Alec Robbins NST 350Z Formula Drift Orlando Recap

Going into Round 3, we were expecting a normal rain-filled event that always seems to take place in Florida. However as the days got closer, the weather ended up clearing with only a few spotty showers on practice day. We did what we could to get some laps in before qualifying, but the track conditions were not ideal. Things ended up drying up enough before qualifying to get a few good lead laps in during warm up. 

Qualifying in Orlando is always close because the layout is pretty simple once you get the flow of it. I was able to lay down a great run with a score of 90 that put us in 9th place. Unfortunately after qualifying we were doing some maintenance on the car and found a leaking rear main seal that had to be addressed.  Due to this being a night event, we had to wait until morning to get the new part. ​

Saturday morning we ended up running into a few issues during reassembly causing us to miss most of practice. I was finally able to get out for a practice lap only to discover the car had a bad vibration. After going over everything, we were unable to find the cause of the vibration and I knew that I would have to drive through it as best as possible. Going into competition, we had not had any chase practice. Our first battle placed us up against Darren Kelly in his Aston Martin, I laid down a great lead run and knew I had to just try and keep good proximity in the chase.  

I was able to run a pretty good follow through the first half of the course, however I ended up transitioning too soon and got lost through the smoke.  I had to hand brake a bit to keep from going off course and incompleting. That correction killed my momentum, causing me to fall back a bit on the second outer zone. Ultimately it was a close battle but we did not end up advancing into the Top 16, making this the first event that we were out in Top 32. ​

Luckily we were able to spend some time in the pits interacting with fans and watching the remainder of the competition which was a nice change of pace. We finally have the car home for maintenance after being on the east coast for the last 2 events and are hard at work getting it prepped for New Jersey in a few weeks!​

WORDS: Alec Robbins
​PHOTOS: @grandschemeviews_

NST - NonStopTuning
​www.NonStopTuning.com