Are you listening Formula D?
Publicado: 19 Ago 2008 12:25
ARE YOU LISTENING Formula D ??
Con eso cierra el comentario Bill Wooden de Speedtv.com respecto al Drift en latinoamerica, inclusive menciona a Costa Rica...
"Cuando rio suena es por que piedras trae"
Post de nuestros amigos del caribe
Post subject: NOTA DE PRENSA Bill Wooden Speedtv.com de "La BatallaPosted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:09 pm
Junior Poster
Joined: Wed Jul 02, 2008 8:14 am
Posts: 133
Location: santo domingo AKI LES DEJO EL LINK DE LA NOTA DE PRENSA KE DIO BILL WOODEN UN RESPETABLE REPORTERO DE SPEEDTV.COM EL CUAL ESTUVO EN EL EVENTO DE DRIFT DE SANTO DOMINGO VS PUERTO RICO LA BATALLA SANTO DOMINGO INTERNACIONALMENTE
WOOD: Punching Drift TicketsWritten by: Bill Wood
RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com 08/13/2008 - 01:35 PM
Los Angeles, Calif.Page 1 2 Drifting is getting big in Latin America - maybe it's time that Formula D pays a visit? (Ivan Mendez photo) » More Photos
First of all, every good story starts with a premise. It might be: “For score and seven years ago…” Or “When in the course of human events…” Or “have you heard the one about the frog in a box…”
Before we get to the premise of this story lets deal with a few givens. The Puerto Rico Drifting Association not only parties infectiously – they even travel with their own DJ! – but they party 25/8. Still, Jose, Carlos, Raan, Rene, Luis, Jose, Juan and the rest find all the time they need to drive effectively, prepare passionately and do it all with the determination of a heart wanting it’s next beat.
The Club Dominicana de Corredores de Drift or CDCD (The Club of Dominican Drift Drivers) is no different and may have found time to hang with the PRDA at all the parties if they weren’t the host of last weekend’s La Batalla, a drift battle between Puerto Rico and The Dominican Republic. There’s something about detail that impresses you to keep your mind clear when thousands hang on your every word or decision. In short, they stopped partying at 2am when the PRDA was just shifting gears. Did I mention the PRDA travels with its own DJ and when the mood strikes them at the race track they’ll stop, do a little salsa, then drift on?
And here’s another given. Last weekend’s show in Santo Domingo was choreographed by Formula Drift driver CasparCanul. The first practice session I saw last Thursday was near embarrassing. Maybe three or four of the 14 drivers assembled for La Batalla could negotiate the course in a drift.
Understand that their grip credentials were lengthy. Raan Rodriguez, for example, once ran in the World Challenge, the FireHawk Series, and the 24 Hours of Daytona several times but he did the boneheaded-est thing ever when he took his Silvia S-13 out for a practice spin on Tuesday, literally spun it into the Armco and almost totaled the car – without a helmet or belts – days before the event. He got the car fixed in Santo Domingo and by the end of the weekend he was throwing it around with some skill. He admitted, though, that his first love remains road racing and he may use the car for time attack in the future.
Canul made each driver a personal project and not only taught them how to drift but got them prepared for tandem drifting by Sunday. Understand, too, that most were experiencing their first tandem or tsuiso drift on Sunday when the driver immediately in front of them pulled the emergency brake and launched both into a nether world of smoke and squealing tires and fans.
Whatever Caspar told them he should bottle and sell. At Long Beach this year I saw the same driver hit the same wall after the same mistake three different times only to emerge from the steaming hulk of debris laughing. Take a Caspar class, dude!
La Batalla is the passionate dream of Riandy Helena, a 25-year-old driver/promoter who knows more about selling tickets and dreams than 90 percent of his counterparts here in the U.S. For example, La Batalla was sponsored by “Red Bull International, Trident, Subaru International, VP Racing Fuels, Presidente Beer and Red Fresh Market,” a popular Beverly Hills style restaurant in Santo Domingo. Not bad for a first event.
And here’s the key to Riandy: he knows how to sell tickets to individuals. Most promoters might know how to put on an event but have never sold a ticket and wouldn’t know how to get it into the customer’s hand. Riandy, with the help of a Red Bull Austrian World War II Pinzgauer troop transport that had been converted into a DJ wagon, put on a police-escorted parade Friday night through several sections of Santo Domingo “coincidently” passing all the hot night spots where the drift cars stopped, lined up behind the six-wheeled Pinzgauer, and attracted attention with their gleam and the throbbing music from the Red Bull DJ. In nearly every case, the sound system from the Pinzgauer overwhelmed the club’s system nearby.
Did it work? On Sunday Riandy had convinced maybe four or five thousand to drive a half-hour through a storm (it rained in town but not at the track) to see La Batalla. He’d sold twice that many tickets in advance. Did he make money in his first full scale “international” event?
“Yeah, I think so!” Riandy said on Friday afternoon with a huge laugh. Are you paying attention NOPI, NHRA Sport Compact, Champ Car and anyone else who says today’s economy just won’t support racing promotions. Here’s a 25-year-old putting on his first full-scale event. He had a “practice” Drift Day last year to test the water and get the promotional video for his La Batalla show last weekend. He had no live television and he was able to attract the attention of MAJOR sponsors – who gave cash and not just products – because he knew how to sell tickets and not just spend sponsor money.
And don’t give me that old story that there’s nothing else to do in the Dominican. There’s a beach just a John Elway drive from the race track with palm trees, alluring waves and even more alluring Dominican women offering plenty to do! The Autodromo Mobil 1 has been remodeled for all kinds of racing from drags to drift but it was the drifting that got the undivided attention of sponsor VIPs last Sunday. There will be another La Batalla as far as they are concerned. The UV Vodka, another sponsor, flowed pretty heavy in the three-story, Red Bull-livered VIP building. Yes building, not tent!
Riandy also knows how to drift! He was one of the three or four who knew how to drift around the track in the first practice session. Still, Caspar was able to get him better chops during the weekend. So is Riandy a promoter or a driver?
“My goal is to compete in Formula D. And it’s a short goal. In one or two years I have to compete in Formula D.” Watching him at the end of the weekend he could compete now. He probably wouldn’t get into the Saturday Sixteen but he’s already better than the knock-the-walls-down qualifiers who haven’t taken a Canul Class yet.
However, the guy who may have emerged with the Most Improved or, even, Drift King, title was Luis Narra of the PRDA. He spent about a half hour in the passenger seat while Canul schooled him around the course on Friday. Luis emerged with some skills that would also put him head and shoulders above the quirky qualifiers in Formula D. Sunday’s spotlight tsuiso was Luis versus Riandy. In my eye Luis had clearly better skills but it didn’t help that the distracted promoter side of Riandy caused him to spin not once but twice after the crowd “demanded” a one-more-time run of what was an excellent contest between the two drivers.
“I watched everything Caspar was doing,” Narra told me. “It just all worked after I rode with him.” Narra didn’t say he wanted a Formula D opportunity but I’d like to see it.
In the end, the Dominican team won La Batalla to continue dominance over Puerto Rico that dates back to road racing challenges of the 1980s. This might be a portent of things to come. Both Riandy and Raan told me of a long team goal creating a Caribbean series including drift, grip and drag racing events in the Dominican, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Aruba, Peru, Costa Rica and other places where, curiously enough, Riandy is selling cars he imports from Japan under his other interest Car Connections, another La Batalla sponsor. He also has customers in Russia and Romania but that’s a little out of the Caribbean milieu, isn’t it?!
So what’s the premise of this story? What’s the hook? Maybe it’s this: how many Latins does it take to screw in a drift bulb in the Caribbean? You only need one when he knows how to punch tickets. And Riandy knows how to punch tickets.
Are you listening Formula D?
Con eso cierra el comentario Bill Wooden de Speedtv.com respecto al Drift en latinoamerica, inclusive menciona a Costa Rica...
"Cuando rio suena es por que piedras trae"
Post de nuestros amigos del caribe
Post subject: NOTA DE PRENSA Bill Wooden Speedtv.com de "La BatallaPosted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:09 pm
Junior Poster
Joined: Wed Jul 02, 2008 8:14 am
Posts: 133
Location: santo domingo AKI LES DEJO EL LINK DE LA NOTA DE PRENSA KE DIO BILL WOODEN UN RESPETABLE REPORTERO DE SPEEDTV.COM EL CUAL ESTUVO EN EL EVENTO DE DRIFT DE SANTO DOMINGO VS PUERTO RICO LA BATALLA SANTO DOMINGO INTERNACIONALMENTE
WOOD: Punching Drift TicketsWritten by: Bill Wood
RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com 08/13/2008 - 01:35 PM
Los Angeles, Calif.Page 1 2 Drifting is getting big in Latin America - maybe it's time that Formula D pays a visit? (Ivan Mendez photo) » More Photos
First of all, every good story starts with a premise. It might be: “For score and seven years ago…” Or “When in the course of human events…” Or “have you heard the one about the frog in a box…”
Before we get to the premise of this story lets deal with a few givens. The Puerto Rico Drifting Association not only parties infectiously – they even travel with their own DJ! – but they party 25/8. Still, Jose, Carlos, Raan, Rene, Luis, Jose, Juan and the rest find all the time they need to drive effectively, prepare passionately and do it all with the determination of a heart wanting it’s next beat.
The Club Dominicana de Corredores de Drift or CDCD (The Club of Dominican Drift Drivers) is no different and may have found time to hang with the PRDA at all the parties if they weren’t the host of last weekend’s La Batalla, a drift battle between Puerto Rico and The Dominican Republic. There’s something about detail that impresses you to keep your mind clear when thousands hang on your every word or decision. In short, they stopped partying at 2am when the PRDA was just shifting gears. Did I mention the PRDA travels with its own DJ and when the mood strikes them at the race track they’ll stop, do a little salsa, then drift on?
And here’s another given. Last weekend’s show in Santo Domingo was choreographed by Formula Drift driver CasparCanul. The first practice session I saw last Thursday was near embarrassing. Maybe three or four of the 14 drivers assembled for La Batalla could negotiate the course in a drift.
Understand that their grip credentials were lengthy. Raan Rodriguez, for example, once ran in the World Challenge, the FireHawk Series, and the 24 Hours of Daytona several times but he did the boneheaded-est thing ever when he took his Silvia S-13 out for a practice spin on Tuesday, literally spun it into the Armco and almost totaled the car – without a helmet or belts – days before the event. He got the car fixed in Santo Domingo and by the end of the weekend he was throwing it around with some skill. He admitted, though, that his first love remains road racing and he may use the car for time attack in the future.
Canul made each driver a personal project and not only taught them how to drift but got them prepared for tandem drifting by Sunday. Understand, too, that most were experiencing their first tandem or tsuiso drift on Sunday when the driver immediately in front of them pulled the emergency brake and launched both into a nether world of smoke and squealing tires and fans.
Whatever Caspar told them he should bottle and sell. At Long Beach this year I saw the same driver hit the same wall after the same mistake three different times only to emerge from the steaming hulk of debris laughing. Take a Caspar class, dude!
La Batalla is the passionate dream of Riandy Helena, a 25-year-old driver/promoter who knows more about selling tickets and dreams than 90 percent of his counterparts here in the U.S. For example, La Batalla was sponsored by “Red Bull International, Trident, Subaru International, VP Racing Fuels, Presidente Beer and Red Fresh Market,” a popular Beverly Hills style restaurant in Santo Domingo. Not bad for a first event.
And here’s the key to Riandy: he knows how to sell tickets to individuals. Most promoters might know how to put on an event but have never sold a ticket and wouldn’t know how to get it into the customer’s hand. Riandy, with the help of a Red Bull Austrian World War II Pinzgauer troop transport that had been converted into a DJ wagon, put on a police-escorted parade Friday night through several sections of Santo Domingo “coincidently” passing all the hot night spots where the drift cars stopped, lined up behind the six-wheeled Pinzgauer, and attracted attention with their gleam and the throbbing music from the Red Bull DJ. In nearly every case, the sound system from the Pinzgauer overwhelmed the club’s system nearby.
Did it work? On Sunday Riandy had convinced maybe four or five thousand to drive a half-hour through a storm (it rained in town but not at the track) to see La Batalla. He’d sold twice that many tickets in advance. Did he make money in his first full scale “international” event?
“Yeah, I think so!” Riandy said on Friday afternoon with a huge laugh. Are you paying attention NOPI, NHRA Sport Compact, Champ Car and anyone else who says today’s economy just won’t support racing promotions. Here’s a 25-year-old putting on his first full-scale event. He had a “practice” Drift Day last year to test the water and get the promotional video for his La Batalla show last weekend. He had no live television and he was able to attract the attention of MAJOR sponsors – who gave cash and not just products – because he knew how to sell tickets and not just spend sponsor money.
And don’t give me that old story that there’s nothing else to do in the Dominican. There’s a beach just a John Elway drive from the race track with palm trees, alluring waves and even more alluring Dominican women offering plenty to do! The Autodromo Mobil 1 has been remodeled for all kinds of racing from drags to drift but it was the drifting that got the undivided attention of sponsor VIPs last Sunday. There will be another La Batalla as far as they are concerned. The UV Vodka, another sponsor, flowed pretty heavy in the three-story, Red Bull-livered VIP building. Yes building, not tent!
Riandy also knows how to drift! He was one of the three or four who knew how to drift around the track in the first practice session. Still, Caspar was able to get him better chops during the weekend. So is Riandy a promoter or a driver?
“My goal is to compete in Formula D. And it’s a short goal. In one or two years I have to compete in Formula D.” Watching him at the end of the weekend he could compete now. He probably wouldn’t get into the Saturday Sixteen but he’s already better than the knock-the-walls-down qualifiers who haven’t taken a Canul Class yet.
However, the guy who may have emerged with the Most Improved or, even, Drift King, title was Luis Narra of the PRDA. He spent about a half hour in the passenger seat while Canul schooled him around the course on Friday. Luis emerged with some skills that would also put him head and shoulders above the quirky qualifiers in Formula D. Sunday’s spotlight tsuiso was Luis versus Riandy. In my eye Luis had clearly better skills but it didn’t help that the distracted promoter side of Riandy caused him to spin not once but twice after the crowd “demanded” a one-more-time run of what was an excellent contest between the two drivers.
“I watched everything Caspar was doing,” Narra told me. “It just all worked after I rode with him.” Narra didn’t say he wanted a Formula D opportunity but I’d like to see it.
In the end, the Dominican team won La Batalla to continue dominance over Puerto Rico that dates back to road racing challenges of the 1980s. This might be a portent of things to come. Both Riandy and Raan told me of a long team goal creating a Caribbean series including drift, grip and drag racing events in the Dominican, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Aruba, Peru, Costa Rica and other places where, curiously enough, Riandy is selling cars he imports from Japan under his other interest Car Connections, another La Batalla sponsor. He also has customers in Russia and Romania but that’s a little out of the Caribbean milieu, isn’t it?!
So what’s the premise of this story? What’s the hook? Maybe it’s this: how many Latins does it take to screw in a drift bulb in the Caribbean? You only need one when he knows how to punch tickets. And Riandy knows how to punch tickets.
Are you listening Formula D?
