Samuel Hubinette
After the Red Bull Drifting World Championship in Long Beach on Sunday, Nov. 16, where I finished in the top four in my Mopar® Dodge Viper SRT10,® I packed a bag and headed down to the Baja peninsula in Mexico to run the legendary Baja 1000 event. I met with my team on Wednesday, on Thursday they had a media day and press conference, and then on Friday, Nov. 21, we started the race. It was a great experience—a nice change of pace from the world of drifting.
We had some obstacles, of course. A couple of gearboxes broke and so on, but we managed to get across the finish line after 21 hours and finished sixth in our class. I would absolutely do the Baja 1000 again. I’ve always enjoyed endurance races, because you get to drive so much and you get so much seat time—and that’s definitely what you get in Baja! It’s brutal, it’s a challenge, but we had a good team and had lots of fun together. It’s similar to running up in the mountains on snowmobile trails, which I had a lot of experience doing growing up in Sweden. You kind of learn how to read the obstacles and bumps and figure out ways to go as quick as possible through the obstacles. You also have to learn how much your vehicle can take. I got up to speed pretty quick and worked with a team that had been doing Baja for years, so it was nice to be surrounded by good people.
After Baja, my wife Stina and I went up to Mammoth Mountain in California and went skiing over Thanksgiving. We skied for five days and then headed back. I called my friend Danen during our drive home, and he mentioned about running the 25 Hours of Thunderhill endurance racing event in Willows, Calif. on Dec. 5–7. He said he was going to race the event, and then crazily enough Stina and I decided to join him—I was going to run my second endurance race in two weeks! We got the team and the car put together at the last minute and we managed to go out and run it. We finished sixth in that event, too, a great showing.
It was great to have Stina out there competing with me, and for her to get a chance to drive a Mopar-powered Viper Competition Coupe, which is one of the most respected race cars out there. It was awesome that Danen felt comfortable letting her drive his $160,000 race car. She ran clean without any mistakes—in her first time at the track, first time in the car and with about 75 other cars around her. Amazing! That’s a big challenge and she pulled it off. I could definitely see her doing more with road racing in the future. She has great potential.
When that race was finished on Sunday, after we had been racing for hours, we hopped in our car and drove eight hours south to L.A. We crashed for a few hours, and then we both worked on a commercial in downtown L.A. on Monday morning. It was the first time we had worked together on a commercial. So there has been a lot of “together” time going on with me and Stina in the last few days, which is always good for your marriage. It’s great to have a spouse that not only supports what you do, but also enjoys doing it as well.
Right now I’m at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif., getting ready to board a plane for Orlando, Fla., where I’m going to attend the Performance Racing Industry (PRI) Trade Show. I’ll be making some appearances at the show for my primary sponsor Mopar, and I’ll take part in a Mopar autograph signing session on Thursday. My brand new Mopar Drift Dodge Challenger, which I will compete in during the 2009 Formula Drift season, will be on display, and my team owner Shaun Carlson will be there as well. It’s a good feeling, especially in these difficult times, to know that we are moving forward on next year. The Mopar NuFormz team has proved itself as a championship organization that gets results, and the sport of drifting just keeps on growing. I’m hoping we will start testing the new Challenger in February 2009 and I can’t wait for the season to start. I want to bring home that third championship for Mopar.
After the PRI show, I’m going back home to Newport Coast, Calif. on Sunday to meet up with Stina, then we’re off again, flying to Sweden on Monday to spend Christmas with friends and family. I’m also going to continue filming on a DVD I’m producing, titled Drift Ya Later. We’ve shot some great footage already of me in drifting action behind the wheel of the Mopar Dodge Viper SRT10, and we’re going to shoot some winter drifting scenes at the Ice Hotel in Sweden, which is two hours north of the Arctic Circle. We’re going to shoot some ice lake drifting. As a young man, I really learned the techniques I use today in drifting by driving on ice lakes in Sweden. We should get some killer footage. We’re hoping to have the DVD out in April 2009, so keep an eye out for it, Mopar fans.
So, it’s been a lot of driving, a lot of racing and a lot of travel lately—but a lot of fun!