Joon Maeng – Formula D Long Beach
On Friday afternoon at the Formula D opening event at Long Beach here in Southern California Joon qualified 21st to make it into the show on Saturday.
On Saturday morning after the morning practice and warm up session we heard some odd ticking noises from the valve cover area. On further inspection we found that the LS7 had a broken valve spring. :-/ Joon was not able to get into the top 16 for the main event.
Kevin @ Nexus Visuals is Joon’s videographer and he put together this video of the weekend:
Click here for more pics from David Karey @ AM Drift and the RRE crew: (more…)
Erica Ocampo – RRE Formula D Umbrella Girl
Erica Ocampo is our official RRE Umbrella Girl for the Formula D season this year competing with Joon Maeng’s LS13. You will remember her from last year’s Mitsubishi Owner’s Day and also from the cover of DSport with Tim Smith’s EVO X.
Check out her website here : http://www.ericaocampo.com/
Joon Maeng Formula D Press Day
Joon’s first runs giving rides to the media and tearing up the streets at Long Beach’s Formula D Press Day in the Lucas Oil/RRE LS13.
Joon Maeng @ FD Tech Day
Joon passed the Lucas Oil RRE LS13 through tech inspection this last weekend for the runup to the 2013 Formula D season. Here are some pics from the tech day and an interview with wreckedmagazine.com.
Joon Maeng- FormulaD Las Vegas- Lucas Oil RRE LS13 Premiere [updated]
Joon Maeng debuted his new LS2 powered S13 at the Las Vegas Formula D this weekend. We just finished building the new car over the last month and a half. Joon lost his ride in the Nitto Tire RX8 with Ron Bergenholz just before the Seattle Formula D round.
Joon had a S13 bare shell in the wings waiting and all the guys at RRE chipped in with some serious long all nighters to get the new car built and running.
Lucas Oil and American Real TV have always been a personal sponsor of Joon. They both are really helping to get Joon to the last two races of the FD championship this year.
The S13 is wrapped with one side as Lucas Oil
And the other as American Real TV.
After being let go from Bergenholtz Racing, Joon Maeng decided to continue as a privateer in the Lucas Oil/Nitto Tires V8 S13 240SX. This car was a plain 240SX body shell that was built into the LS2 V8 beast you see here in just over a month and a half.
Nitto Tire, Sam’s Auto Land, Parts Shop Max, Feal Suspension, Westech Performance, ACT and many, many other companies stepped in to help Joon make this happen.
With some final suspension adjustments Joon qualified 12th Friday night with a clean 82 point run. With the new course layout it was a night of big upsets.
RRE mechanic Lod Tongkul is Joon’s crew chief and RRE fabricator Art Thavilyati (more…)
Joon Maeng – Panama Drift Photos and Video
Joon is back and we got some great pics and a little video from his trip down to Panama. Enjoy!
Here is his write up on the event:
http://www.joonmaeng.com/2012/02/16/formula-drifting-in-panama/
Joon Maeng – Prepping for Panama Drift
Lod, Art, Ruben and Joon just finished up prepping Joon’s S13.5 for the Formula D drift demo and stunt show in Panama City, Panama on Feburary 5th. They added some heat protection around the turbo and swapped Joon’s MotoIQ grip road racing setup back to drift.
Lod put the 240 turbo on the dyno for a clean up tune with the AEM EMS and knocked out a solid 400 whp/375 ft lbs of torque on the RRE Dynapack dyno on 91 octane.
Jack Gets a Magazine Cover (Sort of)
I picked up the newest issue of Modified Magazine last week and I was looking at the cover. Checking out the CBRD EVO they had there and wait, what? Hey! RRE’s favorite up and coming drifter Jack Reynolds got his 240 (with a Dart V8) pictured at the bottom! We have been helping Jack as much as we can. He is a great kid and he slides that beast with no fear. Modified Mag has a nice series of articles this month about how to get into drifting and time trials. Congratulations Jack!
Formula D – Title Fight
Well www.speedhunters.com says it well… “the biggest man in the smallest car” Jeff Abbott got into the big show Friday by qualifying 27th on Friday night under the lights at the House of Drift in Irwindale. At the drivers meeting to announce the qualifying it was all: “Good news, you qualified 27th, you are in!” and then it was “bad news… you go up against Dai Yoshihara for your first run!”
Jeff drove his heart out. Dai led on the first run and you could just see Jeff pedaling as fast as he could trying to keep up to the V8 powered S-13. On the second run with Jeff leading he pulled off a great run. But with Dai making everything count with his potential championship on the line, there wasnt much the little 1.8 liter Mazda had to hold him off. The run would have been enough to advance to the sweet 16 against many other cars. Oh well, it was Dai’s night in the end.
Jeff ends the season with bigger motor visions dancing in his head. We’ll see what comes over the winter!
JOON “Gentle” MAENG
MotoIQ just posted a great interview with JOON MAENG.
http://www.motoiq.com/magazine_articles/articletype/articleview/articleid/2085/driver-profiles-joon-maeng.aspx
Before getting in to that however, I have to say, all that stuff you hear about Joon is true. I got the chance recently to hang out with Joon over the weekend at Redline Time Attack when RRE was out supporting his S13 for the event July 2-3 at Big Willow. Joon and I shared a hotel room, so we hung out a bit on and off the track. After careful study of Mr. Maeng, I have to say, he is just as cool as the media describes him as. The guy has a magnetic personality and he is just golden to be around even when his car was overheating in the 112 degree heat (that translates to something like 10000000 degrees on the track). Joon took the whole weekend in stride, the ups the downs and even me, snoring while he was trying to get some sleep. It was a great weekend and I hope to get the chance to hang out with the RRE crew and Joon again soon!!
Also, The fact that Joon is the first Korean American pro drifter is no joke in the Korean community. Koreans take stuff like that seriously and the community is behind this guy with their love and support!! There is a minidoc on this here:
….enough said… Here is the interview. Don’t forget to check out MotoIQ!! Their site is worth at least a day wasted in the office at your cubicle monitor!! ALSO, I changed ALL the pictures on here, so the MotoIQ story will have pics. of Joon in his beastly RX-8.
RRE MIATA??
OMGWTF? RRE Works on Miatas?
Mike @ RRE tuned the AEM EMS Series 2 ECU on Jeff Abbott’s FD Miata. It is not only DSMs and EVOs all day every day. There are some weird things going on at RRE like JOON MAENG’S S13 and JEFF ABBOTT’S Miata. Come by the shop and see what is going on!!
Everyone who is anyone reads MOTORMAVENS! You are in your favorite PJs sipping some coffee and you see a MIATA and ask, IS that an RRE sticker on that MIATA??
Why yes, that is an RRE sticker. Get out of your PJs and come to an FD event to support these fools!!
Joon Maeng – Lucas Oil Drift Commercial
RRE’s Formula D driver Joon Maeng took a couple days off to shoot a commercial for his sponsor Lucas Oil at Irwindale Speedway last month. This is his back up/demo S13.5 with the SR20 turbo motor. Here is the video.
Joon Maeng – Extreme Drift in Panama – Feb 2011
Our favorite Formula D driver Joon Maeng got invited to the Extreme Drift demonstration in Panama. Joon, Lod and Art here prepped the 240 here at the shop back in early January for the long trip. Formula D shipped the cars down there by ship in containers. The drifting demo was in the main downtown plaza. Here are a couple videos. Enjoy!
Joon got caught in a Nissan/Mazda sandwich:
Here are some pictures from Joon’s blog http://www.joonmaeng.com/2011/02/
Joon Maeng – Formula D – Portland International Raceway
The S-Empire/RRE Nissan S13.5 ran with Formula D at Portland International Raceway from July 25th-27th. Joon ran with Chris Forsberg, Tony Angelo, and JR Gittens. On Saturday Joon gave a ride along to one of the P.I.R. staff and she had a good feedback. It was a successful event!
Joon will be attending the Formula Drift Monterrey Mexico Competition next with the S13.5 on August 22nd-23rd. We are upgrading the turbo and getting prepared to have a powerful and reliable drift car for the Formula Drift Mexico event. The S13.5 will be loading in the F.D. Rig on August 13th.
Joon Maeng – Team Drift
Here are some picture from Performance Nissan Show presented by HKS at the Orange Show Speedway on April 5th. The RRE S13.5 was presented and was performing drift demos that day for Formula Drift.
The other pictures are from this past weekend @ Formula Team Drift Competition. The RRE S13.5 was presented from April 16th through April 20th. Joon had drift practice on Thursday until Saturday. Sunday was competition day. As a 3 car team for this competition, one of the car (Z33) was out because of mechanical failure. We did our best as a 2 car team, ( Robbie Nishida and Joon) but were deducted points for having only 2 cars.
Joon Maeng – Formula D – Passed Tech Inspection
Joon passed the Formula Drift Pre Tech held at Super Autobacs. We displayed the vehicle from 9 A.M. -6 P.M. Here are some pictures.
