. Drivers like Kyle Mohan and Charles NG made the trip but the drift gremlins said they could not qualify this time. Other drivers like Chris Forsberg and Pat Gooding had catastrophic engine failures days before the event but somehow made the show. Qualifying went by faster than normal as there were very little crashes and with only 28 running cars they were able to get through them quickly. Right from the beginning of qualifying we were seeing 90 point runs from James dean and Vaughn Gitten Jr rounded it off with a 97 point run.
Top 32 had some epic battles after we sat through several by runs .
To name a few, Forsberg and Hohnadell were pared up and squared off in battle, so did D Yoshihara and Mike Essa. both battles were fought hard but Forsberg and Essa moved on to the top 16. Divers like Jeff Jones fought hard to find that sweet spot in his new Edelbrock supercharged set up and will prove to be a monster once he does.
The rest of the event was dominated by a Peruvian master and a European drift god both Alex Heilbrunn and James dean dominated the field running some of the most masterful follow runs I have ever seen in FD history. James Dean was predicting transitions even before the lead driver was making them. His line was on point and his demeanor was grounded and focused on running consistent lines all day. On the other hand you had Alex Heilbrunn who was also running near perfect lines all day. He destroyed driver after driver with his chase runs. The overall victor of the day was James Dean as he showed the American drifters that he means business.