This is a recap of Formula Drift Wall Speedway that came from the KÖNIG Drift Driver Dennis Mertzanis.

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Wall, NJ – Formula Drift Round 4 at Wall speedway in beautiful New Jersey. Well, what an event. I had a good time despite the challenges. Thursday practice was crazy. For the first time with this car, I was full throttle around the entire track. Freaking sweet, but the side effect was the car caught on fire. How you ask? Well, during the build we neglected to add more than enough heat shielding material around everything. “It should be fine” is a dangerous comment. I set the cover for my fans on fire from all the heat being produced during WOT…..wow; it was awesome flogging on the car that hard.

I noticed the rear camber was too much, so we made a change. The mistake I made was I didn’t record the toe before I changed the camber…so I couldn’t set it back to what it was. So we guessed. Car got crappy and I struggled to qualify high. We did make it, but anyone that put a score down made. I’m not feeling so accomplished. The only thing I can say is that there were not many points separating me from the 18th place guy, if I remember correctly. I was slated to go against Tyler McQuirre…AGAIN.

During Top32 something weird happened. I saw ASD pull Tyler’s car to the pits during practice and I wondered what was up. I line up for tandem and he is a no show. The FD staff tells me he called a 5 min time out. At the time I was kinda hoping for a buy. Lets face it, car for car and driver for driver, I’m at a disadvantage and I could have used some luck. I always joke that there’s no easy time for me, I have to earn it. I would rather win man to man, but in this case, I wanted to move to top 16 and battle Joon or Odi.

After nearly 6 min, they announce he is ready to go with “10 seconds to spare” they said. Of course, having a stop watch handy would have been an awesome idea so we could have tracked the minutes to know he was well over 5 minutes. If I had, I could have protested. This is not a mistake I will make again…well, I probably will. I only found out after the event when people were coming up to me and saying something about 7 min, 6.5 min and so on.

What a bummer! You can’t go back in time. I could have had a top 8 finish if only I had a stop watch handy! At FD, a large part of your success is who you are paired up against and this was a good bracket for me had I beat Tyler. Well, the long and short of it is Tyler beats me because I drove crappy and I didn’t have a stop watch.

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Image and content courtesy of Wrecked Mag

This is a recap of Formula Drift West Palm Beach that came from the KÖNIG Drift Driver Dennis Mertzanis.

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West Palm Beach, Fl – Well, this event was interesting. As you guys may or may not know, the track configuration was revealed before the event. After EOS and Pfeiffer hit the wall, spraying debris into the crowd, the course was changed to a more suitable layout. It was a Road Atlanta entry and the course lasted about 15 seconds in total. I thought it was pretty fun.

During practice, I was doing pretty happy with my runs. I would go in deep and ebrake. Before you get to the clip you’re back on the throttle to blast past the first clip. You pitch it left and stab the brakes to transition it hard AND to slow the car down for the right turn. Drift it out to the outer zone at full lock and full throttle in and out of the course. Thursday I was getting it pretty good.

I was excited about qualifying on Friday because I was feeling good. I got to the track and setup. I didn’t make any changes to the car because it was good Thursday night. During Friday practice the car was a little shaky but I didn’t have a spotter to help me get back on track with my runs. I get to qualifying and royally screw it up. I scored a 55 on my first run and 41 on the second. Missed the cut by one, was 33rd. Oh well, I’m getting communications equipment and a spotter. This Mickey Mouse game is over, its getting real now. But I cannot speak for Sean, he loves this stuff.
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Image and content courtesy of Wrecked Mag

Summer is here! And so is our June calendar featuring Ashley Malia and the new Privat Werks wheel. Get yours today!

Dennis Mertzanis sent us a picture of him on track during the Xtreme Drift Circuit Event in Orlando last weekend.

Check it out.

This is a recap from Dennis Mertzanis from Formula Drift Round 2 – Road Atlanta:

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Braselton, GA – Round 2 of Formula Drift was set at beautiful Road Atlanta. I love this track. It’s fast and technical. It brings out the vulnerabilities in your car and you. My favorite part of this track is the fans. Of course I love them because a huge group of them are cheering for me. Remember, Atlanta is my home town and I started drifting there for the first time in the Atlanta Braves Turner Field parking lot at DGTrials events back in 2005. Last year the crowd was huge and very Rowdy, this year was no exception. Armed with posters, megaphones and beer, my people were out of control and I loved it. I always get tons of support in Atlanta and that makes the event my favorite of the tour.

Also, I am working with Petfinder.com to have local shelters out at the events and this was the first event where a shelter came out. It was cool to meet Bill from Humane League of Lake Lanier. He was really excited to be at the event. I think it went well because Petfinder.com was pretty happy.

First of all, getting to Atlanta was difficult due to the transmission of my truck pretty much grenading. It’s a manual, so all the guys had was 5th gear. I didn’t experience it, but imagine starting out in 5th towing a 2car enclosed…I heard the clutch was smoking. I am glad I wasn’t there to see it .

We get there, set up and get to driving. As usual, RoadA is causing some trouble. Grip is always hard to get for me. I can tell how the car is hooking up during the launch. I was getting a lot of wheel spin off the line. I made some adjustments and it was better.
HOW TO (my way):I take off down the hill, shift up to 4th and initiate…straight to ebrake and lightly feather the brake to slow down for the clipping point 1. Its down to 3rd and back on throttle through clipping point 1 and up the hill to the outer clip 2. Brake hard for clipping point 2 going up the hill and either shift down or stay in 3rd. Either one is fine, but the car lags a bit in 3rd, so I chose to shift to 2nd. Now you shoot into the horseshoe and aim for the edge of the track, trying your best to barely hang that RR tire off the track but not touching the dirt. This next step is critical, stay at the edge of the track until you have a clear shot of the next clipping point at the top of the hill out of the horsehoe. Throttle it hard to get your speed up, or feather it to get the speed up of your grip is not enough. Speed is key because if you shift to early (low speed) your car will bog in the next gear and you will straighten. Just because you hit the rev-limiter doesn’t mean it’s time to shift here. You shift and get into gear and start flying down the hill towards the left hander. You want to start with shallow angle to stay off the outer rumble-strips, they bit and bit hard. At the left-hander, if you go too fast, throw a little more angle in to slow down and setup for the last right turn. If you over shoot this last turn and go off course, you will destroy your suspension on the reverse-rake-rumble strips. I had the course down pretty well, I was just in-between gears somewhat and didn’t have the speed I wanted. I really need different gearing to get the wheel speed up a lot more than it is.

RoadA is fast, technical and pretty hard to master. This makes its pretty sweet when you get some good qualifying runs and make the show on Saturday. I struggled with grip during practice and a few minor mechanical problems. I shifted in 3rd going down the hill and broke my 5th, 6th gear lock-out….and of course miss-shifted into 5th. It was an easy fix with the help of the Megan Racing guys grinder and a little bit of time. I got a chance to get some in-car video of some practice runs. I look like crap, but I am usually my worse critic. I scored a 61 my first run and I wasn’t happy. I found out my entry sucked. My next run I threw it in pretty hard and ran a good run, scored a 73. This put me in 18th place overall and paired my up with the 14th place guy, JTP. OK, so JTP got a zero his first run and laid down a conservative 2nd run to ensure he was in the show. This put him in 14th place and paired him up with me……awesome. Qualifying mid pack should ensure running guys that are equal with you, nope, not this time, I get the winner of Long Beach and the leader of the series, JTP. I knew I had a small chance to beat him, no one is perfect.

I line up for top 32 against JTP. I knew he was much faster than me down the hill, so as soon as the last light lit, I took off, jumping him off the start really hard. I’m start slamming gears to get down the hill. Just as I get to the entry, JTP flies by me and we both initiate. I got him sort of close. I run a line behind him and he leaves me going down the hill after the horseshoe. No biggie, I did a clean run the best I could do.

He follows me and of course he is on me pretty tight. The win goes to JTP. He told me this was revenge for me beating him about 4 years ago during NOPI Drift….honestly, I would have rather had this win. I owe him one now. Now it’s off to West Palm Beach where no one has the advantage of experience. See you in Florida.
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First off we would like to thank Storm from Orange County Choppers for not only inviting us but making sure that we had a great spot in front of the building. We were right next to our new found friends from CP-E. If you have a Mazda you need to know about these people! So check out their site here CP-E.

Their were a ton of cool Mazda’s at the meet and everyone there was really great people. It was nice getting to hang out and show some of our product off. Thanks to everyone who came out and spoke with us! Here are a few pictures we took! ALSO BIG SHOUT OUT TO John from the CP-E Team. His sick, air force plane paint theme, and extremely modded Mazdaspeed 3 looked great rolling on Konig Milligrams in Black 18×8.5 et 45!

The Wrecked Magazine coverage of the Main Event of Formula Drift Round 2 @ Road Atlanta is up! Gallery is brought to you by Konig. Make sure you check it out…and Dont forget to follow up with us for more information on the Konig Drivers competing in FD!

Here are the runs from Formula Drift’s Driftstream. Watch Dennis Mertzanis take his runs during the main event.

LETS GO TO THE VIDEO TAPE!

The Wrecked Magazine gallery for the Formula Drift season opener at Long Beach is UP!

If you haven’t yet checked it out you should! Oh yeah its sponsored by Konig so that just makes it even better!

Check it out: WRECKED MAGAZINE GALLERY

As it may have been obvious from this passed weekend at the Formula Drift Long Beach event, we have signed Dennis Mertzanis for a second year in a row! Dennis is not only a great person but a hell of driver. We signed Dennis last year as a wheel sponsor in his Rookie Year. It was exciting for us to be able and step up to support his program further.

“I am really happy that Konig Wheels saw the value in our program in 2010 and now are investing more for 2011. Konig is a great company to work with because, not only are they a bunch of cool guys, but they understand the industry and what it takes to be successful.” – Dennis Mertzanis.

Dennis started off this season with a hell of a Bang by rounding out the Top 16 field. We wish Dennis the best of luck this season. Make sure you check the Formula Drift schedule to see when Dennis will be bringing the hotness to a city near you!