Elite JDM

Just a reminder to all out customers. We will be closed this week for the SEMA Show
We will reopen on Monday 11/7

On July 16th, Club Loose hosted Round 2 of Hold the Line Formula D ProAm. There was also drifting from B & C group guys going on at the same time. The competition was held on the Back course, one of the best parts of Englishtown’s road course. It is extremely technical and gets pretty fast between turns 1 & 2 as you come up a hill and transition Blindly at the peak into a left hand sweeper.

They took all of us drivers for a walk through the entire course and explained exactly what they wanted us to do and where they wanted the cars at on the course.

There was a ton of Practice since we had the back course most of the day. I was making a bunch of mistakes during practice but i was able to get it down before qualifying.

Here I over shot it and came into the sweeper way to hot and dropped my right rear wheel of the track where the is a deep trench getting me on three wheels. Made for a sweet picture. Good timing Ray!

I put on a fresh set of Kenda Kaiser Tires so i could really give it my best. By the time I got back to grid after the tire change, I was nearly last in line. That gave me an opportunity to watch and see how everyone else was doing. They broke qualifying down into 2 groups , 12 in the 1st group and the rest of the drivers in the 2nd group. I would say 9-10 of the drivers in the 1st group did pretty well which pumped me up.

During Practice, i was having most difficulty with pushing to the outside coming out of the first turn as I was coming up the hill so I could extend to the outside after the transition while gaining speed and angle heading into the left sweeper. I was able to pull it off on my 1st qualifying run.

Mike Griffith took those sick shots for OMGDRIFT

Here is raw footage from my 1st qualifying run

Having a good 1st qualifying run gave me the ability to really go all out and try for the top Qualifying position on my 2nd run. I was pumped and did just that.

Here is raw footage from my 2nd Qualifying Run

I managed to score a 92, 10 points above the #2 Qualifier Tanner Munson, and qualified 1st place! man was that an awesome feeling! Here are the qualifying results.

In my top 16 Battle I went up against Oneydo Diaz. He is a Club Loose regular just recently moving up in to A Class this season! I believe this was his first competition, and he did awesome considering!

Here is raw footage of My lead run

I still have alot to learn about tandem. I should have paced myself and left more of a gap on him since he was slower then I was. I ended up correcting a few times, but overall my runs were stronger and I moved on to the Great 8.

In the Great 8 I had to go against Canadian & DMCC Driver Brad Carlton. From what I hear Brad has an aggressive driving style and is known to clip cars in tandem. He is definitly a skilled driver, but it seemed he tried to close in on me a bit to early and it caused him to spin at the 1st turn while following me. I didn’t realize it until after i was coming out of the sweeper and i was driving full force. Here is raw footage from My Lead run.

My Follow run i think i did the same thing has he did but i stayed in it, poured on the angle and got on his door. I kept it safe with some space, as i only had to complete the course to move on. Here is some raw footage from my follow run.

In the Semi-Finals I had to go against good friend and driver Miro Ovcharik. He has been pretty much unstoppable this whole season. Almost every weekend he is on a podium somewhere. On My lead run I ended up spinning on the first turn. I guess I got phazed, who knows. I do know it felt exactly the same as it did last September at my first competition, Street Life Tour, when I spun in front of him. Here is raw footage of it

I knew the only way to move on I needed to really get up on him and cause him to make a mistake. He is a pretty consistent driver and I knew it wasn’t likely but i tried. Here is my follow run with Miro

Since I lost that battle, Miro was going up against Tanner for 1st place and I was going up against Rapper Dan for 3rd. Unfortunately, the battery died in my camera and Lou couldn’t shoot those runs. I believe they were the best battles of the day for me and of course, i didn’t get to watch them.

My good friend Brian Casse from Jerstystreets.tv threw together some raw that he had from the event which has some small clips of our runs.

My Cousin Lou came to the event to help me out. During Qualifying and Comp, he shot all the video for me to make posts like this one possible. He rode shotgun the rest of the day!

After the competition We went out and hit the front course.

There were a bunch of close calls like this one of me and Mats Baribeau from Canada

Here is the on-car from that run

Also had a close call with Kyle Landers

And one following Miro Ovcharik

I also had this on-car of one of my Faster / Earlier entries of the day

Towards the end of the day I had pushed it a bit to far around the bank and made some contact on my right rear, more of a bunp than a scrape which caused my front end to get sucked in a bit. It wasn’t bad enough to keep me off the track. I pulled back in the pits, pulled the front out and kept on driving!

All in all, the event was a great success!

Check out the Videos from the event

JerseyStreets

Chris Szczapala

Here are the current standings After Round 2.

The next Hold the Line Round (3) was supposed to be on August 6th at Monticello Motor CLub, but the venue is now changing. The September 11 date that was supposed to be round 4 is now round 3 and the Final Round will be announced in the upcoming weeks. This was taken from HTLDrift:

Hold the line, CHANGE OF DATES/VENUEEE

THE NEXT HTL EVENT IS THE SEPT 11th DATE!!

Englishtown 9/11 will be the 3rd round of HOLD THE LINE.

The HTL finals will be announced in the coming weeks!
October date-tentative
We are working hard to deliver more bang for your buck to wrap up the Northeast’s only Pro-Am series!
Working on a new track, and prizes for the winners!! Hold on to your ass!

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I appreciate the continued support!!

Freedom Moves is coming quick. Freedom Moves will be on September 10th and 11th at Englishtown on the road course. It will be 2 days of drifting, partying, shanty town living and all other assorted kinds of fun. Saturday night we will be driving under the lights until 10PM and then partying at Sneaky Pete’s, the E-town trackside bar, until 2AM.

The details:
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Gates open at 9AM
Tech starts at 9AM
Driver’s meeting at 10AM
Drifting starts right after and last until 10PM. That’s 12 hours of drifting.

Sunday, September 11, 2011
Gates open at 9AM
Tech for people only driving Sunday will be open at 9AM
Driver’s meeting at 10AM
Drifting starts right after the driver’s meeting and ends at 6PM.
In reality, this timeline will be pushed back a little depending on how awesome the party is the night before.

Registration is now open. It will be open until Labor Day, Monday, September 5 at midnight. No late payments without a really good story. If you’re story isn’t that good, we will post it on facebook as a poll and Club Loose’s facebook fans will decide your fate.

$265 to drive 2 days.
$160 to drive 1 day, either Saturday or Sunday, just make sure to put which day in the notes on the paypal payment.
Paypal to clubloose@gmail.com

I’m sure you guys have noticed that the prices have gone up a couple dollars. This is because the tire machine, that you guys all use for FREE, is getting really beat up. Whether it’s just the shear amount of use or people not knowing what they’re doing or whatever is happening, it has already been repaired once this year. So we are adding a couple extra dollars to each registration to set aside so when it breaks, we can afford to fix it or, for the worst case, we can buy another one. It’s either a couple more dollars each event or $5 per tire to change them at the track, we figured this was a better idea.

So get your cars together, send in your money and get ready to 2 awesome days of drifting, partying and just having a good time. We have a couple things in the works to make things more fun for you. And depending on how quickly people register, we might be able to put some more fun stuff together. So don’t be lazy and wait until the last minute to pay.

See you guys soon.

CLICK HERE for Official Facebook Event Page

Click here for more info on the Club Loose Forum

XDC Round 5 Was held on July 3rd at Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina.

I was pretty excited to head to Charlotte since my wife Jessica has some family there and it has been a few years since we have been able to go out for a visit. We decided to take the opportunity to make a mini vacation out of it.
The past few weeks have been jam-packed with full weekend drift events. The weekend before this was Club Loose’s Annual East Coast Bash, which is Drifting, camping, partying all rolled up into 3 days from setup to tear down. The week before ECB was XDC Round 4 which was in conjunction with Hyperfest at Summit Point WV, which was another full weekend trip. Needless to say, I was exhausted going into this and needed a few days to unwind before competing.

Like Every event i run, my car starts at RT Tuning to make sure my alignment is on point and make any minor adjustments required to make the car do as I want it to on the track.

Since we decided to make this a week long trip, we took Hendri to Best Friends for boarding. The place is pretty sweet, he gets 3 hours play time with other dogs everyday, 2 walks and a huge room to sleep in. He loves it!

We hit the road on Thursday, June 30th. It was a pretty smooth ride until we hit traffic just after we crossed the NC Border. It seemed like there was an accident, we moved 1/2 mile in one hour. I decided to take the shoulder to the exit which was right ahead. I followed the highway on sideroads until i found the next entrance and it was clear, thanks to my GPS.

We finally got there and the rig definitely looked out of place in this neighborhood that looked like it was off of a movie set.

I have been on Nexens the whole beginning of the season because Kenda was backorderd on the size that I run. They got their shipment the day before I was leaving, so I had to have them shipped to my uncles house where we were staying in Charlotte to hopefully have them in time. I had some backup Nexen’s mounted just in case. It didnt matter because Kenda came thru and I had a skid waiting for me when i got there!

Me and my wife really enjoyed cooling off in the pool!

On Friday, I went and dropped my trailer & car off at the track and unloaded. It was scorching hot out and i knew it was going to be a brutal weekend!
On Saturday, we rolled in for practice early and the venue was already filling up.

They were holding a NASA road race event the same weekend so we were sharing the track with them. It really killed our track time as we were only able to get (4) 25 minute practice sessions spread across the day. 1st Practice session i pretty much was getting used to the inner section which was really tight. The rest of the day I tried working on my entry. It sucked because as soon as I would start getting comfortable, they were pulling us off the track.

There wasn’t alot of Media, or at least i could barely find any pictures or video. Garage Spec & Schen Photography were there shooting though.

Here is a shot of the track from outside the sweeping entry turn

My Pit Area all setup

Kenda Tires really Came through for me by getting the tires out fast! I was relieved that I had a decent gripping tire for this competition.

Sunday rolled around, and it was way hotter than it was the day before! There was no practice before qualifying & because of scheduling with NASA, they broke up Qualifying into 2 groups. I was selected to run in the 2nd group which wasn’t going out until 3:00. I was able to watch the 1st group and hang out.
I had tons of family there supporting me so that made for a good time!

Some shots from Qualifying

My 1st Qualifying run I entered way early and came up short and was way off course. This resulted in a 0 for that run and I was dependent on my 2nd run to get me into the top 16

My 2nd Qualifying run was still a bit shollow, but i was able to keep it on course and was safe enough to make it in the show

Hey Look! The 4 Jarods!!!

Announcer Jarod DeAnda & Judges Matt Petty, Mike Schnieder, & Chris Forsberg Keeping it Classy

After Qualifying, we had out drivers meeting. They gave us the results. I qualified 11th, which put me up against #6 Qualifier Rapper Dan Savage. Dan was looking really decent during practice so I was looking forward to some awesome Tandems with him!

I was 1st to line up for Tandem Practice… i guess i was excited after waiting around 2 hours from Qualifying.

At about 7:00 Competition Started. I was feeling good and ready to rip. I lined up with Dan for our fist heat, I was following. I tried to leave the line with him so i could enter with him so i didn’t have to catch up as much during the run with my lack of power. I entered a bit to early causing me to have a shallow line around the sweeping right turn. Coming out of the sweeper I was to shallow to make it around the 1st clip and I straightened up. I tried to correct but Dan got pretty far ahead. I was trying so hard to catch him that I hit the dirt and spun after the last clipping point.

I really needed a stellar lead run and phaze Dan to move on in the competition. Again, I did the same thing and initiated to early and ended up shallow, this time more shallow causing me to hit a drainage dip and bent my left inner tie rod. Dan was following strong and at this point I was fighting my car to get it around the course. I spun again after the last clip. Needless to say Rapper Dan moved on to the great 8.

I have to thank my cousin Kyle for being patient and shooting for me, none of these videos would have been possible without him!

Here is the round 5 Results

Congratulations to the winners

On the way home we took the scenic route, In Virginia we got some amazing views as we peaked over a mountain and were above the clouds

We picked Hendri up from Best Friends and he was pretty excited to see us, he had a foam moustache. The said he got a little to close to another dog and the other dog snapped at him, he had a little cut under his eye.

When I got back to the shop, I put the car on the lift to change the tie rod.

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