On October 26th I travelled to Seattle to take part in the Autoweek American Adventure presented by Mopar, a 6 day road rally that would eventually take us to Las Vegas and the incredible Sema show. Details
Eric O’Sullivan to embark on Autoweek American Adventure.
On October 26th Gardella Racing driver, Eric O’Sullivan, will cross the starting line of the 2012 Autoweek American Adventure in Seattle. The Autoweek American Adventure is a 6 day treasure hunt and race-track based rally starting in Seattle, Washinton and finishing at a live press conference during the SEMA Convention, Las Vegas.
Competing alongside team mate Steve Vander Griend of ICM, Inc., the team will spend 6 days travelling throughout diverse American countryside following clues, accepting track based challenges and completing missions. Details
Clubloose Finishing Moves
The final Clubloose event of the year was Finishing Moves held on the first weekend in October alongside the Fall Nationals drag racing event. After having such a good time at Freedom Moves a few weeks earlier I couldn’t wait for this event to come around. I had made some improvements to the Gardella Racing missile solstice along with some repairs and it was good to go for plenty more laps of the Englishtown road course.
Irish drifting champion Eric O’Sullivan has vowed to return to 2012 Formula Drift competition with renewed ambition following an unexpexcted early exit from the season Finale at Toyota Speedway Irwindale, California.
Following damage sustained to the Gardella Racing Mobil 1 Pontiac Solstice during the first qualification session, O’Sullivans efforts during his remaining pass of the course failed to reach the mark required for passage into the main competition on Saturday October 8th.
Clubloose Freedom Moves
Clubloose runs some of the biggest and best amateur and pro am drift events on the east coast and my local track, Raceway Park at Englishtown happens to be their home venue. After missing East Coast Bash, their biggest event of the year held back in June, I made sure I’d be ready to go for Freedom Moves held in September.
Driver Feature – Grid TV
In June, Gardella Racing teamed up with Mobil 1 The Grid TV show. The TV crew followed the team for the weekend and have just released this feature following Eric’s debut season with the Mobil 1 Pontiac Solstice.
New Egypt Dirt Racing
Crew chief at Gardella Racing is Scott Davidson, together with Mike Whitney these are the two guys behind the scenes that are responsible for the current fleet of GR drift machines that are almost completely built in house. Scott has an extensive history of success on asphalt oval racing both behind the wheel and as crew a crew chief, what he doesn’t know about car set up from suspension design to chassis fabrication isn’t worth knowing !. More recently he’s been involved with dirt modifieds, these are 700+ horse power custom built machines that race on dirt ovals all over the north east United States. Details
At every Formula Drift event I meet new people, get introduced to new brands and usually make some great friends in the process. The Wall speedway event this year was no exception and because it is the Gardella Racing team’s local event the social side of things was almost more hectic than the action on track !
My favorite event of the Formula Drift season has always been Seattle, one of the fastest tracks with the best atmosphere and situated in the beautiful Washington state that always reminds me of home.
This year I would be approaching the event a little differently however, the plan had always been to step into the Gardella Racing solstice for the east coast FD events only so I was traveling to Seattle as part of the crew to help get Tuerck his first podium finish of the year.
With only a couple of weeks to get the solstice back in shape it was non stop action from the time the car rolled out of the trailer back at base right up until a couple of days before FD round 4 at Wall Stadium.