So I figured I better do a little bit of catching-up here since it’s been a good while since my last update. With so much going on it’s been a challenge just to keep everything in perspective much less write it all down documenting it all. That said, I’ll do my best here to get everyone “in the know”
On the “not so fun side”, the Mustang drift program has had no action for a while now. With the Formula Drift Canadian Series going away in the shadow of the DMCC series, the team I last ran with decided not to continue making the trek up north and to run a single-car program up there 6-8 times just didn’t make much financial sense. Where I go from here with the program is hard to say at this time, I still love the sport of Drifting, I love driving this car and I’ve got a new engine-program just waiting in the wings but in the end, it has to make sense, I’ve got to find some sponsors that are interested in making us a part of their marketing program and I have to find a series that gives us a good return on our investment both time and money-wise. I’m always looking for new opportunities so please reach out if you have any idea’s that might help us get this program back on track.
Now on the “super fun side”, I’ve been spending a lot of time with our WRL- World Racing League program. If you’ve been following my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/dvanzmotorsports/) or my Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/dougvandenbrink/) you’ll know that we did a few races with them. We had a great time last August bringing home a 2nd place finish at Barber Motorsports Park. Then in Sept. we ran the same Team ACP BMW up at Mid-Ohio where we again brought home a 2nd place finish.
These events really solidified our interest in the WRL series so much so that we started a new endurance team bought everything from a Transporter to pit equipment and even a really sweet Ginetta G55 racecar. At first our attention was towards a Porsche ClubSport and we even went so far as to make a trip down to Daytona to the final PCA race of the year to look for a car and a team to run us. On that trip, we found a few cars but none of the prep shops we talked to had any interest in helping us put a program together so we left not really too excited about going that direction. After making my annual “pilgrimage” to SEMA, we stopped off at COTA to further my attempt to put a Trans-Am TA2 deal together and there running in the TA3 category was the very first Ginetta I had ever seen in person. Well, we immediately took a liking to these little cars and once we did some investigation, knew this would be our car of choice for the WRL series.
After the holiday-break we found a car, bought it and together with my friend Steve Davis began testing it to get ourselves acquainted with it. Just as I had suspected, this Ginetta proved to be a very potent car within the GTO class of the WRL. In our first official outing with the car again at Barber MS Park, I was able to set Fastest Lap of the weekend and we were poised to win one if not both of the separate 7 and 9hour long races. Unfortunately we had a malfunction with our lap-transponder that took us out of contention for Saturday’s race (we rebounded to finish 4th) and while I watched the race unfold from the back straight away on Sunday’s event, I saw our beautiful little car get involved in a massive crash that eliminated us from being able finish.
We’ve now spent the past couple of months regearing ourselves to get our car back into action asap. With any luck it will be July 13-14 at Road Atlanta but we’re not 100% sure yet. Please keep an eye on my FB page for the latest update on this front.
In addition to all of this, we’re very fortunate to be wide-open at the Porsche Track Experience School here at Barber. I’m really enjoying getting to work with such a great group of people, an amazing brand like Porsche and at such a nice facility that is Barber MS Park. Our students are continually buying up every program we offer and come August we’re going to be doing a series of 2-day Car Control Clinics that are going to be so much fun, I can’t wait!
On the “what’s next” front:
- As I said, I hopefully will be testing the Ginetta GT4 car soon and racing it at Rd. Atl. in July. Then if all goes well there, we’ll take on the rest of the WRL calendar and see how much of an impact we can be to the GTO points-race.
- I’m still trying to share the Trans-Am TA2 idea/program with anyone who will listen. I so want to compete in this series and after getting a tiny taste of it in the Stevens-Miller Racing Mustang last year, I would love to get a chance to race it.
- We’ve thrown around the idea of taking the Ginetta to either a Trans-Am TA3 or a Pirelli Sprint-X event later in the year, so we’ll see how things go.
- Lastly, I’d love to get the Mustang back out for some drifting before season end.
So that’s about all for now, thanks for reading this and I hope to send out another update soon…
-DV