It’s a cool, cloudy morning in northern California. Along a nondescript rural road in the heart of the sparsely-populated wine country, the peace and quiet is shattered by long lines of modified and performance cars, all headed in one direction: Infineon Raceway. This winding, undulating ribbon of tarmac is the location for the sixth round of the 2008 Formula Drift championship. The circuit is in the very definition of ‘the middle of nowhere’ – the nearest town of any significance is Sonoma, over 10 miles away – but for one Saturday afternoon each September, it becomes the centre of the US drifting world.
Entering Infineon involves driving up and over a hill covered in the reddish-brown earth characteristic of this region before descending into the natural amphitheatre that surrounds the track. No attempt has been made to modify or flatten out the natural terrain here: the track follows the natural contours of the valley, making for a unique challenge for drivers and a great spectacle for the fans. As the morning goes on, the cloud begins to lift, but a cool breeze coming over the hills keeps temperatures from reaching unbearable levels.
Modified Motors is here to follow the progress of Darren McNamara, the 2006 Irish Prodrift Champion, who since last year has been carving out a career for himself with Team Falken in the Formula Drift championship, firstly in his self-built SR20-powered Corolla, but since the start of this year in an all-new Saturn Sky V8 coupe, custom-built by the team.
10:00am: Driver’s Briefing
Darren has already spent all day Friday practicing and fine-tuning his setup, but despite this, he’s not optimistic as he waits for the driver’s briefing to start, just before 10am on Saturday morning.
“It’s been s**t so far,” he says candidly. “We always knew this was going to be car’s worst track and we didn’t have a good day yesterday. We’ll have to see if we can pull something out of the bag.”
He heads in to the briefing, where the 32 drivers that will attempt to qualify for the afternoon’s twin battles are reminded of the layout of the track and what the judges will be looking for. The small section of Infineon used for Formula Drift competition involves a high-speed downhill blast before the drivers must scrub off speed and enter a tightening right-hand corner that almost doubles back on itself. The course then turns left again, passes through a sweeping left-hander and finishes on another downhill straight. Ability to precisely control the car under heavy deceleration and rapid changes of direction are key here and, apart from on the opening straight, torque is more important than horsepower.
11:00am: Open Practice begins
The day’s first on-track action begins just as the sun starts to break through the clouds and the temperature begins to rise. It’s clear straight away that finding the limit here is no small feat: numerous drivers leave their braking just fractions too late, and find themselves struggling to reign the car in and make the clipping point of the first corner. Some start braking and drifting well back from the corner, while others leave it later. All of them record impressive entry speeds, nudging 100mph at times. Back in the Team Falken truck, Darren is feeling a bit more optimistic after his practice runs.
“That didn’t go too bad – it was a lot better than yesterday,” he says. “It’s still not anywhere near 100 percent but we’re going to have to live with it. If we changed something, it could just end up being worse, so I’m just going to stick with it and try and drive my way through it,” he says.
Is a place in the Top 16 possible? “We could pull it off – we had a 97mph entry in one of the practice runs, so we’d be bound to get some good points if we repeated that,” Darren reckons. “My normal strategy is to put together a 70-80 percent effort for the first qualifying run and get somewhere between 5th and 16th position, then just go all-out on the last one. So I’m gonna sacrifice a few miles an hour, try and make the clipping points and do a solid run in the bag, then maybe pull something out at the end. To get into the Top 16 would be perfect today, after the way yesterday went. I’d be well happy with that.”
12:30pm: Qualifying begins
Crunch time: All 32 drivers now have just two solo runs under the scrutiny of the three-strong team of judges to book their place in the final battles. Darren comes in hot and fast at 90mph in his first run, maintaining some great smoke and angles between the clipping points. It’s a smooth and solid run, but the final score of 87.9 means it’s not the guaranteed ‘banker’ he needed it to be. Next time out, he’s pushing very hard – too hard, in fact. The Saturn won’t turn in tight enough and he sails into the line of traffic cones marking the edge of the course – instant zero.
“I was thinking I’d add another mile an hour or two onto the 97mph I got in practice,” Darren says afterwards, “but it just didn’t work out, I was carrying so much speed going in. The car has been difficult to drive all weekend, and it was only really starting to come around there in qualifying. We should have been at this point yesterday and been working to get it right this morning. But it’s a new car, it’s an experimental project, it doesn’t always work out how you want it to.”
3:30pm: Autograph session
Darren’s day on track may be over, but there’s more work to be done as the fans flock into the paddock area in search of autographs and memorabilia. Formula Drift’s ‘fan-friendliness’ is typical of American motorsport series, with nearly all the teams and sponsors handing out stickers, posters and photo cards, selling official merchandise and making their drivers available for autographs and photos with fans.
As the Top 16 qualifiers get ready to do battle, Darren is back in the Falken truck, going over his performance with the team and looking forward to preparing for next season. “There’s not really been any development of the car since the start of the year,” he explains. “We had one test day at a particular track and it went competitively there, but it’s been hit and miss apart from that. The car has strong and weak points – this track shows up all the weak points, whereas the last track in Seattle showed up a lot of strong points. Where we start off slow and build up speed, we’re very quick, but here where we start off fast and have to decelerate sharply, it shows up the weaknesses and the lack of development time, particularly on the suspension.”
Team Falken is planning a big development push on the Saturn for the 2009 season, and Darren is looking forward to the improvements this will undoubtedly bring. “Now we’ve got a season under our belt, we have data from all the tracks, and we’re going testing in the off-season a lot, so we’re looking to be a lot more competitive next year. When we get it right, we’re not far off the mark, so if we can just get to the point where it’s predictable, we should do very well. Every time we go out we find something new that we want to change, and that’s not the way to run a car competitively over a weekend. We’re learning on the track at the events, but we should really be learning away from the track. So that’s something we’re sorting for next year. It’s frustrating at the moment but we’ll get over it – next year’s gonna be completely different!”
4:00pm: Top 16 battles begin
Darren is just another spectator at this point, as Nissan 350Z driver Tanner Foust powers his way to victory under the warm glow of an evening sun and re-takes the lead of the championship standings. Foust would go on to win this year’s Formula Drift title, his second consecutive championship victory in the series. Darren’s results from earlier in the season were sufficient to keep him in the final Top 16 championship standings, however, which meant he went on to take part in the Red Bull Drifting World Championship in Long Beach last month, alongside fellow Prodrift champions Eric O’Sullivan and James Deane. Darren was the highest-placed of the three Irish drivers at the event, and now looks forward to a winter of testing and preparation for an all-out championship assault in 2009.
This article was originally published in Modified Motors magazine.
