Samuel Hubinette
I started out this week by traveling down to the Baja Peninsula to do my pre-run with BFGoodrich for the Baja 1000. I’ve never competed in the Baja before, so it was a great experience going down there and getting prepared for the big race next week.
Who would have thought four or five years ago I would be part of the biggest off-road race in the world, and it all came through being part of Mopar’s drift effort and getting BFG involved with our team. Now I get the chance to drive for BFG and try my hand at a much different type of racing than drifting.
On Wednesday I flew out of Baja really quick to make Thursday’s testing day at the Red Bull World Drifting Championship in the Port of Long Beach. What a great contrast, to go from kicking up clouds of dust in the desert to unleashing tons of tire smoke on a crazy-fast drift course. I went from the desert in the middle of nowhere to Terminal Island in Long Beach, surrounded by huge ships and massive machinery!
This is definitely a great venue, very different from other courses we have competed on before. The folks from Formula D have done an amazing job setting this up. It looks spectacular when you’re coming over the bridge from downtown Long Beach.
The track is fast and has a good flow. As you take off, there is a long, long stretch down till the first right hand corner. You’re going at a speed over 90 mph—I was at 103 mph today, my highest initiation speed ever. You pull the e-brake hard to get the car sideways, and at the same time I’m shifting down to third and mashing the throttle, dumping the clutch, and off we go into a right hander. They want you to come down right next to a cement wall right away and hug it all the way into a left hander, up to another wall, where there is another clipping where you want to get on the gas again. You reach another clipping point, then flick into another right hander, then you pop into fourth gear again and come to the finish line.
The grandstands sweep around the whole track, so the spectators are going to have an amazing show here for sure. I’ve met a lot of cool people, drivers from Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. The best 32 drivers from around the whole world are here trying to grab this world championship crown. I would love to put the Mopar NuFormz Dodge Viper SRT10 on the top!
