Samuel Hubinette
After the Formula Drift Seattle event in August, I jumped on a flight straight from Seattle and headed to Sweden. I hooked up with my wife Stina, who had flown over earlier, and all of our families in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. We spent a few days at Stina’s brother’s house and just hung out, and my parents came down as well.
Together we drove to a race track in central Sweden where I competed in some road racing events. It was a three-day event and it was really, really fun to be back in the road racing mode. There was no pressure, being a guest driver. I got a third-place on Saturday on the podium and a second-place on Sunday. We got some good media exposure over there. I always promote Mopar® when I’m in Sweden. My Mopar gear always draws lots of questions!
I spent a few days vacationing in Sweden after that. Then I left and flew straight to Monterrey, Mexico and hooked up with Shaun Carlson and the NuFormz Team for the Drift Mexico exhibition, which was sponsored by my tire sponsor BFGoodrich. We finished second there in my old Mopar Dodge Charger SRT8® drift car. It was fun to get my hands on the Charger again and showcase that platform. We had a good time down there.
Then I flew back to home in Newport Beach, Calif. A few days later I went to Willow Springs at the racetrack and was back in the seat as host of the Internet-based show Head-to-Head, which is hosted on www.torque.tv. I got to test drive a bunch of extreme cars in the show, including a 2008 Dodge Challenger tuned by the NuFormz Team. It had around 750 horsepower! Wow!
Next we headed up to Northern California for the Formula Drift event in Sonoma. It was exciting being in the points lead heading into the event. We qualified No. 1 and felt so strong until suddenly in the Great Eight I initiated too hard and came out of my line and BOOM! I was out after that round and I was now in second-place in the points standings. We came out of the event trailing, but we are still very much alive and we still have a great chance to bring home my third Formula Drift championship.
After the event, Stina and I went to San Francisco and stayed over there for my birthday on Monday, Sept. 15. A friend of mine, Matthew, hooked us up at Mandarin Oriental with a smoking deal so we stayed on the 44th floor and had awesome views of the bridges and of downtown San Francisco. We had a good time — well, as good as I could. I felt pretty down after not making it to the podium at Sonoma. We headed back down to Southern California afterwards.
My mind set heading into the final race at Irwindale in October is to look at everything from a positive perspective, and the positive thing is that we are in a chase now for the Formula Drift championship. We don’t have anything to lose now. I’m just going to go out there, have fun, do my thing, and get my Mopar Dodge Viper SRT10® sideways. I’ll stay focused, as you always have to in this extreme sport of drifting, but I’ll basically try to go out there with the NuFormz Mopar team and try to have a good time.