Hey everyone! I wanted to take the time and post up some of the recent progress from our new team! As many of you already know, I will be working with MA Motorsports for the 2012 season! They have been hard at work preparing our all new 2012 Nissan 370Z chassis for Formula Drift. We will still be running the same Nissan Motorsports 5.6L V8, however we are pushing for more horsepower this season. One of the amazing tasks that MA took on was to spec out the engine and address rebuilding them. In their search, they were able to get in touch with the original engine builder who built these engines. Low and behold, he had numerous sets of pistons, rods, bearings, ported heads, and so on. Now our engine program is fully insured!
Back at the shop the guys at MA were finishing up the chassis work. We wanted to keep the car similar to last year’s chassis but with a few changes to improve its performance as well as reliability. We started with a cage just like last years car, then we added A and B pillar gussets to strengthen up the chassis some more.
Dry Sump tank mounted and covered up.
Then, a makeover to the rear. Last year our car was ALL steel in the rear, which helped keep some weight back there as well as retained the 100% full chassis of a 370Z. But with the level of driving going up and up, we need to prepare our car for dragging the walls! We opted to cut the steel quarter panels out for easier maintenance in light collisions, as well as knock off the whole back end and replaced the bumper with this fabbed up aluminum support!
And one of the biggest upgrades for this season is the development of a completely new lower control arm for the front to make more steering angle! I’ll just leave you with this…
I cannot even say how excited I am for this year! I am in the final steps of packing up the rest of my life and hitting the road in less than 2 weeks for the east coast! More updates soon!
looks awesome and i look forward to seeing how you do this year.
Looks like you have enough engine bearings for the next decade:)
Those little cam nooks are just the cutest things.
that’s quite a budget and quite a car. for a 7 event season. if you were to win every event in a season. you still would not be able to pay for the one car and trailer, parts,travel and team pay. proof the the statement “drifting has gone hollywood”. why dont you just use last years car or the year before. i remember when the FD rulebook with about 20 pages and swaps were regulated. now the rulebook is 100 pages and nobody cares what motor you use. whens the last time you saw a rodeo drift at a FD event?
Anthony,
I completely agree. I have said countless times that our series needs more restraint. The cars are too insane and too fast. I have personally tried to help make things more cost efficient for the drivers and teams, it’s just not that easy to get some people to see how it negatively effects the sport. Last year, aside from our engine, our chassis had more stock Nissan parts than any other car on grid. The issue is, “keeping up with the Joneses”, if we want to be competitive, this is how it must go. You also have no idea how much we spent on those engine parts, like I said, we found the original engine builders who has had those parts sitting on their shelves for years. Lets just say they didn’t want them collecting dust in their shop anymore so we got a screaming good deal.
The reason why the rulebook is 100 pages now is because people continue to find new ways to make their cars have more mechanical advantage over the rest. Engine swaps have never been regulated, I have been pushing for that as well.
We moved into the 370Z because Nissan provided us with the chassis as a promotional tool for their latest Z. Both 350Z’s have been sold to help finance the team to build the new cars. This 370Z is being built so that we will have a mirrored car that we can send around the world to continue to promote the sport of drifting and help its growth.
We do what we can to keep drifting fun, especially at the grassroots and pro am events. I have invested more time than I can keep track trying to push drifting in the right direction, hoping the sport be around for years to come. There are many things that I would like to change as well but mine is not the only voice out there and those decisions are not mine.
I feel very lucky to have my sponsors, I realize how difficult (or near impossible) it would be to compete without their support.
Tons of respect for Brain and the Ma Motorsports guys. Top notch work!
Looks like a great start so far Chris!
Looooking Good Neph!!! A Man with a plan!!!
I’m Lovin’ the BLOODMASTERS videos, Outlaws on the track~
Good Luck while moving back East to Your new Home.
Can’t wait for the Season to start!!! Best Wishes~ “GO CFR”
what if you were to say “the hell with you guys im going pro am” and build you own car by yourself. im sure you could get enough parts from friends and gets enough automotive students like me to donate their time and effort to help at fd events. that would throw everyone off. maybe more pros than you think would follow and maybe guys like Ernie Fixmer, Alex Pfeiffer and Hiro Sumida would come back into the sport.