Author: FormulaD
RTR Motorsports Announces 2017 Formula Drift Team with Vaughn Gittin Jr. and Chelsea DeNofa as Second Driver in new Ford Mustang RTR
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:::
CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA, MARCH 20, 2017 — Coming off a strong 2016 Formula Drift season, in which Vaughn Gittin Jr. finished third in the championship with two victories and four first place qualifiers, RTR Motorsports is pleased to announce a dual car campaign for the 2017 season. Chelsea DeNofa, winner of last year’s Formula Drift Streets of Long Beach, will be joining the team alongside Vaughn in a brand new 2017 Ford Mustang RTR Spec 5-D. Vaughn’s car features an updated look breaking away from a traditional theme, instead focusing on his personal style mixed with varying degrees of design: mixed paint, vinyl, gloss, satin, matte, and a few special tricks to achieve a livery that is both simple and complex.
Race To Win Tickets to Formula Drift Long Beach – Round 1
Climbing the Ladder – Dirk Stratton and his LS7-Powered #Driftvette
Holley’s LS Fest(link is external) is an event near and dear to our hearts. We attend every year for a chance to witness drag racing, autocross and drifting, all in one weekend and all cars featuring an LS or LT engine. This is where Dirk Stratton comes into the picture. Two years ago, at the 2015 Holley LS Fest, we saw a grey C6 Corvette ripping through the gears at Beech Bend Raceway with a trail of white smoke behind it and we were blown away. It was refreshing to see a Chevrolet chassis dominating in a motorsport series comprised almost solely of small Japanese cars, so we have been keeping our eyes on the driver, Dirk Stratton, ever since.
As it turns out, he has grown leaps and bounds since we last saw him at LS Fest. That year, in 2015, he won the Midwest Drift Union Championship which earned him a spot in the Formula Drift Pro2 series, only one tier below the big dogs of Pro1. He competed in the ‘16 season of Formula Drift (FD) and came in a very impressive 4th place in the overall series points which earned him the prestigious “Rookie of the Year” title.
Dirk is now positioned to compete in the FD Pro2 series again in 2017, although his “Rookie of the Year” title did earn him a license to compete in Pro1. “You know, I just think my team and I should compete another year in Pro2 in order to refine a few things and continue to grow. We hope to enter the Pro1 series in 2018 as a better team and I’m confident we can dominate,” Dirk told us.
So, within a matter of just a few years, Dirk climbed the ladder from the grassroots level of drifting to a professional level, competing alongside some of the best drifters in the world. We were intrigued to find out how he got here and how he progressed so quickly, so we gave him a call to learn more about his story.
Formula Drift President Jim Liaw on the process of regulating motor sport’s fast-growing underground discipline
Click here to read the full Auto #17 magazine.
Q Where is Drifting in its evolution from underground pursuit to mainstream motor sport discipline?
A Drifting pretty much exists in every market, in various forms. Definitely it exists in a grassroots form. There have been different spikes around the world that have escalated the sport – Formula Drift being one of them and the next phase is to push it towards a professional level as much as we can, to bring what is still a weekend sport into something that is a championship that can be commercially feasible.
There are some series that have had degrees of success but the next step is the legitimisation of this form of motor sport in order to find a cohesive global platform. We are fragmented in different parts of the world and there are certain rules we employ that don’t necessarily work in other parts of the world. That’s where we are now.
