Zandara Kennedy recaps her 2023 trip to Formula Drift New Jersey, detailing her first ever One More Time battle in Formula Drift!  Zee and her turbocharged JZ powered S14 are ready to charge on to St Louis!

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​Alec Robbins recaps his 2023 Formula Drift New Jersey weekend in his Supercharged LS powered Nissan 350Z.  Half way through the 20th FD season and looking to charge forward!

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In between ProSpec rounds 1 and 2 I got busy making adjustments to both car and driver to help prepare for New Jersey. This included flying to Orlando for a whirlwind trip to install nitrous into my car, extra training sessions in Taka Aono's 1JZ Is 300 (left foot + turbo practice), and arriving to New Jersey a few days early to get the S14 re-tuned and to do a day of testing.

Englishtown has an amazing support system, and Chris Napp helped us out with shop space, a truck and trailer to get the car to the dyno, and some track time.

As is common with drifting, nothing ever goes according to plan, and I ended up very glad for the extra time. The dyno went well, hearing the sound of the nitrous kick in was amazing - the car sounded so much more aggressive right away, and I was really excited to get out on track. Even though the forecast called for rain, we ended up testing in the dry, and while the engine performance felt amazing, I quickly noticed progressively heavier and heavier steering, especially closer to full lock, and then it became clear the pump had failed.

We replaced that pump rather quickly, and got back on track, only for the same symptoms to arise after just one lap. We made the call to replace the rack, the pump, and flush the system, which did solve the problem. In spite of all of the work on the car, I still went through 10 pairs of GT Radials – the car was definitely working!

I walked the track the night before practice and noticed many features that were not apparent on the livestream, including inches of flaking, caked on rubber, and steep drop offs towards the walls at the outside of the track.

The forecast for both the practice and qualifying days called for rain but that did not come before qualifying.  FD set up a dual burnout box for this event, and it was really efficient, allowing us to get a lot of laps in!  We battled a few small electrical issues, but I missed very few practice laps, keeping my crew busy by repeatedly ripping off the bumper on various walls.

Due to not qualifying in Atlanta, I was sitting on 0 points, and I had to qualify first. I was reasonably satisfied with my first qualifying run, though I did get a little deep into the wall, and I pulled a score of 67, which ultimately did not put me above the safe line and I went into the second round of knockout qualifying. I did my best to fix my second lap and received a 79.66, which was enough to put me in 30th place and I made the show.

The following day we had additional practice before competition and it rained heavily in the morning. While it started to dry up and dried up completely before the battles, I definitely struggled in the wet at the beginning of practice, and then as I was starting to get confident, I got a little too aggressive on the wrong line and slammed my driver's rear into the wall on initiation.  I relayed what I thought was damaged to the crew and rode with the car back to the pits. Luckily for us, I was one of the last battles in the top 32, and we were well prepared with spares.

By the time I made it back to the pits, my crew along with bonus Drift Cave team members GD and Matt Field, and FDF Race shop owner, Josiah Fallaise, were ready to go waiting for me. We assessed the damage and replaced the rear toe arm, a mounting bracket, bled the handbrake and removed, inspected and reinstalled the rear coilover.  I got very lucky - the wheel took the brunt of the damage and the rear arms worked as designed. We actually got the car back to the line more than 10 minutes before my battle.

My first battle was against Dmitry Brutskiy – a two time season champion for Prospec. Not the first battle I would have chosen, but I was excited for the challenge. It was a close battle and we initially thought we had taken it, but ultimately the judges called for one more time. In the second battle, I focused on correcting my chase run and being as aggressive as possible, and I definitely succeeded in that, however I was not as deep in the zones as Dmitry and ultimately the judges gave him the win.  Regardless of the outcome, I was happy that I was able to demonstrate that I could contend with one of the higher performing drivers in the ProSpec category. 

After competition, I once again had an opportunity to meet and interact with the fans at the autograph signing, and I was especially stoked to see so many female fans and a lot of French Canadians – people drive a long way to attend FD and it just speaks to the power of drifting to bring people together. I was also invited to be one of the drivers giving the track walk experience, and I really enjoyed chatting with the fans and explaining the track from my perspective.

From round 1 to round 2, I'm extre mely happy with my development as a driver. As we head towards round 3, I am Non Stop Training to put on an even better show in St Louis, and I couldn't be more happy to be working with the team that I have.

WORDS: Zandara Kennedy
PHOTOS: Ignition Source TV | Nickelbag Media

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Weds – Load in
Englishtown, NJ is probably my favorite FD event of the year. Both for the fans and the drivers. It has the highest attendance over any other round (30k spectators). It’s also only 3hrs away from where I live in Maryland, so it’s super convenient. We arrived at 3pm, got the car unloaded and set up our pit space. Tirestacks mounts all of our GT Radial tires for us, but they closed at 5pm so we squeezed that in to be better prepared for tomorrow. The team did a nut & bolt check over the car so that it was fully prepped and ready for practice in the morning. PS- this is the FIRST FD event that I am debuting my Wisefab angle kit. We all camped at the track at this round. I had my enclosed trailer, Chad had his Class A RV, so we were pretty set up! They guys stayed up, but I had a super boring night and totally went to bed early at 8:30pm.

Thurs – Practice / Qualifying
The day started early with putting the car in line for practice at 8am. As you guys know, practice has been shortened this year to only 3 hours so getting a good spot in line is crucial in order to get familiar with the track and its current conditions. While my team was getting the car prepped and ready in line, Mateen and I had a Drivers meeting to attend to at 8:30am. Practice was from 9am - 12:15pm (with a 15 min break halfway through). It had rained the night before, so conditions were wet! But we weren’t anticipating any more rain for the rest of the day so we decided to not waste too much time dialing in the car for wet conditions, considering it would most likely be dry within the hour. Practice went well. I felt extremely comfortable and the car was dialed in from last year’s data. We were able to get 8 practice laps! In fact, we had to stop practice about 30 mins early because we did not bring enough tires! I had brought 14, and we were down to 8. With qualifying approaching, we would only have 6 total for practice and comp the following day. This was NOT enough; it was time to source some tires!!! Shout out to Richard Advani for hooking me up with 10 more additional tires.

Qualifying started at 12:30pm. We were the 10th car to go, which was nice since I had just ended practice confidently and I could pick up right where I left off. I go out, run my qualifying lap, and did great! My qualifying run scored us a 76.33. I was pretty happy with that! But as I continued to watch the other drivers after me, I started to get nervous… Everyone was getting higher scores than me. It’s like I scored a 90% on my high school exam, but everyone else in the class got 91% or higher so overall, it doesn’t put me in the best spot in the class. The way that Knock Out Qualifying works is you do ONE qualifying run. Then, when every driver has done their one run, whoever is in the Top 24 is secured and in the competition the next day. For everyone else (the remaining 18 because there are 42 drivers), they have to do a SECOND qualifying run. Now, even if they did a perfect 100pt qualifying run on their second run, they would only be placed in the 25-32 section of the bracket. So watching every driver get a higher score than me made me wonder, am I going to have to do a second qualifying run? I was #24 and there was one more driver left to run. He is a fantastic driver and I was for sure going to get knocked down one more and put into #25th. But this is drifting, and anything can happen. Sure enough, he spun out resulting in a incomplete score, solidifying me in the Top 24 at 24th place! The team and I celebrated slightly, as we were making our way back to the pits to prepare to run again. Needless to say, the night was celebrated with good company, food, and smiles!

We ended the day with an autograph signing at 5:15pm. I spent the rest of the night engaging with fans and watching the show.

Round 4 of the formula drift pro series is in the books.  Nj is always a tough and intimidating track to drive.  With multiple dives into walled corners and super tight tandem action.  And this year didn't disappoint.

Through practice we focused more evenly on chase and lead laps than the previous events this year.  And I felt pretty good going into qualifying.  After initiating hard into oz 1 and getting back on throttle I came out of the zone a touch early.  I was able to dive into oz2 and 3 nicely however they dinged me hard on line through outer 1.  We ended up landing in 23rd place.

Going into competition we faced last year's event winner Travis Reeder.  We had a good chase run and held proximity and angle through the run, however Travis was fast and was able to hold slightly more proximity on us which ended up being the deciding factor and Travis moved onto the top16.  It was a big bummer going out in 32 but we were able to learn quite a bit and plan to come out swinging in st. Louis! 

We're celebrating 86 Day at our Irvine CA location this year, and you're invited! 

Free Event
9 am to 12 noon
Huge Discounts on All Items
Raffles & Prizes at the Event

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​Zandara Kennedy recaps her first trip to Atlanta for Round One of the 2023 Formula Drift ProSpec Series. Detailing her team's adventures in the practice sessions, dealing with overnight repairs, and going through her first FD qualifying session.

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​Alec Robbins talks to us about his experiences at FD Orlando, from practice, to qualifying, and through the competition.  Check it out! 

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​

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!​