鈥淲e went into our first battle in Top 32 and got a rematch from Round 2 with Allen Boss and took home the win. We ended up getting hit pretty hard while in the lead and destroyed another door on the car. (that is two doors this year and counting). We hammered the door the best we could and got the car aligned again and then went into our Top 16 battle.

鈥淲e had a great battle with Cole Richards but unfortunately, he just had the slightly better run. I left the battle proud we laid down a great run and put up a good fight and know I gave it my best. Now we work on improving my best and making the best from the car even better.”

鈥淲e left the event in 11th place, and are sitting in 12th in points out of 38 drivers. We have one more round to step up and put some bigger points on the board. We are heading to Utah next week and made a few changes to the car to get better chases. We are excited to try it out verse the field at a really fast track.

鈥淲e had a few events these past few weeks from Import Alliance in Nashville to National Corvette聽Museum in Bowling green where we were able to do some testing while also putting on a show for the fans.

鈥淥ur next few weeks will be even busier as we go across country to Utah for the final round of Formula Drift, then LS Fest back in Bowling Green, and then Slush Motorsports in Nashville all back to back. It should be fun, but hectic!鈥�

鈥淲e went back to pits and took the time to diagnose and swap out our fuel pressure sensor which was the fix, but we did not pay attention to the alignment of the car and unfortunately we went into battle with our car toe knocked out about 1/4″ on one side. This made the battle a bit more challenging than we wanted and we lost forward bite. We also made some contact in our first half of the battle and we should have asked for inspection on the toe. I personally didn’t think it was that much contact but afterwards we saw the wheel was knocked out and fully black (wheel to wheel).”

鈥淭he lesson learned here is double check alignment before going into battle and ask for inspection if the rules allow! We aren’t sure when we had the toe knocked out but we definitely will go away with the lesson learned!

鈥淣ext stop: St Louis鈥︹��

鈥淲e were really happy with the changes we made on the car in the off-season! The car is much more responsive now and we have the forward bite that we were lacking before. This is really going to prove useful at later rounds and we can’t wait for Formula Drift New Jersey.

鈥淲e are starting to prep for Round 2 in聽New Jersey and I am starting to work on learning the world of virtual drifting so I can use that for practice. The car really does not need much to be ready for NJ so I will focus on myself鈥︹��

鈥淲e then made our way across country to Bowling Green for LS Fest in a big field of Pro and Amateur drivers. We ended up battling out 56 drivers to qualify into the Top 32 competition. We took home the win in Top 32 and got knocked out in the Top 16 with a close battle. We had a lot of fun at one of our favourite events and had a consistent set of fans coming in for pictures and autographs and wanting to check out our Kei Van.鈥�

Pics: Cardeefoto & Kage Media

鈥淲e got four total laps in practice and then went into battles, and they were not going to make it easy! First battle out we got our聽wheel knocked in and it broke our聽tie rod and rack. We change it overnight and got into more battles the聽next day.

鈥淚n our Top 32 battle, we had some rubbing but no major damage. In Top 16, we got into a little scuffle after the lead driver miss-shifted and we ended up colliding to bend ANOTHER tie rod and rack! Unfortunately, not enough time to swap the rack so we just sent it with a bent rack and new tie rod! We ended up getting knocked out in our Top 8 battle. Really good results for the 1^st round placing us tied for 5^th out of 48 drivers going into Round 2.

鈥淲e are ready for Jersey; Allen has plans for a new motor to get him through that round already in the works and we are just making the proper repairs and minor adjustments on Hooman鈥檚 car.鈥�

Pics:

鈥淲e decided we wanted to show up and throw down and kept working on dialling in faster and nastier entries. The 鈥榝un鈥� thing about this track is the grip levels change drastically from the morning sessions until the sun comes out, and we were making some adjustments to loosen up the rear… and disaster struck. I took out too much grip in our last practice session right before qualifying and ended up flicking the car on initiation only to find it didn’t want to flick back! I shortly found myself head-on with the wall and my front tyres off course, so I made some quick efforts and was able to flip the car to hit the wall in reverse. I was DEVASTATED. The car was trashed, the wheel was stuck in the frame. Subframe bent. Rear crash structure was completely gone. And we had very little time before qualifying.

鈥淲e evaluated the damage and I thought to myself there is no way we can get this car back together in any sort of safe manner, so I thought we were done. Well, I got a call from my friend and fellow driver Jonathan Cash Hurst and he told me to slap something together and make the qualifying pass even if the car is crab walking down the straight. Well, that is what we did. Through some miracle of thrashing with minutes to spare we got the car half together with some makeshift fabrication with very little metal stock that we had laying around. We got the car back on the line with an eyeball alignment and crab walking down the straight for our initiation and BAM: we end up qualifying in 14^th place securing us into the Top 32 competition!

鈥淣ormally this wouldn’t be so exciting but from the position we were looking at of not being able to attempt to qualify at all and then to be able to qualify above mid-pack, we were thrilled. Beers all around for the team! They killed it, as they always do and made my driver error less of an issue. We spent the rest of the day/night getting the rest of the car back as close to straight as we could with the bent frame and subframe. We end up winning our Top 32 battle and go on to Top 16.”

鈥淚n top 16 battling Joshua Love, I KNEW he was fast. So, we focused on making the car fast and I told myself I am not getting left behind on my chase. I am going to make him feel me all the way around the track. Well, I may have went a little too close on the initiation and my front right wheel hit him on the inner clip 1 and my wheel broke and my tire de-beaded. I didn’t know this during the run and tried to keep it together but the car wouldn’t hold. Pulling it back around to line up I asked an official if there was a cone stuck under my tire and he said… well no, there is a tyre not attached to your wheel though! So we called our five minutes and changed our wheel out with a rear tyre, because we didn’t have the front tyre in the pit. We bent a little bit of stuff in the front and got it as straight as we could in the five minutes we had. We sent it on our lead lap and unfortunately sent it a little too hard and dropped some tyres on the dirt and that was the end of our competition.

鈥淚 held nothing back, went for the win, and wouldn’t change a thing (well maybe try to crash less) We left this event with our heads high and learned a lot of things we can apply to next season and go even harder.

鈥淎fter our competition we were able to do some 鈥楩ree Candy鈥� runs with the JDM Kei van and Formula Drift fans 鈥� that was a blast to do! We gave away over 500 pieces of candy to lucky fans. Smiles for days.

鈥淭hank you for everything and a great season. We have a few fun events left in the year so we have the car still together including Chilhowee Drift in Knoxville, Slush Motorsports in Nashville, Import Alliance in Bowling Green, and Slydefactory Halloween Party in Nashville.鈥�

The year isn鈥檛 over for Rahimi yet, though, with some fun one-off events planned before his Nissan is put into hibernation for another winter period.

鈥淭hank you for an amazing 2022 season; the car held together quite well and we are looking forward to a solid 2023 season and working with 91传媒 again,鈥� Rahimi commented.

Link ECU 50k Summer Showdown

鈥淚n early July, we took part in the Link ECU 50k Summer Showdown in Salem, Indiana, where we finished 2^nd among a 70-driver field of pros and Joes! The competition was fierce, but we were grateful that our team came out in 2^nd place for the weekend!

鈥淲e had some ups and downs across the weekend, as the event started with a broken truck causing us to miss all of Friday’s practice. We went into Saturday with one hour of practice in the rain going into qualifying! We ended up qualifying in the dry and making it into the top 64! We had a lot of battles ranging from regular Joes to pros.

鈥淲e had an uphill climb with most of the field as there was an open-tyre rule and we were running our PROSPEC 255mm tyre, against people running 315mm rear tyres! We dialled in all the grip we could and made the car quite fast! We kept up with almost everyone.

鈥淥ur last battle was a bit of a challenge to keep up, unfortunately we threw it in a little too hard and we finished in 2^nd place. Despite the loss at the end, $12,000 later we can say we left home with a smile!鈥�

Formula Drift 鈥� St Louis

鈥淲e just got back from Formula Drift St Louis. Unfortunately, we got knocked out by our friend Derek Madison in the first round who took it all the way to the podium. Though we didn’t get the results we wanted, we had a great time and made a lot of connections with fans.

鈥淲e hosted the Formula Drift 鈥楬ang with a Driver鈥� experience again this round, which was a lot of fun! We were able to take the fans behind the scenes to the judges/announcer booth, as well as the live-stream truck and into our trailers and pits to show them how we function. We are working on setting this up at more rounds as we are still testing out the flow of this.

鈥淲e have Import Alliance this weekend at the Nashville聽Super Speedway in which we are taking the demo ex-Pro2 LS7 350Z car to, so we can have fun and not worry too much as we break down the 370Z and get it ready for Utah in September!鈥�