**This is the official recap written by and courtesy of the Mertzanis Racing team from Formula Drift Round 6: “After Dark” at Las Vegas Motor Speedway – August 24th – 25th**
Right after pulling off the trailer on Thursday night, we went into the private paid practice and started bumper banging on the k-rails, and scraping paint and decals off the rear bumper. With some sway bar tweaks, and a Kenda Tire pressure adjustment, the car felt unstoppable. A full day before qualifying, the car felt fantastic to Dennis Mertzanis and the whole Mertzanis Racing crew.
Friday practice, before qualifying Dennis went out chasing Kyle Mohan, who is one of the fastest drivers on the circuit. Dennis wanted to see how quick the car setup for the weekend was overall. These screen grabs were pulled from our GoPro camera that has a video you can see here.
Dennis explains, “Well, we went flying into the first outer clip together. What is normally a full throttle affair, Mohan went too close to the wall, and hard-braked, slowing down a lot. I was coming in hot and couldn’t slow down fast enough. We made contact and I hit the wall knocking the suspension out of alignment.”
The team worked quickly to get the car back in race trim. Only one KÖNIG Milligram wheel was damaged beyond repair, since it made high-speed contact with the rear bash bar on Kyle Mohan’s Mazda Rx-8. After his two runs, Dennis finished 19th for Kenda Tires, which lined him up against Ryan Tuerck in the Retaks S13. This was a rematch from Round 1 at Streets of Long Beach.
On Saturday, just before competition brought on rain and crazy wind as the drivers hit the track. Luckily, we had a rain setup for the car on standby, but it all dried up before Dennis got on the track for his Top 32 battle. Ryan Tuerck led the first battle in his S13.5 against our Chevrolet Performance Parts powered LS3 S13.4. Dennis held a somewhat conservative, but all around solid follow run behind Tuerck.
After the smoke settled, the judges gave the win over to Ryan Tuerck eliminating Dennis Mertzanis from this weekend’s competition. The team came together and really made huge developments with the S13. Dennis is planning on a huge month of testing in September to get ready for the final round at Irwindale Speedway coming up in October.
Images courtesy of Wrecked Magazine
