Mertzanis Puts Down Best Qualifying Score in his Career

Mertzanis Puts Down Best Qualifying Score in his Career

Posted on by Konig Wheels

Before the Fuel Culture S13.4 was shipped to the East Coast to Road Atlanta, the car headed to the Sea Otter Classic at Laguna Seca for the huge 2012 bicycle show. Over 60,000 people came through the doors in Monterey, California, to see the show and catch a glimpse of the drift car. The 240sx was parked in the center of the Kenda Tire booth who built out a virtual garage around the car to attract visitors. This was one of the only vehicles at the whole show this year, gathering tons of attention.

After leaving the Sea Otter Classic, the car headed east across the United States to Atlanta, Georgia in preparation of Formula Drift Round 2. Some tweaks to air pressure and our KW Suspension between rounds really set the team up for success after Road Atlanta.

During qualifying, Dennis managed to put down his best career qualifying run of 89.5 at his hometown course Road Atlanta. The car didn’t require as much setup adjustments to accomplish this huge career accomplishment. He was one of the few drivers to meet the speed trap minimum for the weekend.

After qualifying, we found out that we would be lined up against Top 10 driver, Kyle Mohan, who didn’t qualify at his usual top level performance which gave us one tough draw in the first round. Dennis and the team made some last minute adjustments and put down some of the best lead runs he has driven in his career by far. After one round, the judges were stuck at 1 vote for Dennis, 1 vote for Kyle, and 1 vote for OMT.

On the OMT tandem battle, Dennis performed top notch on his lead run but made a wide turn on his follow run which let Kyle Mohan pass into the Top 16 with 2 votes for Kyle and 1 vote for Dennis. A tough break for the team who performed near perfect all weekend but we are looking forward to Palm Beach International.

The next day after Road Atlanta, the Mertzanis Racing team attended what might be the last event at Turner Field with several other Formula Drift professional drivers. The city council in Atlanta, Georgia, signed an ordinance that bans drifting specifically in the city of Atlanta within 1,000 feet of residential zoning. This made it very personnel for Dennis Mertzanis as he first learned how to drift and hone his skills in this very parking lot.

Sadly, the weather didn’t cooperate with this final Turner Field event but Dennis brought out his Fuel Culture S13.4 in the rain to tandem with local drivers and promote the sport within the local area. He talked with various media outlets on the importance of the sport and the need to continue in grassroots events and why it’s best to create events and have safe, controlled environments so as to keep drivers off the streets.

It has been a busy month in back to back travel. And with Round 3 at Palm Beach International Raceway just right around the corner, Dennis Mertzanis will continue onwards and upwards by shooting for another career best finish at Round 3.

//Images courtesy of Fuel Culture & Wrecked Magazine 2012//

Moen at Formula Drift Round One: Long Beach

Posted on by Konig Wheels

KÖNIG is proud to be partnered with Lutz Performance and Kenny Moen for the 2012 Formula Drift Season. Check out the FD Round 1 recap from Lutz Performance below.

Last year, Lutz Performance had the opportunity of partnering with Kenny Moen and helping him with the 2011 Formula D season as a sponsor. Fast forward to today and we are pleased to announce that we are this year’s title sponsor for car #22. This is the FIRST time in Formula D’s history that a local performance shop is the main sponsor on a car.
We obviously couldn’t do all of this without the help of our other sponsors:

KÖNIG Wheels, Carbonetics, Stance Coilovers, GT Spec, Powered by MAX, VIS Racing, SPL Parts, Prosport Gauges, Falken Tires

Round One

Went a lot better than we had expected for our first round as a Main / Major sponsor. Our first run was against Darren McNamara in Falken Tire’s Saturn Sky who unfortunately crashed on his first run and knocking himself out of the event.

Next we took on Conrad Grunewald in the Hankook Camaro and defeated him and advanced to the top 8. Up next we had to beat Matt Powers in the Need 4 Speed 240sx to make it into the top 4.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and our Round 1 experience came to an end. Although we did not have a podium finish we feel that the team did a great job for our first event,
we hope this is the beginning of a great season with much more to come. We are also pleased to announce that Kenny Moen has signed with team Lutz Performance for the 2013 FD season, look out for his 2013 season car design being release after Round 6 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Images courtesy of Wrecked Magazine and Lutz Performance

Formula Drift RD1: Streets of Long Beach

Posted on by Konig Wheels

Images and words by Fuel Culture | Article

Dennis Mertzanis came off the 2011 season with his best career finish in the series. During the off season, a new car and a wildly more extreme Chevrolet Performance Parts engine set the stage for Round 1 Streets of Long Beach this past weekend. His new car is a 1991 Nissan 240sx with a S14 kouki front end. The car started its life as a Fuel Culture project car and was publicly debuted at the 2011 SEMA Show in the Kenda Tire booth.

New to Mertzanis Racing for the 2012 season is Fuel Culture which is a virtual car garage where users can come and rate, review, and price compare aftermarket parts for their car. Another great website coming into the picture this year is www.rentreporters.com which is a great innovative service that allows renters to report rent payments to the credit bureaus. Everyday, they are helping renters build credit for something they are doing every month already! SPEC Clutch has come on board to provide us with the best LS clutch technology that money can buy. Rounding out the new sponsors is BodyArmor which is a superdrink packed with antioxidants, electrolytes, vitamins, and nutrients on top of being an all natural beverage.

The new chassis features a Chevrolet Performance Parts crate engine LS3 which is producing over 500whp and receiving all of its fuel needs from Aeromotive parts. We are running VP Racing 100 octane fuel to reach this horsepower output. We teamed up with KW Suspension and SPL Pro Suspension parts for the most lightweight and adjustable suspension you can throw at a Nissan 240sx. Dennis still remains on Kenda Tires for 2012 and continues to run the Kaiser KR20 using Konig Milligram 18 inch wheels which are lightweight thanks to MAT technology. And rounding out the return sponsors, Dennis continues to support Petfinder.com to help great dogs and cats find a forever home.

When Dennis hit the Streets of Long Beach, it was his first official drift event with a V8 engine and he couldn’t believe how the torque helped him keep up around the track including that drag race to the first turn. He was able to keep up with any car on the track when following in drift including the event winner Justin Pawlak during practice.

When they lined up for qualifying, the Mertzanis Racing team was still working on some setup changes to the car but qualifying had to go on! After watching 40+ car runs in front of him, it was time to put on a show! Dennis sadly missed the 53mph minimum trap speed with his qualifying pass but managed without 10 points for speed to lock him in for 32nd place. This meant lining up in the main event against Ryan Tuerck who was the events number one qualifier.

During Saturday morning practice, our support team Ryan Clemens and Dave Epifano made some extreme suspension changes and we found the car now running through the speed trap at 57mph which is over 8mph faster than where we qualified. Now facing off against Ryan Tuerck, the team threw everything we could at him during competition. Dennis was so solid through Turn 10 of the LBGP course, he caused Ryan Tuerck to make a huge correction and straighten out. It was a hard fought battle and the judges actually had to go through deliberation before declaring Ryan Tuerck the victor. This moved Ryan into the Top 16, ending the weekend for Dennis Mertzanis. The team is set on doing a few more test sessions this month to be ready for a huge finish at Road Atlanta in front of the team’s hometown crowd.

Fuel Culture | Dennis Mertzanis Racing | Formula Drift |