Join Alex Lichliter for a recap of the final round of the 2024 Formula Drift ProSpec season at the Utah Motorsports Campus. From the upgrades and changes made to the car, to the exciting seeding battle, to our mega raffle, this one has lots of footage including all the extra fan interaction. You may even spot yourself or your friends!

NST - NonStopTuning ​
www.NonStopTuning.com

Thursday – Practice & Seeding
​
Our day starts super early! Drivers meeting started at 7:00am. There are two practice sessions today. They are both 90 mins long. The first practice session started at 8:15am. I started off with no grip, sliding me off the track. I came in, made a suspension change, and went back out. Second lap was perfect. I mean perfect. I was looking like one of the top drivers! We only got 3 practice laps in the first session. The second practice session was at 11:45am. The sun was out, increasing track temperatures. We made some small changes to the car to combat this. We also only got 3 practice laps in this session too, which lead us into our Seeding Bracket Battle.

In the Seeding Battle, we were faced against Luis Lanz. He is a rookie this year running a blue corvette. I was feeling very confident about battling him, since I was driving so well in practice and I have been to SLC 3 years now. I was the Lead driver first, so I go out and run my lap! Unfortunately, FD removed the cones that showed the drivers where the outside of OZ1 was. They did this towards the end of practice because too many drivers were knocking them over excessively. This made it extremely difficult to see were the zone was now, since there was no longer a reference point. When I entered, I went deep into the zone, causing me to go two tires off the white line. Transitioning into OZ2, car was solid, riding the zone perfectly. I came out of OZ2 feeling spicy! Full throttle and on the edge! I transition into OZ3 perfectly and throttled down! But to my surprise, I was not in the zone? Why did this happen? I was hitting it perfectly all day in practice. My head was right, I felt confident about my battle, but for some unexplainable reason, I started OZ3 on the zone at first, and just fall away from it and I attempted to drive in it. Overall, throughout the entire run, I was pulling away from him in every zone, so I was hoping this would give me an advantage.

With no time to think about what happened, it’s time to switch and go again. This time I’m Chasing Luis. I know, I have to apply all the pressure. I need to be on this guy’s door! Lights extinguish, and we are off. I’m neck and neck with him, initiate into OZ1, and we make contact! It was such a small tap, but the cars become unsettled, but we stay in it. I was warned that his transition into OZ2 was slower than mine, so I knew I had to back down through the transition so I didn’t hit him. But, this time Luis wasn’t slow and he pulled away from me significantly. I caught back up with him towards the end of OZ2, but this put me in his smoke trail. I can’t see anything. This happens sometimes in drifting, and as a driver, you just have to drive through it. It can be intimidating driving a race car at its maximum potential in an environment where you can’t see anything. But I can’t shut it down and straighten up, that would be an incomplete. So I drive through the smoke line. In doing this, I go two tires off and smack the pillion that marks the end of OZ2. My side mirror folds in from the impact, and glass fires off in a hundred pieces towards me. My helmet visor is down, and my suit is on, so I am ok and unaffected by this. All I can think about is staying on the throttle and transitioning into OZ3. I do this, significantly behind Luis now, but somehow managed to stay in drift and catch up to him by the end of the run. WOW! I sent it! I didn’t let up one bit, despite the imperfections. Unfortunately, this was not enough to get the win. Luis did a great job in OZ3, and since I did not, he got the win and moved onto the competition the next day.

If you have been following me all year this season, you know I have been struggling with mechanicals this entire season. This has not been a fun year for me in FD. I’m spending all my time and money fixing a car that I have not been able to drive. It was SO awesome to finally be able to drive my car this year. We exhibited zero mechanicals all weekend. I wish I could have had more than 6 laps of practice, but I know every driver had that same problem. We ended the event on Saturday with the Drivers Banquet, which include dinner and awards. This is always a fun way to end the season. I can’t believe it is already over! I have many events left to do outside of FD this year, but we have lots to do during the offseason! Now that the teething of the new motor is over, we can focus on continuing reliability, making the car lighter, and more balanced correctly to be more competitive next year!

Coming out of New Jersey, the team and I knew we needed to make some changes. We had the subframe basically welded directly to the chassis with some square tube just to get through the rest of the event in Jersey, so some major changes needed to be made. 

I bought a new subframe, had Commited Service Brand modify it up for the quick change the week after NJ. Gary and I got to work quick. We swapped out the whole rear subframe, and we also swapped out every single rear arm. We changed the angle of the FDF rear knuckle in order to pull some anti squat out of the car, which in turn made the wheel base almost 1in longer in total. 

After a couple hours on the alignment rack at County Line Auto Body (some of you may know this name, they have a massive drift history) the car was ready to go. We did a very similar alignment to the car as I did 2 years ago, the last time I competed in St. Louis, which I got 4th place at. 

Now I hate this track. I hate it a lot. I don't think it's a great competition track anymore, I feel the cars and FD has outgrown the current layout. It's literally a drag race to turn 1, full throttle, then massive slow down for turn 2, then full throttle than an even worse slow down going into the final turn. It doesn't make for the best looking tandems, and it's really not that fun to drive in my opinion. To top it off, they changed OZ4 this year, made it a decreasing radius turn, and it decreased fast. Essentially they turn OZ4 into a "V" shape due to the speed we enter it at. Felt horrible in the car, and looked worse. 

However with that being said, the St. Louis area has a massive drift community. So as much as I dislike the track, I love the fans that show up. They are always so amped!

There was a little bit of luck on my side this round, I ended up having a bye run in my seeding bracket battle, but only due to Richard Advani blowing up his motor. Not the way we wanted to win, but with the year we are having, I'll take a little bit. But even with that, in my Bye Run, my power steering rack shifted and made me look like a scrub. Unreal right?! Quick fix, but still annoying. 

Getting that win put us up against my good friend Cory Talaska. Dude is an absolute ripper. Last time I competed in St. Louis, we faced eachother and I came out on top. Always exciting to battle a good friend, because it just gives you that extra little boost. As much as you want your friends to do good, when you are on the line next to them, you want to be that 1% better. 

​The battle starts and I'm in the chase first. He gaps me a bit to turn 1 becuase I spun the tires leaving the line, I close the gap going into OZ2, set the car and I'm ready to put it on his door. I floor the car and before I even knew what happened, I spun out. Out of nowhere. It didn't make any sense. I've never spun that car out before. And as far as I knew, the car was settled and I was ready to jump on him. I finish the lap up, and I'm just not happy. Now for my turn to lead. I throw down a heater. One of my better laps of the whole weekend. Ofcourse, an amazing lead run but I spun out in the chase. Easily gave the win over to Cory. Which again, as much as you want your friends to do good, it also burns just that little bit more when you make a mistake and it's not just an all out battle. 

So that ended our weekend right there. We got some points that we needed. Not enough, but some! The pros are the car worked great. The suspension is perfect. Other than an oil change, we are ready to go to Gridlife Lime Rock before shooting over to Utah for the last round of the year. See y'all in Lime Rock! 

​WORDS: Ricky Hofmann
PHOTOS: Caitlin Ting

NST - NonStopTuning
www.NonStopTuning.com

Join Alex Lichliter and the team for a recap of the third round of the 2024 Formula Drift ProSpec season, in St. Louis! From battles on track, to diagnostics and changes made to the car, to our mega raffle, this one has lots of bonus footage including all the extra fan interaction. You may even spot yourself or your friends!

NST - NonStopTuning
​www.NonStopTuning.com

FDSTL
Wednesday – Load in
​
LETS FREAKING GO!!! We had a HORRBILE round at NJ and redemption is finally here! I made it to the Great 8 at STL before so spirits are high! Car is running great, team morale is fantastic, and I couldn’t be more prepared for this round. I even pre-mounted all my tires so that was just one less thing we would have to do at FD. We arrive several hours earlier than anticipated.  Unloading and setting up legitimately took an hour or so and we were done with everything around 1pm. Weather was truly astonishing! Low 80’s during the day, and 60’s at night. Historically speaking, this place has high temps in the 100’s and severe tropic thunderstorms. We are drowning in good vibes! We decide to head to our Airbnb, freshen up, and go out for a nice team dinner.

Thursday – Practice/Seeding 
​
We arrive at the track comfortably at 8:45am. There’s a Track Walk at 9:30am, which is extremely important to do as a team. Mechanics/spotters get to see the variables you don’t get to see on tv. Camera men get an idea where they want to shoot. And let’s be real, it’s fun to be out there as a team scoping it all out. We did notice the track workers installing jersey walls along OZ1. This is unique, because there has never been a wall there before. Seems like they were also painting new lines for all the zones, which is great for us drivers so we can see the track clearer while racing. As soon as the Track Walk ended, it was time for our Drivers Meeting. In the Drivers Meeting, we had some concerns. Apparently, the jersey walls they were installing for OZ1 were not “pinned.” The act of pinning jersey walls, combines the walls into one whole wall. This is for safety, so that if you were to hit a wall, they would all move together upon impact. Without them pinned, any wall that hits would move, leaving any unaffected walls sticking out. This is super alarming, and as drivers we were concerned of our safety performing our best in a dangerous environment.  Also, OZ4 was not painted entirely, and there was previous paint that was in the wrong places. This was making it challenging to see where the zone was. We were told that they were looking for solutions, and would communicate them to us as soon as possible. 
​
Practice is scheduled to begin at 12:15pm and its allotted for 90 mins.  FD was able to make the wall in OZ1 safer by adding a second set of jersey walls against the first set. This should prevent jagged corners upon impact. But adding this second wall, cut into our practice time. They were trying their best, but we lost about 20 mins of practice because of this. Then, just after a few drivers had gone out for a few laps, there was a bad incident. One of the drivers had hit the wall in OZ1, and the car actually rode up ONTO the wall. So a crane had to come in to remove the car off the wall, and this process took about 45 mins. Overall, this practice session only ended up being about 30 mins long which only gave me one practice lap before it was over. All the drivers were denied extra practice time due to these variables. 

During our break, the mechanics pulled the data log and discovered that the Intake Air Temperatures (IAT) were very high (240 degrees)! When the IATs are this high, the computer will adjust timing to protect the motor. This process takes away horse power, and makes it run more lean which is how motors can blow up. After they told me this, I did feel like the car was down on power towards the end of the run. But it was so hard to gauge, since it was my only lap. Luckily, we had some time to fix it before our next 90 min practice session at 4pm. We were able to swap out fluids, bleed out any potential air bubbles, add an additional fan, and hope for the best!

For our second practice session, we were able to get 3 laps in. We now were experiencing an additional issue with the driveline. It appears that the clutch isn’t holding up to the torque of the motor. Quick side story: the clutch is a very important, expensive part of any race car. We had some issues with the previous clutch, and were unable to source the correct replacement in time for this round (since NJ was so close to STL). So, as a temporary solution in a pinch, we knowingly put in a clutch that had a lower power rating than the previous clutch. We had hopes that it would hold, just for one weekend and get us through the competition. To be fair, this clutch was still functioning, but under hot temps, it was not holding up to what we needed. This, in combination with high IATs, resulted in us discontinuing practice and letting the car cool to get ready for our Seeding Bracket Battle. 

We are scheduled to be the 4th battle in the Seeding Bracket. We are battling our friend Rudy Hansen. We have driven with him many times, and have even battled here before. Rudy is now a PRO driver, but he is also participating in PROSPEC as well. This is unique, and not many drivers do this. Nevertheless, this allows him to get twice as much practice, twice as much Seeding Battles, and competition time. To be more competitive in PRO, he also had to upgrade his power to over 1,000hp. Given the current conditions on my car, he’s most likely almost double what I have. Luckily, this is one of the most slowest, technical courses in FD, so I’m not intimidated by any of this. If anything, I’m hoping for an advantage. 

​The first battle was a bye run, so that went quickly. The second battle someone called their time out, so they skipped that one. The third battle a driver didn’t show up, so that person won by default. So long story short, Rudy and I were the actual first real tandem battle. This is why you HAVE to be ready at any time! He Leads first, I chase. Instantly off the line, he pulls car lengths away from me. Maybe horse power is playing a bigger factor than I anticipated. No problem, I’ll catch up to him throughout the course! But I was wrong, every turn he was able to pull away leaving me in the dust. It was my turn to Lead. I maintained drift throughout the entire course, but I was shallow everywhere. I was just trying to drive through the mechanicals the best I could. It had nothing to do with grip. Infact, we added air pressure to the rear wheels before going out to help loosen the car.  I was able to run the course correctly, there wasn’t any collations or spin outs in either run. At the end of the day Rudy had won and I was knocked out. 

This has been my most challenging year in FD. Everyone tells me that I have been too lucky in the past with having such a reliable car. They are telling me I’m finally paying my dues. They are telling me every driver has the one year that was just so terrible and this is my year. They tell me I’ll look back years later and say 2024 was horrible, so glad that’s over. These are all inspirational things to say, but at the end of the day, it sucks. I have the best sponsors, the best team, and the best support I have ever had year to date. To be going through this now is SUCH bad timing. I guess there’s never a “great” time, but I know I can drive. I want to show everyone. You have all seen me drive well in the past, or at other events outside of FD. The final round of PROSPEC is in Salt Lake City – my favorite track. We have about 29 days to get the car prepped and out there. That’s not much time, but I HAVE TO DO GREAT. I HAVE to show my team, and my sponsors that their hard work, time, and investment is worth it. Its emotional for me to even write this all out. It’s not fun losing. 

I’m looking forward to telling you guys how I do in SLC, because it’s not going to be a sad story. It will have victory! I have one moment, one more opportunity to make it all work. I’m not giving up. I’m going for it. See you soon =]

Let's just start off by say FDNJ is a very special event to me. It's a home town event, being that it's less than 15 min from my house, and I was one of the first people to test the track after it was paved. 

Having a terrible showing it Atlanta due to car issues, we made sure the car was perfect. I even went to drive a couple events before FDNJ,  the car performed flawlessly. Vibes were high. The car was good. We are local, and ready to kill it!! 

Practice number 1 comes around, and I'm the first car in line to do a lead run. I have zero stress that I'm going to lay down a heater lead run to start the day. We have the car set up perfect, and everything. I pitch the car hard into turn 1, car feels great. I transition and this is where stuff goes wrong. The car goes to over rotate and almost spins me out going into turn 2. This made zero sense to me, I've driven this track a ton of times and this has never happened. The track felt really slick, lacking grip for some reason. I thought it was that, and I finish the lap. I get back into the practice line, and my team is checking the car out a little, and they tell me something looks off in my rear suspension. I drive back to my pits, and the back end seems to be walking around when I'm going around turns. Well this seems to be the reason why I almost spun the car out. 

Hoping it's going to be an easy fix, we aren't stressed or anything. We jack up the car, take the wheel off and to everybody's surprise, the passenger side traction arm mount is pushed forward into the chassis, and the toe arm mount is starting to rip off the subframe. We are mind blown. There was no hit, I didn't go off track, we were mind blown for this amount of damage. Now over the course of the year, in years past, we typically bend the traction arm mount forward. It's a common issue on S chassis subframes, but for it to happen this fast in the year, and this aggressive, we were shocked.
With no choice, we pull the wheel back to the around about area it should be, and I start to weld the subframe back in place. We add some metal in places, and do whatever we can to make this hold for the event. Finish up welding, we toe plate the car, get back in line for practice and just as I'm about enter the burnout box, practice is over. We didn't get to make a lap. 

We are a little beaten up now, it's 98 degrees out, and just a little shocked. But the vibes are still good. The car is fixed. We are ready for practice session 2. Practice session 2 starts, we go out there to make a lap, and the car just does not feel good. We managed to put down a decent lead lap, but it wasn't at the pace we wanted, and the car just felt like the rear was dancing around on me. We make some shock adjustments, and get back into line. I go to make my next run, and throwing the car into turn 3, bam the car losses what feels like all grip and tries to turn me around again. I'm thinking maybe we killed the tires earlier than expected. We go back to the pits, and to our shock, the driver side traction mount of the subframe ripped off, even worse than the passenger side one did earlier today. We are in shock and mad and just totally disgusted in what is going on. We rush to get the car up and welded just like the other side. But with this side being even worse, we have to add metal in, trying to wedge back the traction arm as much as we can. Hammering and pulling with ratchet straps. And it's just not going well. 

With time running out because now practice 2 is over, and it's time for comp. I put enough metal in there to hold, we have just enough time to put a fresh set of tires and out we go right to the burnout box. No time to align the car. Out we go. Comp time. I have 2 full laps under my belt for the day. The car has an unknown rear alignment. It's patched together with some random metal we found, but it's time to throw down.

We warm up the tires, get in line and here we go. I know the track. I'm confident, just need my car to hold up for me. We go out there and throw down a decent chase. The car wasn't as responsive as I wanted it to be. It didn't have the grip it normally had for me to run up on people. But it was good, and we made it through it. Now time for the lead run. I hard charge to turn 1, throw the car in, and it doesn't flick out the way it normally does for a lead run. Not sure if it was from the alignment, the car being super hot since it's not over 100 degrees. But the car is not acting right. I miss outter zone 1 by a good foot. Which in drifting is a mile. I throw the car into turn 2, and nail outter zone 2. I nailed the inner clip perfectly, and I throw it hard into outter zone 3 perfectly. Came across the finish. I'm happy we got through the battle. The car is still together. Had a little mishap on outter zone 1 but I'm just hoping my opponent had a mistake somewhere to push the needle my way. 

Unfortunately for me, he did not. He has a good lead and a good chase. Me missing outter zone 1 by 1 foot, just ended my weekend. Ended my weekend at my home track, and another horrible weekend for the team. We get the car back to the pits, check out the rear of the car and it is wacked out. The alignment is no where near, one wheel is basically jamming itself into the chassis of the car so bad, there is a mark from the tire and rim rubbing the chassis under load. But it's what we had to work it. For what we had, it was a decent showing but still not what we as a team are capeable of. Tough start to the first half of the season, and we are looking forward to St. Louis to show what we can do! 

Join Alex Lichliter and the team for a video recap of the second round of the 2024 Formula Drift ProSpec season, in New Jersey. 

NST - NonStopTuning
www.NonStopTuning.com
​

#FDNJ – Event Recap
I’m going to start off this recap a little differently than previous ones. This is to help depict what ended up being the most challenging round of Formula Drift in my entire 4-year career. 

Formula Drift has a rule that states: ”Track rental and testing is prohibited 14 calendar days prior to the start of Formula Drift practice at that event track.” All the drivers in FD come from all over the world. So if you were to come to a track privately, let’s just say three days before the event started and got a bunch of practice, this would be considered an unfair advantage to the other drivers. But there’s nothing in the rulebook about day 15. For this round, I went to Englishtown 15 days before FD kicked off (June 4th). This allows me to dial in my gearing, suspension settings, sway bars, etc. The idea is that if I get this all sorted out 15 days before the event, I can spend less time dialing in the car and focus more on driving when we get to FD in two weeks. During testing, the car was down on power. We realized Intake Air Temperatures (IAT) were high, and discovered that the electric water pump for the supercharger wasn’t flowing correctly. We replaced the bad pump with a backup spare (thanks Trevor). We were excited to see better performance after the repair, but the car was still down on power. In our efforts to diagnose it, the motor ended up BLOWING UP! Cylinder 7 piston exploded into a million pieces all in the engine. We packed up the car and came home sad…

In hindsight, we now have 14 days to come up with a solution. My car has a 5.3lt LS engine in it. It has stock pistons, stock rods, stock valves, etc. It only has a few upgrades in it (pushrods, trunnion bearings, and a cam). It was put in back in 2016, lasting EIGHT YEARS in FD PRO/AM & PROSPEC (supercharged for 7 of those years). This motor doesn’t owe me a single thing. As much as we LOVE to upgrade parts when they break, getting a replacement 5.3lt LS sounds the fastest route to go. Getting a motor that I know “this bolt goes here” & “that connector plugs in here,” will minimize the hiccups along the way. To better ensure this method, I chose to purchase a brand new 5.3lt LS from Summit Racing. This engine is brand new, very similar build to my old engine (stock pistons, stock rods, stock valves, etc). It does have a cam in it, and it makes 450hp. I ordered it on June 5th (the day after my motor blew). Summit estimated that I would receive the motor on Weds, June 12th. So I had one week to remove the old blown up motor, and prepare for the new engine. Upon disassembly, I discovered that the Magnuson Supercharger had a broken IAT sensor, needed replacement plenum gaskets, and was missing half of the RTV that holds the heat exchanger in place causing hot air to surpass around the cooler giving higher IAT’s. So I had to do a mini rebuild to my supercharger.

Weds comes, and the tracking is not showing any updates. After endless phone calls, the only thing I was told was that my motor was on some truck in America and it would show up anywhere from weds the 12th (which we knew that wasn’t going to happen) to Tues the 18th (which that’s not an option because we have to be at FD on weds the 19th). I contemplated going to Nashville and purchasing a completely different motor, but was running into too many logistics about that. Finally got a friend to source the Summit motor and discovered it would be in Delaware the next day (Thurs 13th). So I choose to go retrieve it mid-day Thursday, bring it home, get it on a motor stand and prepare for tear down. I had to tear the brand new motor down to put head studs in it. This Summit motor came with head bolts and studs are required for boosted applications. We also swapped my chrome molly push rods and rocker arms over since they had upgraded trunnion bearings in them. After tossing new head gaskets on it, the engine assembly was completed, the night had ended around 2am. Friday I went to install the motor and trans together to put them back in the car. unfortunately, the motor and trans did not mate well and fighting it all night, I threw in the towel around 2am. Saturday, we finally get the motor and trans together and in the car. It's time to fire up the new engine! After many cranks, we got it to start and it ran horribly. This resulted in another 3am night.

Sunday, we complete most of the work and are ready for dyno tune on Monday at InsaneWayz performance shop in VA @3pm. The car continued to run horribly. InsaneWayz thought we should put the old push rods/rocker arms back in (which I left home in MD) and also confirm timing was correct. We decided to take it back to MD Monday night with no tune to diagnose what was happening. Monday night we tear down the front end of the motor and confirm timing. We also swap rods/rockers. Motor still runs bad. Another 3am night. Tuesday, we are limited with assistance and decided to take the car back down to VA for the tune and hope to diagnose it correctly at the shop. After extensive checks, we determine that the even side of the motor (bank 2) didn’t have spark or fuel. The electrical connector for the ignition coils ground wire had failed. It had a break in the wire, and we ran a jumper from the odd side to the even side to give it proper ground. THE CAR RUNS! Finally! Excited with joy, but only an hour away from dyno tune so it was time to button it up and be ready. We decided to swap the Summit rods/rockers out and put my performance ones in from the previous motor. Car runs horribly again. Using an extremely large micrometer, the push rods are different length. The Summit motor has 7.2” and the old motor had 7.4” so we swap the Summit parts back in and are now ready for dyno @6pm. Get on the dyno, and discover that the fuel pump was losing fuel pressure under boost. This is causing the motor to run lean, and was probably the reason for the original engine blowing up. We had to pause the dyno tuning and put a new fuel pump into the fuel tank. Also had to address some wiring as well. Fuel pump fixes fuel pressure issues and we are able to continue forth with the dyno. Another limitation presents itself. Now we are starting to slip the clutch on the dyno. The tuner had to stop tuning once the clutch started to slip to attempt to let the car be drivable at FD. We left Insanewayz at 1am, getting home at 3am.

​It’s now early on Wednesday morning. We are supposed to be at FD and we haven’t even loaded up the trailer/tires/clothes. We somehow finish packing and are on the road by 1pm. Every single night that I have depicted to you was only made possible by my friends, family, and teammates who came and helped out till 3am every night to get me to FD. Absolutely insane that everyone rallied with me and chose to push their mind/bodies to the extreme. I truly am the luckiest guy in the world and I love everyone who has helped me in my most valuable time in my racing career. 

Weds – Load in
We arrive at Englishtown, NJ around 5:30pm. It's 95 degrees. Lost looking for our assigned pit space, we discover by the luck of the drift gods that we are pitted over on the PRO side. This has never happened to us before. It appeared that there was only about 6 PROSPEC drivers pitted on the PRO side and this was a fantastic marketing spot for us. I’m excited for the increase of foot traffic, making our location a wonderful opportunity to sell merch, engage with fans, etc. This stimulated good vibes amongst all of us on the team. Being that we all live so close to this round, each teammate had different sleeping arrangements. A few of my guys were planning to drift on Sunday funday at ProBroDown so they drove their own trucks/trailers with their drift cars. Most of us camped for the weekend. With scrambling to get to FD, there were a lot of things that still needed to be done. The car needed a nut and bolt check, we had to set up our pits. Around 9pm, it was discussed that the slipping clutch should be talked about. By midnight, we decided to pull the trans and replace the clutch. The stubborn pilot bearing and lack of sleep from endless nights made for a long night. I went to bed at 4am. The guys, 5:30am. 

Thurs – Practice / Seeding Bracket
The day started early with a driver's meeting at 7:30am. Everyone was drained. But everyone was in high spirits, as the car was now completely ready! Energy drinks for everyone, the breakfast of champions! It's 96 degrees today, and everyone is feeling it.  Practice started at 10:15am. It was 90 mins long, followed by a break, then a second practice for another 90 mins giving us a total of 3hrs of practice before the Seeding Bracket Battles. Every single time we got in line to go do a practice lap, once we entered the burnout box to scrub tires, we ripped off the serpentine belt. During the total of 3 hours, we went through 3 belts. We tried everything. We swapped all pulleys on the tensioner and idler. We replaced the brand new tensioner with another spare as a precaution. We determined that our brand new OEM crank pulley that came with the new motor, was wobbling while running. We also discovered that the alternator bracket had a hairline crack in it causing the alternator and the idler pulley to slightly move under load. We attempted to weld it, but it was missing alignment shims. We tried manufacturing those shims trackside. We even tried purposely cutting the belt from a 6 rib to a 5 rib just to see if it would stay on. But despite all of our efforts, we simply just ran out of time. We were scheduled to battle Justin Chestnut in the Seeding Bracket and we had to defer. We had to call it, and our weekend was officially over.

Friday – Top 32
Spirits were down. Temperature was 97 degrees. The team feels defeated. Of course they want me to be on the podium, but I just wanted to reward them by showing them they had fixed the car and could be raced on the track! Just seeing that would have yielded some form of accomplishment. Later in the evening, I did participate in the autograph signing for the fans at 5:15pm. I always truly love rapidly engaging with the vast amount of people that come through the line.

Saturday – PRO Competition 
PROSPEC no longer participates in scheduled activities on Saturdays. The day was spent repairing the car and attempting to get it ready for ProBroDown on Sunday. The last thing we needed to get the car right was that alternator bracket which I was unable to source in time. This confirms that I cannot drive on Sunday either. This was the hottest day at 98 degrees.

Sunday – ProBroDown
Typically, at every FD event, Sunday is funday. If a FD driver is local, or wants to hang out an additional day, we can drift with local sanction that runs events at that track throughout the year.  This is a neat experience because local grassroots drivers can register to drift that day, and the FD drivers drift with them. I remember when I was a grassroots driver and this was my favorite event of the year! I would be able to drift with my role models! It was just the coolest thing. Now that I am in FD, I’m so excited to do this, however, with my car still throwing belts until I can get an alternator bracket, I’m stuck spectating once again. Two of my crew mates have their own drift cars with them, so I decided to switch roles and be their mechanics. This made me feel good, considering the weekend. We left around 5pm and made a stop on the way home to get an alternator bracket. We arrived back home in Maryland around midnight and I’m officially, 100% drained.
​
*Monday I unload everything and put the replacement alternator bracket on. It took about 15 mins to complete, the car is fixed and no longer throwing any belts.

Join Alex Lichliter and the team for an in-depth look at the start of the 2024 Formula Drift ProSpec season, in Atlanta GA. Alex is back with a more heavily modified car, more crew members, and more media, all looking to make this their best season to date!

The start of every single FD event is pretty similar. Prep starts about a week before the actual event. Packing the truck, making sure you have every single spare part and tool you can possibly have, along with all of the wheels and tents. It doesn't matter how ready you think you are; you'll always forget something. (Side note: Sure enough, I forgot my toothbrush, so I had to buy one at a gas station when I got down there.)

At 12:30am Tuesday morning, my friend and media person, Sara, arrived at my house so we could start the trip down. Being that it's about a 12-hour trip, we started early so that we could skip past DC traffic and make solid time. I prefer to do long hauls at night just to make my life a bit easier on the road. About 4 hours in, we stopped at a rest stop in Virginia to pick up longtime friend and media person Mike Prez. Mike finally made his way out of the truck parking lot and found us since his girlfriend parked in the wrong spot. He and I used to do a ton of road trips together, mostly doing drift demos around the country. Headed off on the road again, Sara jumps in the back seat and knocks out almost instantly. This left Mike and myself to talk about the car and life in general, all while jamming to some music to keep each other awake. 

We got to the track around noon and started the unloading process. It's pretty funny how fast you can unload what takes about a week to load. We got the car together and hopped right over to tech. Tech was pretty easy and simple. I went right through pretty much. A bunch of guys from the FD crew were happy to see me back with a car since I took last year off, which was a nice feeling. After tech, we got to go back to the pits, close up house, and shoot to the air bnb. 

Wednesday, we got to the track around 8 a.m., continued to set up, and hit the drivers meeting. The drivers meeting was pretty straight forward, with judges telling us what they wanted to see. Most of the drivers were dissatisfied with the little details here and there. It's how every drivers meeting goes. After drivers meeting was a track walk, which was nice seeing that I haven't been here since 2016 Gridlife. I walked the track with one of my crew members, Matt Schulman, and we went over some different parts of the track as well as how we were going to set the car up. After the track walk, we went to the pits to set the car up for a test session across the street at Lanier that Dustin Miles set up for all the drivers. 

Finally, it was time to drive my car at full tilt after about 6 months. We had one test day prior, but it didn't go well, and we had to cut it short, unfortunately. Then, with typical New Jersey weather, we didn't get back to testing, so we had to settle to drive the test day at Lanier. I had never been there before, but it was a fun track. It was a bank track, which I love, and it was somewhere in between Orlando and Irwindale for a size comparison. I got to warm the tires up and sent it hard right off the rip since there was limited time. Matt had the car set up well and fast right off the jump. I was hyped by how good the car felt. Fast but controllable, with plenty of room to go either way, we can make the car exactly what we need. Then I cut a few more laps, found some small issues that we fixed, and it was back across the street to get the pits ready for the next day, which was practice and seeding bracket. 

Woke up on Thursday to the worst thing that can happen when trying to learn a new track with a new car. Rain. And not just steady rain, but patchy rain. The worst of the worst. The first practice session went decent; I got a total of 4 laps in just about 2 hours. I wish we could have had more, but with people breaking down and going into the kitty litter, that's all we got. Just before the second practice session, it started to rain hard. The track was completely wet, so we changed the setup on the car for a full wet track. Then, of course, just as I went into the burnout box, sunlight came out. I made a full wet lap, which was decent. Not what the team wanted, but we got through it as we needed to. The next lap was patchy, and I followed somebody who spun out, so that lap got cut short. Without fail, just as I was about to do my third lap, the car started to act up. It was running rough, and not happy. We headed back to the pits and started to mess with everything and anything. We plugged into the Link and couldn't find anything in the log telling us why the car was acting up. Practice was now over, and we got a total of 6 laps. Four of the six were full laps. Well, onto comp we go. 

My seeding bracket was actually against my good friend Matt Bystrak. As much as it sucks going against a really good friend, it's also fun. We had been talking smack for weeks to each other. So much smack talking that Andy Luk from FD got in on it and made a bet with us that the loser takes a whip cream pie to the face.

We line up with Matt, and my car starts to act up again. He leads first, I chase him down the hill, enter with him, transition back, and the car bogs. It created a bit of a gap, but not a ton. I chased him down a bit. We finished the lap clean. He had a good lead, so I knew I needed a heater.
​
It was my turn to lead. Sitting at the line, the lights went off. I went to give the car throttle, and it bogged down. I shut it down and forced a restart. I gave the car some throttle blips; it seemed to have gone away. Okay, let me try again, I said. I was in my head like crazy now, but I shook it off. Lights went off, down the hill I went, chucked it into turn 1, went to get on throttle, the car bogged, catching more grip than I wanted, and pushed me just too far out that I dipped tires off the track. I stayed in it, climbed the hill into oz2 and then 3, got the inner clip, and all the way to the finish, the car felt great. The judges went over the replays a few times, but unfortunately, just me going off track with the rear of the car for just a second was enough to give Matt the win. Just like that, the weekend is over. 

Well, not fully over, as I then had to face the grim reaper, AKA Andy Luk, and take a whip cream pie to the face. Not my finest moment in FD history, but when you make a bet, you have to own it when you lose. All in good fun. 

That wrapped up the weekend pretty quickly from there. I did some fan exposure, talked to a ton of people, and had a great time watching Pro go out and put on a freaking show. 

I got the car back to Jersey in one piece, and my crew chief, Gary, actually found the issue that we couldn't find at the track. The car is all fixed up and ready to kill it in Jersey in a few short weeks! Other than my car bogging, everything else was literally perfect. Every NST part that was brand new performed flawlessly and looked even better than it did. As much as the weekend was a big loss, the car made it home in one piece, and that's more than some people can say. We live to fight another day. See y'all in Jersey!! 

WORDS: Ricky Hofmann
PHOTOS: Caitlin Ting

NST - NonStopTuning
www.NonStopTuning.com