Join Jayce Habich and crew for a recap of the second round of the 2025 Formula Drift ProSpec Championship in New Jersey. Jayce shares about his battles in the Thursday seeding bracket, taking him all the way to a seeding bracket podium! The video continues to cover the rest of the event, including Friday's Top 32 action and more!

NST - NonStopTuning
www.NonStopTuning.com

Tuesday - Arrival

We pulled into Old Bridge Township Raceway Park on Tuesday night around 11 pm. The track didn’t open until Wednesday for load in so we camped out in a trailer we rented on RvShare. It was only a 14-hour road trip this round from Atlanta, where we stored our car with good buddy Taylor Hull. Major thank you to him, he let us stay with him a week before the event and finish fixing our car.

Wednesday - Testing/Load In

We grabbed my spotter from the airport at 6:30 am and stopped at Walmart to get groceries for the week. We also had to go to Harbor Freight and Lowe's to make a special cord to power the RV with our generator. After doing all our running around we set up our space in the pits. Chris Napp held a testing session at the road course all day so I texted him and got it all cleared to come over to dial in the car. Jack Davis, Chris Forsberg, Nate Chen, and Coty Demster were all there too. Once again we were chasing a nitrous bug preventing the team from being able to dial in any suspension changes but the car still felt good. I put in 8 or 9 laps before feeling comfortable enough to go back to our pits and call it a night. As we got back our hometown photographer arrived, we picked him up, took him to the pits, and briefed him on how the schedule goes for Formula Drift. 

Thursday - Practice
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The team and I got going around 7:30 am to get the pit ready for practice. Despite multiple forecasts, the rain seemed to have gone elsewhere. The sun was out almost immediately. I zipped up to my drivers meeting at 8 am, thankfully the round 2 meeting was much more efficient than the first round, so I got out early and went out for the track walk. Englishtown is unique in that you can see the whole track perfectly from the stands. The only extra information that can be gathered on the track walk was the bumps in outer zone 2. I headed back to the pit to prepare for the first practice session of the day. 

The nitrous was still giving me issues so we left it off for the first session and focused on suspension. Despite the power deficit, the car still felt fast! I had to abuse my NonStopTuning handbrake to keep from flying off track but it saved me every time without fail. I Love that thing, the wheel too! Coming from a 15-inch to a 14-inch was a little daunting at first, but now that I am used to it, it keeps my elbows tight and offers more control with precise inputs.

I got to run with Allen Boss, Justin Ruth, and Dustin Miles all in the first session which was a blast! Only at FD do you get to drive with all the best around the country in the spirit of competitive drifting.

The top 8 battle was with my pit neighbor and Konig teammate Allen Boss. He’s a ripper in a supercharged 350Z. We’ve battled before in Utah last year and I got the win because his car did some funky stuff and spun out in front of me.

This time I wanted a clean battle for the fans. I took off for my lead and wall tapped perfectly into outer 1, Allen was right with me. On the transition to outer 2, I heard him get close and then fade away. Unfortunately, his car gripped up behind me and he had to shut it down or take me with him. His team had repairs to make so I received a bye run! ​

Friday - Competition Day

Fresh off a podium, the sun is shining, nitrous works, my confidence couldn’t have been higher. Due to the storm and rescheduling of the pro seeding bracket. We didn’t have anything until we warmed up at noon.

My top 32 battle was with Nik Jimenez. I’ve known about him for a while because he used to live and drift up in the Pacific Northwest. Warm-up went well and I got to practice with top-of-the-line competition, such as Collete Davis, Nate Chen, and Chris Leonard.

The car felt amazing and I came back to the pits to get ready for battle. We were on the bottom left of the bracket this time so we had a good amount of time to rest. The power went out after Chelle Hansen flipped so that created even more downtime.

Finally, I was up. Ranked lower than Nik I was in the chase position to start off. Nik and I left the line together and I initiated right on his door! After the first transition, I mimicked the line, and angle but left half of a car length through outer zone 2. On the final transition, I surged in and felt like I put a bow on the run.

Now it was time for my lead. I left the line and charged at outer zone 1 but my sim driving came back to bite me a little bit. On the Simulator the cars I drive have a little more power than my car, so I got too much in sim mode and initiated 2 car lengths too early. This caused me to be shallow in zone 1 and negatively affected Nik in the chase. The rest of the run was solid and we came across the line side by side giving the fans a great show, however, my mistake in 1 was enough for Nik to get the win. The judges got it correct, you have to put on a good lead run for the chase to be awesome as well, the judges are stressing it this season and I failed to do so for Nik.
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After 32 ended I went over to autograph signing and signed as many as they let me stay for. It was good to see the fans from the East Coast come out in full numbers. Even meeting some I connected with last year, it was a good time. 

Saturday - Pro Day

We got going at 9 am and brought my car over to the NonStopTuning booth to show off their parts. We sent the tent up and talked to fans about the event and NST products. This round’s NST raffle was a lot more enticing than Atlanta's because it was pouring down rain there. So I handed out tons of entry tickets and got the fans excited to come back at 6:30 pm for the raffle announcement.

The crew made lunch and I went back to the pits to eat lunch and watch pro top 32. The crew and I then went back over to the NST tent and assisted in the very popular giveaway. There were fans of all ages who were excited at the chance to walk home with a free NST product of their choice. There was a winner on the very first pull!

After getting the winner and everyone else who wanted to buy things straightened out, I went to the stands to watch pro top 16 to the finals, before calling it a night.​

Sunday - Pro Brodown

This round is special because on Sunday there is an event at the road course called Pro Brodown put on by Club Loose and Chris Napp. There pro-am and grassroots drivers get to share the track with real pros! I got in 5 or 6 laps before my power steering pulley disintegrated. On my way back to our pits Jordan Becker offered to let me drive his LS powered S14.9. Driving that thing was an absolute blast! Big thank you to him for trusting me with his beast of a machine. We wrapped things up at around 5 pm and began packing for our road trip to Ohio, where we were storing the car between rounds. 

Overall, I am incredibly proud of my team and our performance. Even though it was only the seeding bracket, a podium finish is a podium finish. We battled our way through each round in seeding and made a statement that we belonged here in FD. We will taste that top 16 and beyond this season, I know it.

The next round is in St. Louis, and I can’t wait. Fortunately for us, there are only 3 weeks between rounds 2, and 3 so the NonStopTuning S13 will be back before you know it, July 18-20.
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We’ll see you then!

​WORDS: Jayce Habich
PHOTOS: @johnhongproductions, @nickelbag_media

NST - NonStopTuning
www.NonStopTuning.com

Join Jayce Habich and crew for a recap of the first round of the 2025 Formula Drift ProSpec Championship at Road Atlanta.  Jayce covers everything from the weather, to a wild round of tandem action in top 32, to his crew working overtime in the aftermath of a big crash! 

NST - NonStopTuning
www.NonStopTuning.com

Monday - Prep

​The 2025 season is upon us! It feels like two weeks ago we were washing off the dust and dirt from Utah. I want to say what an honor and privilege it is to be a NonStopTuning Driver. My team, First Air Motorsports, and I are super excited to be representing the brand as we tour the country burning tires! We’ve made some serious upgrades to the car this offseason to make the car immediately more competitive. We’ve added a quickchange, a built dogbox transmission, and a birthday cake style intake setup for more power! Looking forward to what this season holds. We arrived at 2pm after our 44 hr road trip from our hometown, Monroe, WA. My brother “Tuna” made the trip with me and drove during the night so we could get in early. Instead of going straight to the track, we headed over to Outlaw Garage to do a thorough nut and bolt check. Outlaw Garage is Taylor Hull’s shop, so it is equipped with a lift and any other tool we could ever need to make last-minute adjustments. After checking every nut and bolt on the car, I set the length on all our spare tie rods so in the event I bend one, the crew can easily replace it without worrying about measuring the toe-in-toe-out. We wrapped up the night with some test pulls on the new 200 shot of nitrous. The car felt FAST. Like dangerously fast. After a couple of pulls, we sent the logs over to our tuner and got a hotel for the night.

Wednesday - Testing/Load In

​We grabbed my spotter from the airport at 6:30 am and drove through Atlanta traffic back to Road Atlanta to hook up to the trailer and tow the car across the street to Lanier Raceway. Our test time was from 9-11 am, but I didn't need the full time to know the car was ready. Lanier is a nice track, however, it’s an Oval. So it doesn't translate to the FD course. The only problem with the car was that it randomly ran on 7 cylinders. I put in an Amazon Alternator during the offseason, so we chalked it up to that and replaced it. I had a drivers' meeting at 1 pm, so I took off while the crew got their hard cards. A hard card is your credentials for going to all 4 rounds. After the driver’s meeting, I met the crew in the pits and brought all my wheels over to have fresh GT Radials installed. After we picked them up, we talked through our plan for the rest of the week. Our tow rig started leaking transmission fluid at some point during our journey, and with another road trip coming up, we decided to pull the transmission and replace the seal in the torque converter. We finished around 2 am just as it started to pour rain. We called it a night and zipped back to Airbnb.

Thursday - Practice

​Finally, time for some live reps. I’ve been driving my simulator as much as I can during the offseason, but there is no replacement for the real thing. We got to the track at 8 am for the track walk at 8:15 am. I don't pay much mind to the forecast because I’m one of the few Drivers who enjoys driving in the rain. Growing up driving and drifting in the Pacific Northwest rain is a constant possibility. I feel like rain evens the playing field, making it driver vs driver instead of car vs car. This year, Formula Drift added an outer zone on the rumbles coming down the hill as well as a touch-and-go leaving the Keyhole. This stops the lead driver from cutting the course down the hill to gap the car behind. I told my spotter the touch-and-go is a good idea, except, it does make the final transition a little more dangerous. That seemed to be the case as more cars hit the wall than ever before. During practice and comp, that wall took Kasey Kohl, Feras Qartoumy, Jack Shanahan, as well as myself. But we’ll get to that.

After walking the track, I got my picture taken for the broadcast, then jumped in my car to head up to practice. The seeding bracket was also today, however, we finished high enough in the standings last season to be automatically seeded in the top 32. This was nice because we knew we could just focus on dialing in the car instead of worrying about winning a battle to get into the top 32.

​We had two sessions of practice to work with. The first one was 9:45-11:15 am, and the second was from 1:15-2:45. The First lap of practice, my car was still misfiring. I brought it back to the pits, and the crew checked over everything and found that an ignition coil had worked itself loose. As a precaution, they then changed all of the coils and sent me back out. I did a couple more laps in the second session, but the misfire persisted. The good news is that the car felt amazing. I was linking the track just like the sim and staying on the door of people who would leave me in the dust last year. Not having the correct gearing last season really slowed my car down. With the quick change in the car this year, it just stays in the power. The second practice session ended, and we had to head back to the pits to watch the Seeding bracket. After a final nut and bolt check, the crew and I met up with Mike from NST at Texas Roadhouse for dinner. A couple of steaks and sweet teas later, we decided to head back to the Airbnb for some much-needed rest.

Friday - Competition Day

​Despite all of the forecasts calling for rain, we woke up to a dry, cloudy day. We all got to the track at 10 am and began setting up our pit area. The crew staged our merch area and loaded the truck for the hot pit while I was at the autograph session. I always love autograph sessions because you get to interact with fans of all ages. For some, it’s their first event, but others have been coming for 10+ years! As soon as autographs ended, I jumped back in my car and raced up to practice. It is important to get to practice as early as you can, or you will be stuck in the back of the line waiting for 40 drivers to go ahead of you. I ended up in the middle of the line running with Allen Boss. During my chase, I felt the motor start running on 7 cylinders again! Very frustrating, it felt like no matter what we changed, nothing worked. I pulled the car back into the pits for a final attempt at fixing it before our competition runs with Kelsey Rowlings. While pulling the ECU logs, Carlton noticed our problem only existed on the 200-shot of nitrous fuel map, we deduced that the 200-shot was pulling too much power. With practice time running out, we decided to turn off the 200 shot and run the 150 we ran all last season. My rationale was that I would rather have a car that fires on all 8 cylinders with less power than a more powerful car with a random misfire. The crew buttoned the car back up as I jumped in the driver's seat for one final practice lap. I got to the front of the line and noticed Kelsey was lined up in the chase position. This means she gets a chance to chase me right before we go into a live battle, good planning on her part. As I left the line, I immediately knew we had fixed the misfire. The car ran so well! I put down a heater lead, nailing all the zones while keeping a steady gap and giving myself and the crew a vote of confidence before we send it live in competition.

​The competition starts, and we are on the bottom left side of the bracket. This means we are the 7th or 8th battle of the day, so there were a couple of battles we got to watch before sending me to the line. The nitrous bottle we installed before battle had a leak, so we had to change it. Super glad we caught that before it all leaked out pre-battle. As I rolled to the line, I hit the nitrous purge and saw a white cloud indicating the spray was loaded and ready, easing my concerns and clearing my mind before battle. I chase first, so I line up in the left lane. I kind of have to line up crooked so I can see the start light over the air filter sticking out of my hood. I took off one light early, which is legal in the chase position, and gave me a great run on her going down the hill. I could have initiated a little closer, but I was still in a good spot coming up the hill into outer two. In outer two, Kelsey straightened and had to reinitiate, which allowed me to pull right up on her door in outer three. I was right where I needed to be on the inner clip and gave her a couple of taps on the door. The next transition was perfect, she filled the touch and go, and I was right on her door. One more transition to go. I still don’t exactly know what happened next. I went for the bumper sweep, and Kelsey’s rear bash bar became hooked on my front bash bar. Thinking I could still save it, I tried to back off, but we were hooked together like truck and trailer. Realizing all was lost, I tried my hardest to slow the car by grabbing both brakes as hard as I could before launching into the wall. It was the hardest impact I’ve ever had. Immediately after hitting, I noticed a fire in the engine bay, so I put my fingers on the fire suppression system and got ready to pull. Luckily, the fire went out before I pulled it because those cost thousands to replace. I exited the car and went to check on Kelsey; thank goodness she was alright. I then began taking videos to send to my crew so they could get replacements ready for a 5-minute timeout. As I investigated, I found too many things than we could realistically fix in a competition timeout, so I had the track crew take my car back to my pit area to assess the damage.

​The car was badly hurt. Pretty much everything suspension-wise in the right rear was toast. coilover, axle, tie rod, wheel, everything. Thankfully, we prepared this offseason to be able to rebuild the car if necessary, just didn't expect to be doing it so soon. That’s drifting though! The crew spent all night taking broken parts off and replacing them. We called it a night around 9 pm and went back to sleep. 

Saturday - Pro Day/Rebuilding

​Usually Saturday we hang out with the fans, watch pro, and have a kind of relaxed day after working so hard in the competition. We still got to interact with fans, but we were knee-deep in repairs. We arrived at the track around 10 am and resumed thrashing on the car. Now that we had a better idea of what all was broken, we made a plan for the coming days. With the car needing a frame shop, I decided to stay back in Atlanta through the week. That meant changing flights and arranging accommodations. After setting a plan, we continued to try to bend back what we could to get the rest of the rear suspension on to roll the car back in the trailer. After we finished,

I stopped over at the NonStopTuning booth to help out with their giveaway. At each event, you can come to the booth and grab a raffle ticket. Towards the end of the event, we choose one lucky winner to receive anything on the table they want for free! It’s an awesome opportunity to talk drifting directly with the fans and do some Q and A. Once the giveaway ended and everyone dispersed, we packed the car up and headed up to watch the Top 16 Pro competition.

​Overall, it was about as far from what we planned as you can get. However, I am incredibly proud of my crew. An event couldn’t go much worse than this one did and yet my crew didn’t so much as blink. They just kept their heads down until the job was done. I am lucky to have such a savage team by my side. Our NonStopTuning parts performed perfectly and looked even better while doing it. So happy to have the privilege of being their one and only driver this season. I can’t wait to get to New Jersey and perform like I know I can. We will be in the Seeding bracket, but it’s more of a blessing than a curse this year because Formula Drift is running the bracket to completion with 12 points on the line! It would be awesome to try and get some of the points back I missed out on in Atlanta. See you in New Jersey in a couple of weeks!

​WORDS: Jayce Habich
PHOTOS: @nickelbag_media, @johnhongproductions

NST - NonStopTuning
www.NonStopTuning.com

​NST - NonStopTuning
​www.NonStopTuning.com

NST - NonStopTuning
​www.NonStopTuning.com

Did you know NonStopTuning has the ability and expertise to offer special order items for tuners who require pulleys specifically machined to their unique needs? Need a custom pulley for your supercharger, crankshaft, alternator, or water pump?  We've been doing it for 20+ years, and we've got you covered!

Browse our website to see if we already offer what you need, and if we don't, please email us and provide a few photos of the pulleys you need (ideally off the engine and accessories) and we'll be happy to provide more info regarding availability and pricing after reviewing your pictures.

FAQ: 
Q: Can you make custom lightweight pulleys for any application?
A: Almost! We are one of very few companies with 20+ years of experience in this field.

Q: Can I send you measurements or do I have to send you my OEM pulleys?
A: In many cases we already have engineering data based on past experience and you can provide custom sizes for a quote, but we will need you to send in OEM pulleys if/when we do not have existing data.

Q: Do custom pulleys take long to manufacture?
A: Do to the nature of the beast here, and several external factors, custom pulleys can require 40-60 days to machine, anodize, and ship. Please don't wait till the last minute if you know your project is time sensitive. 

Q: Are custom pulley kits expensive?
A: We do our best to keep prices as affordable as possible, you can browse our website for an idea of what most our kits cost, of course custom one-off products always cost more. Feel free to email us for a quote and we'd be happy to do our best to help. 
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Q: Which custom pulleys are the most popular and why?
A: Supercharger pulleys are the most popular of all the custom pulleys we offer, because changing the size of a supercharger pulley directly affects boost/psi numbers, we also offer a larger number of lightweight crank, alternator, water pump, and power steering pulleys. All of these pulleys are very popular because the weight reduction (NST Pulleys are apx 70% lighter than OEM) leads to improved throttle response, better horsepower and torque delivery to the wheels, and better fuel economy.

It's a common topic of discussion among the Tuner crowd, the JDM fans, and the Euro builders.  Are your lug nuts aluminum or steel?  Should I sell a kidney and spend all my monies on titanium?  Or is Forged Steel strong enough to stand up to my track day wheel and tire swaps?

At NonStopTuning, we've invested 20+ years to develop The Best Parts at the most affordable price points.  Our Forged Steel Lug Nuts have been tested and proven under the harshest conditions.  Professional drifting (NST has campaigned quite a few cars in Formula Drift) is a sport in which drivers and teams often swap wheels and tires every two laps, resulting in a need for Lug Nuts to be removed and installed at least a dozen times per weekend.  Pro drift events are the perfect proving grounds for testing lug nuts, and NST Lug Nuts have passed the test with flying colors.

Forged steel is an alloy of carbon and iron compressed under extreme pressure.  Modern forged steel is constructed using specialized machines or hydraulic hammers, making it extremely hard and very strong. These will be your favorite Racing Lug Nuts for years to come!

20 Forged Steel Racing Lug Nuts Per Box
Colors: Red, Black, Blue, Gold, Puple, Neo Chrome

Forged Steel for extra strength and durability
Open top to accommodate long race studs
Compact size to fit small diameter wheel holes
60 degree taper seat for better contact area
​Backed by a full One Year warranty

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