Orange Spot: California Speedway

Showing posts with label California Speedway. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Chumps

This past weekend, I swung by California Speedway, in the always beautiful town of Fontana. Actually, I was invited by former neighbors/ Lemons teammates, Mark and Noemi. They were racing a piece of crap in the Chump Car series. But I think their real mission was to torture me, by watching them race, since I haven't my R compounds haven't had any contact with tarmac for quite some time.

Formula D Long Beach 2008

It's been a while since I was a Long Beach for a motorsports event. Back when Long Beach Grand Prix when Champ Car was still Indycar World Series. Where I was rooting for Marlboro and Team Penske, even though I didn't event smoke. This past weekend I went for a visit to Long Beach for Round 1 of Formula D. I've been too many west coast events, but yet I never went to Long beach. Looking at the schedule, I didn't feel like going in and standing around for hours to see a 2 hour competition.
I had arrived there around noon time to catch the last half of the qualify session. Unfortunately, the Corolla hero Toshiki Yoshioka didn't make the cut. Qualifying 18th, missing the next round by 2 spots.

Taka and Seigo looking discussing life as a drifter? Unfortunately they didn't make the cut to move to the top

Hayashida checking out the qualifying session.
After qualify we met with a few friends working the event, but decided it would be best to cool down at Rockbottom restaurant, which is a pretty good place to eat and have a good brew.

Titan toothpicks and a red lager. What better way to enjoy Long Beach. We kept cool and our tummies full until we were ready to head back to see the top 16 battle.

I brought my point and shoot Olympus camera for all the shots, which really sucks cause I didn't know how to use it to my advantage. And add insult to injury, the battery decided to go at the start of the top 8 round.

I didn't see the end cause I had a premenition that Sam would come in first, he usually does. 2nd place would go to Forsburg, Tanner coming in at 3rd with Mohan in 4th. Boy was I wrong, after reading everythingdrift.com Damn I guess should stick it out next time, with drifting it's always anybodys game.

I think the topper for that event was Kyle Mohan. I remember when that guy was rocking the 1st gen RX7 at the drift days. And yeah he still killed it with that car. For a privateer to come up and lay the smack down to some of these competitiors a much bigger budget and horsepower to a fourth place finish is awesome. He's worked really hard to get where he's at right now and deserves it. Probably more if his transmission didn't go out. Congratulations!

Here's a couple of pics I took of the event here.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Vintage Racing

Since i've been busy with other things lately, and haven't been racing or drifting. I decided to watch a vintage race on Sunday. The Vintage Auto Racing Association (VARA) held their Route 66 Classic racing event at California Speedway over the weekend. I was able to catch part of Sunday's event. Even shot a couple of pictures while I was at it. Everyone there was really nice love to talk cars. Even though I can't say i'm not familiar with many of the cars, it was really nice to watch classic cars still stomping the track as they did many years ago. Maybe one day the Corolla will join these ranks.

I've always been a rotary fan espcially RX-3's. I'm not just a fan I also own one. This one was the only one in a field, battling with Porsche's and 240Z's. According to the owner he'd passed about 20 Porsche's on his way to a class victory.

This BMW also caught my eye. With it's aggressive aero, you know it means business. It ran the last race of the day, which was filled with many V8 domestics.