Welcome to the official GReddy USA blog. -Think of this as our online weekly "GReddy Times," a venue for us to report what's going on or what just happened at GReddy USA this week (new products, new projects, racing news, even online store specials.) On our blog you can see what we are up to in the GReddy Sales floor, R&D garage, on the road or even from our Headquarters in Japan.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Formula D Rd.7 - Irwindale Finale

  • GReddy Coverage from the last round of the 2014 Formula Drift Pro Championship Season.
In a very competitive 2014 Formula Drift Pro Championship, GReddy driver, Ken Gushi finishes the year ranking 13th out of 47 drivers.  The GReddy Performance x Hankook Tire x Scion Racing FR-S Team is proud to have been associated in two Championships this season, with Scion winning the Car/Engine Manufacturer's Cup and Hankook winning the Tire Manufacturer's Cup.  We are very thankful for the support of our fans, fellow teams and our technical partners like: 


Takata | Ray's  | KW Suspension | Rocket Bunny | Garrett | Supertech | TRUST | WPCIgnition Projects | OS Giken | SPL Parts | FMT | Bluemoon

 
The Irwindale Speedway (also known as the "House of Drift") is a local track for Ken and the Team.  And with a full capacity of 15,000 plus fans (many of which are rooting for Ken, GReddy and Scion) it's always an event to look forward to. 

The week started of well with good testing sessions, in preparation for round 7, but just before qualifying, the team discovered a possible reliability issue, but with no time for a fix, Ken had to go out and qualify.  And that he did, scoring two solid runs with the car still running well.  The 76 and 77point scores qualified him in the 12th spot for the FDIRW tandem battles.  As a preventive measure the Team worked all night Friday to have the car at 100% for Saturday's main event.

Up first was a rematch from round 6 FDTX, against Joon Meng's LS S13.  Ken ran a solid lead run and had the advantage.  Unfortunately Meng's car had a mechanical issue and could not follow up the second run, moving Ken in 16 bracket against his good friend Robbie Nishida in is 2JZ Lexus SC.  Ken was running a skillful chase run with good proximity against Nishida's fast SC, when bad luck hit our team, with power steering issue, forcing an end to the season.

http://www.greddy.com/featured/50 
All in all, the 2014 Formula Drift season was a solid result in the teams reliability and engine performance.  The team also learned a lot in the aspects of suspension set-ups for the high performance Hankook tires.  As we speak we are working on making the GReddy Performance x Hankook Tire x Scion Racing FR-S even better for the 2015 Formula Drift Pro Championships!

 Congratulations again to our Scion Racing and Hankook Tires teammates, Papakdakis Racing and Fredric Aasbo on a nail-bitingly close championship season.