Formula Drift Dopeness>>> Long Beach…Attack of the Rookies!!!

The day, April 6^th, 2012. The reason…Round 1 of Formula Drift qualifying runs. Located in beautiful downtown Long Beach, California. We could not have asked for better weather. The day gave us a light breeze that would carry the obscene amounts of smoke away as we made our feeble attempts to remove the tire chunks from our clothes. All efforts made from everyone involved the Formula Drift series made this the most anticipated event to date. There were a record breaking 19 rookies from 2012’s season opener, and a majority of them had the task of tackling Long Beach for their first Formula Drift event.

This is one of our newest members to the OMGDrift family, Danny George in his ’94 Miata powered by a beautiful LS1 V8 from Crabbroker.com

Hit the jump for more

Chris is looking stronger than ever coming out of the second turn

Qualifying was hard on everyone on the track having to battle with the asphalt change thru out each run. Long Beach made few updates to parts of the layout where the event took place – the extra challenge was finding that sweet spot with the transition from old asphalt to new parking lot.

You never knew who would have an absolute beautiful run or come barreling at you with a little bit more than a kiss on our tire walls. Here we have Robbie Nashida with a wing-splitting catch of the fence.

Andrew Coomes is looking good as for his first Formula Drift event. After the upgrades to the vehicle since his 2011 third place pro-am season out of Portland, OR, Andrew is looking really good. One of my favorite builds out there.

Here is Vaughn on his second qualifying run

The FR-S, driven by Kenshiro Gushi brought a huge following as Scion invited the first 86 FR-S owners to sit in the VIP booth to enjoy the show. Ken brought an impressive performance with the debut of the new drift machine. His day sadly came to an end when he was up against last year’s champion, Daijiro Yoshihara, going into the great eight. This was one of my favorite battles of the day.

Ken’s qualifying run

Great 8 Battle

We had an amazing last match where we had last year’s champion Daijiro Yoshihara and Justin “JTP” Pawlak for the firstplace.  Both drivers had an amazing lead run and a door scratching chase.

Dai is coming like a beast through the smoke.

Justin after the his prey.

Congratulations Justin for putting on an amazing performance and thank you to all of our drifting family, whether you’re behind the wheel, under the car, holding the cameras or keeping us entertained while the course is picked up…again. But that’s why we love it and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thank you