The Cyrious Report - DMCC ROUND 1 and Formula D ROUND 4

June 14th was the opening round of DMCC, and man was it a wet one! With most of the events only being one day, you only get about 2.5 hours of practice, so your car set up has to be pretty close right out of the trailer as there isn't much time to make changes. Unfortunately we struggled to get a good set up out of the FR-S… our gearing for the wet conditions was way off and we were fighting with traction, either it felt like we had too much in some parts of the track or none at all in other sections.

We did the best with what we had and came up with a set up that was decent but not ideal. My first qualifying lap was OK, but not great, netting us a score of 65. Second lap out I knew I had to push to get in the main event but pushed a bit too hard in the wet conditions and spun going into the first corner. We didn’t make the top 16 and our weekend was done.

We left DMCC and quickly got back to the shop to make a few small changes to the FR-S, checked everything over, loaded up 2 days later and headed out to New Jersey for FD round 4. It’s been about 3 years since I had last competed in Formula Drift, and lots has changed since then. The amount of power, grip, angle and smoke that’s produced by about 90% of the cars there is amazing! I quickly realized I was a bit out gunned, but I was there to make the best of what we had and put on the best show possible!

Practice went well, but my lack of power and steering angle really started to show. I was the first to qualify, and laid down the best lap I had done all weekend! Up on the wall, hit all the clips and my line was spot on! It felt great but only got us a score of 55 due to the lack of smoke and angle the other cars are capable of. The judges said my run lacked impact, and I understood why. Next lap out I tried to get a bit more aggressive with the FR-S, and did a bit better of a lap getting a score of 57 – nowhere nearly enough to get us in the top 32 though, so once again our weekend was over. We did stay for the main event to display the car and talk to the fans that were there.

Back at the shop now we are modifying our steering to get more angle, which should make the car easier to drift. But there’s not a lot of time, as we are off to round 2 of DMCC this Friday. Every round I feel better and better with the FR-S. We are always trying to improve it and hopefully very soon we find that ideal set up we need to get back on top! I have confidence in the car and the engine set up. As much as every other driver that uses the FR-S chassis swaps out the factory engine, I truly feel with more time and development we will be able to make the power needed to compete with the best out there while still using the factory 4U-GSE engine.

Thanks so very much for the support!

The Cyrious Report – FD Miami

This past weekend was FD FL, where they were having the Pro and first ever Pro 2 drift event in Homestead, Miami. We went to compete in pro2 for the weekend.

When running in Pro 2, you only get about an hour and a half of practice, then it’s straight into qualifying. I was the first driver to get out and practice as I was eager to learn the track quickly. The conditions were wet but I was feeling very confident in my car, and was actually enjoy drifting in the wet. The car was very predictable and feeling the best it had ever felt. We were hitting the right line and were looking easily like one of the top drivers out there!

Going into qualifying I was feeling very confident and was excited to go out for our first lap of qualifying for 2014! As I launched the car from the starting line, pulled through the first 3 gears, initiated drift, then quickly shifted to 4th gear the car bogged then went right to idle… instant zero. We checked the data in the ECU, there was a glitch with the electric throttle. With the very limited time between runs there was not much we could do, so we hoped it wouldn't happen in the next lap and spend more time to figure it out later. Unfortunately it did the exact same thing on the second lap, zero score again, our weekend was done.

These types of things happen with fresh builds and we have the problem fixed so that it will never happen again. In the few practice laps we did make, the car felt great! We were able to keep up with cars that had close to double the horsepower, the FR-S is very controllable now and has a great amount of traction, a big part of which is from the Yokohama AD08R tires we are running.

Our next event is DMCC rd1 on the 14th, I'm really looking forward to it!

Thanks so much for the support!