Check out our new resident blogger Gary Gardella over at the Wrecked Magazine Driver’s Lounge. Gary Gardella is going to give us a team owner perspective on the site for the 2009 Formula D season. He already has some posts of his 2009 Pontiac Solstice GXP that is getting built for Ryan Tuerck in 2009.

Check out his blog: http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/gardellaracing/

Drift Alliance running wild in Las Vegas

Wrecked Magazine has brought you an exclusive Formula D Las Vegas video. An exclusive Drift Alliance production following the biggest team in American Drifting known as Drift Alliance. See Ryan Tureck, Tony Angelo, Vaughn Gittin Jr., and Chris Forsberg in action. Stay tuned for more episodes coming soon! Don’t miss Chris Forsberg flying down a water slide in this video either.

Watch the video: http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/watchvideo/drift-alliance-running-wild-in-las-vegas

We are sure somehow this will probably change. If you notice, we have TWO D1 drivers on this list contrary to our story about D1 not coming to the Redbull Championship. It appears after some digging and receiving some phone calls from various Japanese hoons that one of the reasons D1 is not coming out in full force is due to financial troubles on the home front in Japan. Weather that is truth or a cover it doesn’t seem to bare well for the D1 Grand Prix series. Anyways, here is the list, Kyle Mohan has been added since Ryan Tuerck could not make it due to financial reasons which we reported on earlier.
Formula D Red Bull Drifting World Championship Driver’s List

The only other decline for the 2008 Redbull Championship was a funding decline from Gardella Racing and his driver Ryan Tuerck. The Mobil 1/Maxxis Tires Solstice lacked a title sponsor for the whole 2008 Formula D season. They couldn’t stretch funding to make the Redbull World Championship in November even after Ryan took home 2008 Formula D Driver of the year. Someone make some phone calls and get this team some stronger backing for 2009! We will miss you in action Ryan.

Waiting for the show to come back I feel like when they are showing the runs we should be seeing some more on car clips. They are showing some amazing on car clips for filler and the intro’s but I want to see this IN YOUR face action more on the runs. These shots from like the sky are cool but I wanna be inside these cars already! They are showing the top 8 now. First run was Ryan Tureck and Sam Hubinette. Looks like someone heard me venting, they just showed some great on car footage! Tanner Foust and Daijiro Yoshihara are now running the top 8 battles. They have some cool inside cam from Daijiro Yoshihara on this section. Courtney Day does a post race interview with Tanner. We just saw Michael from Azines.com talking to Daijiro, hey buddy!

We kind of randomly recapped some of the awards but we wanted to put all the awards in one place that were issued at Sunday’s Formula D banquet at V20 in Long Beach.

2008 Formula D Awards:
Driver of the Year: Ryan Tuerck
Spirit of Formula D: Patrick Mordaunt
Superstar of the Year: Tanner Foust
Best Style: Daijiro Yoshihara
Biggest Rivalry: Rhys Millen Vs. Everyone
Hardest Charging Driver: Robbie Nishida
Best Tandem Battle: Robbie Nishida Vs. Tanner Foust (FD Las Vegas - Round 1 of top 16)
Most Improved Driver: Stephan Verdier
Rookie of the Year: Michihiro Takatori
Team Owner/Manager of the Year: Eddie Kim (Hankook Team of Joon Maeng/Robbie Nishida)
Mechanic of the Year: Shawn Hiller from the AEM/Rockstar Energy Drink Team

Ryan Tuerck took home Formula D’s Driver of the Year. This award was by far well deserved. Ryan was able to part with his S13 that had been hindering his performance for years with mechanical failures to say the least.  Under Gardella Racing with the new sponsors like Maxxis/Mobil 1/Pontiac they were able to become major contenders in the series. We look for Ryan to do even better next year and definitely be in the race for the 2009 Formula D championship.

2008 Formula D Driver of the Year: Ryan Tuerck

Check out Friday’s gallery sponsored by Bosch from the House of Drift. We have some great footage of unseeded qualifying and the late night top 32 practice. This event was looking to be a great one as we rolled into the main event with a championship on the line and victory on everyone’s mind. Check out all of our great coverage from Formula D.

Check out this Formula D Irwindale Gallery: http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=68

How can you forget about all of the great action from the 2007 Formula D season? Well in case you didn’t make it to all 7 stops or you cannot quite remember all the amazement that happened like Sonoma 2007 then check out the trailer that Livesocket x Formula D just released and you might want to consider picking up the DVD that comes out next week on Tuesday.

Watch the Trailer: http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/watchvideo/2007-formula-d-dvd-trailer-

So the weekend is over.
It sucks being in school and drifting at the same time. I gotta focus and concentrate all weekend and once i get back, it’s back to economics, business, history and other typical college student stuff.
But anyway, here is how my weekend went!

Friday’s practice went well. The RS-R Scion tC was running in its best condition ever. I spent all my practice time figuring out how to approach turn 1 without sacrificing speed and or angle. I knew that if I were to drift into turn 1 without angle, I would be much faster but it would look boring. I wanted to approach turn 1 with great angle and speed. It turned out that the judges were looking for the same thing. I felt that having a faster entry speed was more important than having massive angle. And then the unthinkable happened. My transmission would not let me get the car into 2nd or 4th gear mid-drift. Fortunately, Koji-san had prepared a spare for us. That night, Koji-san , John, Shacho and Ben stayed at the track to swap out the transmission.
Saturday’s qualify session did not go as I expected. This time, I was having trouble getting the car into 3rd gear. The exit of the hairpin would be much slower than other cars. That was a problem. On the first run, everything went smooth until I came to the exit of the hairpin where I tried to shift into 3rd gear. It didn’t go in! I straightened out and scored a big fat 0!. No good. But recently I found out that I drive better under pressure so it might be good for me. On the 2nd run, instead of shifting into 3rd at the exit of the hairpin, I stayed in 2nd gear to finish the left hand sweeper through the finish line.
I placed 9th in qualify with a score of 93.67 @ 91mph. My top 16 round was against Ryan Tuerck. On the first lap, I followed. In fact, I followed too close that I hit the side of his car. With that impact went my alignment. I was toed-out pretty bad. Due to the bad alignment, I went off course on my lead lap and ended up giving up the win to Ryan.
Event after event, I feel that my luck keeps sweeping itself away. With only one more event left in the series, I hope to prove to everyone that its good to be different!