Hello St. Louis!!! In this guest blog, Kelsey Rowlings takes over the Blog and tells us her story of FDSTL. With a solid finish in Atlanta, Kelsey and the team walked into St. Louis with confidence and ready to take on the Gateway Motorsport Park. Below Kelsey gives us details on her adjustments to the new track and much more…
FORMULA DRIFT PRO 2 St. Louis – ROUND 2 | August 10th and 11th
Coming into the second round of Formula Drift Pro 2 in St. Louis, the Drift Chick team was feeling hopeful and excited. After a 7th place finish in Atlanta for round one, we were looking for similar or better results. It was the first time Formula Drift would make its way to Gateway Motorsports Park and very few competitors had driven the track before which slightly leveled the playing field. Although our team was one of those that had never driven the track, we were excited for the high speed drifting it would allow.
Our first practice session went well but had a few hiccups. We had recently returned the car to run unleaded Thunderbolt E85 instead of lead. When we did this, one of the oil pressure safeties we had set up on the Haltech had reset itself to a higher number, so anytime the car would drop below a certain oil pressure, even if just for a split second, it would trigger the safety and lower our rev limiter to five thousand RPM. This is a great safety in case of loss of oil pressure because it would save the engine without completely cutting power and making for a dangerous situation in drift. Unfortunately, it was set too high and was dropping the limiter in a few of my runs, making it impossible to Drift the high-speed course. Fortunately, the safety rev limiter was an easy fix. We just had to lower the trigger oil pressure number to a lower, but still, safe number and our problems were solved for the next practice session which was right before qualifying.
Going into our second practice session, our runs were getting more and more consistent, but I also notice my previous power steering issues seemed to be coming back. The power steering feel was stiffening up under any slow speeds, off-throttle/hand-braking or deceleration. We thought we had solved our problem by switching from ATF to an actual power steering fluid because it had less chance of over-cavitating and seemed to work for a few events. Unfortunately, I was noticing the issue getting worse and worse. Even though my last two runs before qualifying were fantastic runs, we were thinking about whether we should try to make any changes, like changing the power steering fluid, before qualifying.
Ultimately we decided not to make any changes at the risk of possibly making it worse, and since our last two runs were definitely qualification level runs, we decided to ride out the problem and worry about fixing it after qualifying and before top 16 competition. Heading into my first run I was feeling very confident. I had great proximity to the first clip and went slightly wide on the second, but I had great speed and angle. I continued the course and positioned the car in the touch-and-go and had great proximity to the third inner clip. Heading into the only outer zone in the final sweeper of the course, I carried a little too much speed. This forced me to drop a couple tires into the outer zone, and once I was two tires off, I couldn’t get any traction in the slippery grass and it sent me sliding off track and into the tire wall, a problem that many drivers had throughout the weekend.
I drove the car back to the pits and everything felt fine. We went over the car and were pleased to find that the damage was only cosmetic and I could easily go out for my second run. However, I was sitting on a zero for my first run so the pressure was on. The sun was starting to set as I lined up for my second run. There were no lights out on track so seeing in the dim lighting proved somewhat difficult to perceive depth. As I floored it down the straight, I ended up entering just a fraction of a second too early, which forced me to put a wheel up on the huge rumble strip in front of clip one. This completely unsettled the car as I tried to transition for clip two so at that point, I was just trying to save it and keep drifting in hopes I could clean up the second half of the run. Unfortunately, I was so off-line and struggling with the power steering that I had to straighten slightly before the third inner clip, closing the door on our hopes of qualifying.
Although we didn’t have the results we wanted, it allowed us to realize that there is still more R&D needed to make this car reach its full potential. I think that once we get everything working properly, we will have a lot of success, and we can’t wait until the third round in Texas to see were our changes put us!
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Kelsey is running Konig Hypergrams in 17×9 et 25mm front and 18×9.5 et 25mm rear. The Konig Hypergram is Flow Formed.
