In order to produce amazing photographic imagery, you physically have to be in front of something that is amazing in itself. Whether it be the Taj Mahal during sunrise, or a majestic creature like the elusive house cat – the more interesting the subject, the better the imagery.

I guess what I am trying to say is, I have been so lucky to be able to capture the antics of Ken Block over the years, as he makes my job as a Speedhunter incredibly easy. It’s hard not to come out with some of the best photos of my career when the most awesome tire-shredding action is happening right in front of me.

I got plenty of that from the ‘Head Hoonigan in Charge’ when I was on the set of Gymkhana Eight, which you can now watch by hitting play above if you haven’t done so already. I was there for one purpose: to capture all the hoonage as it took place in the gem of the Middle East – the city of Dubai.

I’ve visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and experienced a little local car culture before, but I really only skimmed the surface.

One of the things I’ve come away with from traveling to the region is the Dubaians’ absolute love affair with all things on four wheels. From what my friends who live in the city have told me, it stems from the fact that if you don’t have adequate and reliable transportation in the middle of the desert, you could not survive for very long, let alone settle there. This was reinforced when I had a chance to witness a monument dedicated to the Dodge Power Wagon. Of course, the locals have evolved from using vehicles for necessity and survival to all-out pleasure in the form of the some of the most amazing and exotic cars in the world.

So it was only appropriate for Ken to choose Dubai as the location for his next Gymkhana playground. To say that the city opened its arms and fully embraced what he wanted to do would be an understatement.

‘X Dubai’ is special projects group of sorts, focusing on everything and anything cool that involves the city. From viral videos to assisting with large Hollywood productions, they are one of the largest media houses in the region.

For this particular project, X Dubai played a part in securing certain locations for filming as well as providing plenty of on-site support.

Gone are the days of just a few cameras and an open airport runway to shoot a Gymkhana video; now the production is the size of a mayonnaise commercial. Or at least that’s what we told people on the street when they asked us what we were filming…

Once again, Ken teamed up with Hoonigan brand director Brian Scotto to make the eighth film. This viral video duo has been at it since the very first Gymkhana way back in 2008.

And the car that Ken used for Gymkhana Eight? Six hundred and fifty horsepower of all-wheel drive fury from a tiny little rally-bred Ford Fiesta.

The call-time for the first day was very early, and for most of the crew that meant setting wake-up alarms for 3:00am. The very first location was the busiest highway in Dubai.

I was told that Sheikh Zayed Road had only ever been shut down once before this, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t to shoot a viral video. You can bet the Dubai Police were out in force.

I can’t really imagine that the BMW i8 would make a very good patrol car, but these guys seem to like it.

There were a series of tricks for Ken to perform on the highway, but there was only a very short window of opportunity to get them done. After all, you can only close a main thoroughfare for so long. We may or may not have delayed flights out of Dubai International Airport on this particular morning…

Due to the reflective livery on the RX43 Ford Fiesta, the camera department needed to adopt a few tricks, one of which was mounting a high-powered spotlight right above the lens.

You can barely see the effect of it in this photograph, but I placed my camera right on top of the spotlight. I had to change the way I shoot this livery as well, because in order to get it to pop, I really needed to use my flash. Of course, I did not dare to do that while the cameras were rolling though.

For the main trick, the crew brought out a huge custom-made ramp. Its purpose: getting a car up on two wheels.

It’s pretty much the safest way to get a vehicle into this sketchy position without the risk of it flipping over. When in the Middle East, right?

The day before I had a chance to check out the stunt drivers practicing. The Ford F150 Raptor had to be fitted with special tires, and they also had to do some minor suspension modifications for safety and to improve its two-wheeling abilities.

What better way to start off a long week of shooting, right? The RX43 certainly made all the right noises as the exhaust note resonated off the surrounding skyscrapers. It’s one way to wake up the neighborhood!

And just like that the first shot was in the bag. As I mentioned earlier, the crew had a very limited amount of time to set up and break down camera positions, so we all moved quickly to vacate the eerily empty highway.

Next, we headed to the east coast of Dubai for our second location. We were shooting at Fujairah International Airport, but no one was prepared for what was waiting on the runway for us.

An early production Boeing 747 with a tug – both completely at our disposal. Brian was so excited as it’s always been a dream of his to tow a jumbo jet.

For an airplane that has been decommissioned, it was in fairly good condition. Although, the wind was blowing pretty strong and turning the turbine fans, which made the loudest racket. It even hurt my ears just standing next to it. I’m guessing it hadn’t been lubed for 30-odd years.

But that didn’t stop the boys from getting some shots for their next album cover. To the left is my good friend Will Roegge from Keep Drifting Fun; in the middle is Ron Zaras, also a good buddy of mine and professional arm wrestler (look at those guns). Brian was sad because he’d just found out he was not allowed to tow the jumbo jet.

If it looks like we were having a blast on set, your assumption would be correct. While shooting days are long and always very drawn out – think 15 hours from sunrise to sunset – having fun with it keeps everyone going.

We quickly got some storytelling shots out of the way, including those of Ken entering the airport. Just your everyday Gymkhanacourse, as you can see…

What would you do if you had a whole airport runway at your disposal? I just know I’d be smiling from ear to ear, too.

The idea was to build up as much speed as possible and pitch it sideways enough so that it became a backwards entry.

A long trail of dust from the runway mixed with the tire smoke created an awesome effect.

‘Killcam’ is the name given to a close-range, perfectly positioned GoPro, and it’s exactly what this one is. In this photo, Ken was sliding backwards at considerable speed.

Considering the size of the Boeing 747, I figured the only way to properly capture the scale of what was happening down on the runaway was to shoot from the sky. It might be surprising for you to hear, but up until this point I had never flown in a helicopter.

Since shooting Gymkhana Eight I’ve flown in choppers two more times, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was a bit nerve wracking getting in the air for the first time.

One thing that was tough was getting the timing right. As soon as Ken left the line, our helicopter would have to play catch-up, because the RX43 accelerates much faster.

After a few tries we got the timing down, and it was so cool to watch my friend Eric Everly from Tempt Media shoot with the Shotover F1 camera system. He was so smooth with the sticks, and the resulting shots were just perfect.

While I didn’t have a chance to shoot out the door, I did have a pretty clear window view which allowed me to snap a few shots of Ken doing donuts under the massive 747. You really do get a sense of how big these aircraft are when you see how tiny the Ford Fiesta looks in comparison. See that black dot on the right of the runway? That is a F150 Raptor camera truck.

With that done, the first day of shooting was in the books. It’s amazing how much we actually got done in one day considering the complications you always seem to run into on projects of this nature.

Day two was a bit tough for all, mainly due to everyone being exhausted after such a long first day of shooting. But I couldn’t help but be excited once I saw the Dubai skyline all lit up in the background.

I was a bit more awake by the time the Porsche 918 police car showed up on set. It’s just so amazing to me that this is actually a thing in Dubai.

In fact, these police cars followed us around everywhere we went. Just like the LAPD cars in Gymkhana Seven, they served a double purpose, acting as great background cars as well as actually blocking traffic.

Our first location was another empty highway, and the perfect spot for an epic drag race.

Not just any old drag race though, but a supercar line-up – the stuff that dreams are made of.

Piloting a few of the ‘street cars’ were Roncar (aka Mr. Big Gunz), and grumpy Matt Tuccillo (cool shades dude). I was insanely jealous.

This was a classic case of all the neighbors wondering what the heck were we doing blocking the road for a street race. Mayonnaise, people! No pizza boys were told to find another way home.

What I found interesting from a photography perspective was the perfect fill light being provided by a very shiny skyscraper just across the way. The whole road was bathed in it.

From a physical standpoint though, that only made the heat even more unbearable, and this was only late fall! It was like being on Tatooine with two suns shining on you.

After a few roundy rounds and some drag pulls, we packed up once more and headed to the next spot; one that turned out to be another favorite of mine.

This location was a crazy network of steel and concrete beams that seemingly existed for no reason at all. Whatever it was, I loved the way it looked.

It’s even better when you see it from the sky, as it actually forms a Falcon.

Below, as Ken appropriately pointed out, was the most expensive donut box the world has ever seen.

On top of that, these weren’t only exotic cars – they all belonged to the Dubai Police!

To capture all that donut box jazz, the boys at GoPro came up with this crazy snake-like contraption.

I’m pretty sure there was still room for around 50 more cameras on the windshield though.

As the sun was setting, Ken made clouds with the RX43.

By the time day three began we’d barely had a chance to get our eye crusties out, as my buddy Bryan Moore from Tempt Media demonstrated.

Our first shooting location was on the docks in front of some of the highest apartment buildings in the world.

Kenny from the Block was jumping for joy – this was going to be the most epic day in terms of how many tricks would be attempted.

It started with some trick maneuvering around some posts that were on the dock.

I can’t imagine this surface was ever designed for tire grip, which of course meant it was very slick, not to mention dusty.

There are so many people behind the scenes that make the ship that is the Gymkhana franchise sail smoothly. Brian was on the radio with Ken as he was driving, and you can see the first assistant director yelling at me for being in frame. Sorry!

The next location was very cool indeed – a man-made island built for a small landing strip. It also provided what must be one of the best views of the Dubai cityscape.

At the end of the runway a fine selection of Dubai Police supercars were waiting. High speed runs into the ocean, anyone?

The strip is actually run by Skydive Dubai, the very same company who helped out with that epic #HelloJetman promo clip involving two jetpack-equipped daredevils and an Emirates Airbus A380.

Camera positions were actually on the runway itself, which made it one of the more interesting locations that I’ve had to shoot from.

The second stunt of the day was a mini jump off a little ramp on the driveway leading up to the Skydive Dubai runway.

There was quite a bit of run-up to the jump, and Ken made the most of it by never lifting.

WRC driver Khalid Al Qassimi came on set to check out the action. It’s too bad he didn’t bring his rally car along, as that would have been really cool.

The guys at X Dubai pulled out all the stops for this single scene. We had police boats, flipping jet ski dudes and flipping jet stream guys as well. Basically flipping everything!

But to top it all off, there was a fan man. How cool would it be for him to say that he tandem ‘drifted’ down a runway with Ken Block?

The next stunt was something I was really looking forward to. It seemed that up to this point, the theme of the video was largely about all things that fly in the air.

I am paraphrasing, but Ken told the pilot something along the lines of, ‘Get as close to the roof of my car as you want.’

The Head Hoonigan in Charge seems to go through life by putting himself in dangerous situations for our viewing pleasure. And what a life, eh?

The hardest part of this stunt was to get the timing perfect. The goal was for the RX43 and the airplane to go full-tilt at the same time down the runway, and it definitely made for an awesome shot. Witnessing it in person was so cool too, because I can only imagine seeing this type of thing in James Bond films.

If the airplane buzzing Ken Block’s tower was not cool enough, the next stunt was the cherry on top.

It was getting late in the day by now, and you can see the reflective livery reacting to the sunset. Everything was in position and the crew was all set for an epic tandem donut session.

Doing tandem donuts with a helicopter that is. It’s a scary thought though, and I was half-thinking how cool it looked and half-worried about something going horribly wrong. The dude is genuinely crazy, and all this for a mayonnaise commercial?!

The stunt worked perfectly as planned and Ken produced a cloud of tire smoke large enough to be seen from the International Space Station.

While any sane person would call it a day, we all know that the Monster driver is far from that.

Jumping into the Persian Gulf from a helicopter seems like a bucket list sort of thing for someone like Ken.

I scored it a perfect 10 for rotation. What form! Such Gymkhana! The Dubai Police Search & Rescue team was on hand to pick up the Olympic diver.

Day four started back in the city, because you can’t shoot a Gymkhana video in Dubai and not include the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa.

While this location is normally filled to the brim with tourists from all over the world, it was completely empty on this particular morning.

What an interesting staging area. Although, the surface was incredibly slick, and Ken needed all the run-up he could get to build up speed.

I don’t know about you guys, but I love this one-off livery. The fact that it has a different look depending on what light you throw at it is so cool. Just be prepared for the slew of copycats in the coming months!

My options were to shoot from the ground, or get on the first deck of the Burj Khalifa. I choose to shoot from the ground as Ken navigated some park benches.

I’ve shot Ken at some interesting locations around the world, but I’d have to say that this spot takes the cake.

Next up was a few pick-up and storytelling shots on Palm Island, near the hotel Atlantis.

I’m sure the neighbors didn’t mind us dropping in for a while. Donuts for everybody!

At 3:30am in the morning we hit the road and headed towards the outskirts of the city. The location was a series of abandoned roads that are being swallowed back into the dunes by the sand.

The reason for the early call-time? The crew wanted to catch the sunrise, and we only had one shot at it.

It was such a cool landscape, and the RX43 looked right at home sitting on what little pavement is left.

It makes you wonder what might have been on these roads? A shopping mall? A residential neighborhood? Who’d have known that all these years later it would become part of a Gymkhana set.

When Ken is not behind the wheel of a rally car he races camels and hangs out with his pet falcon.

With all the talent in place and the sun slowly rising, it was the perfect time for the opening shot.

After being on set for these scenes, it really makes me wonder how grueling it must be to shoot a full-length feature film.

But I love how much goes into such a simple thing. Because of this guy’s lead foot, an entire genre of car videos has been created.

And just like for Gymkhana Seven in Los Angeles, there were up to around 80 people on set at any given time.

That includes the talent wranglers, film crew, security detail, all the grip guys and the logistical people, of course. Not to mention, all of the Hoonigan Racing crew and mechanics. It was endless.

While this shot looks super simple, it actually proved to be quite difficult. I think the cheetah just wanted to give Ken a little kiss.

This is a better shot of what the scene actually looked like. As you guys can see, there are many moving parts just for a simple one-second clip.

The cheetah also left quite a bit of hair on the dashboard, which I am sure the RX43 crew really enjoyed cleaning up. At least the other animal talent on set was much friendlier.

Once the intro scenes were shot, Ken jumped back into the driver’s seat to do some sand hooning.

It was awesome to watch the rally car go full off-road, jumping from dune to pavement. I’m sure Ken could have played all day, but we still had one major shot left to finish off, so we yet again packed up and headed back into town.

Although this time it was to the hotel that Mr. Block was staying at. He certainly got some funny looks walking around the lobby in his race suit.

The fact that the hotel allowed him to go ham on the property was just too awesome of an opportunity to pass up.

With traffic at a standstill on the other side of the road, Ken warmed up the tires. As the cameras weren’t rolling for this shot, I fired my flash for the first time during the shoot.

And just like that, the final shot was in the bag and Gymkhana Eight was a wrap. I can’t imagine what the hotel guests were thinking when they looked outside of their rooms and saw what was going on.

After five days of shooting, I ended up with 12,105 shots in total. That equates to an average of one picture every 18 seconds. It was so much work that I don’t think I recovered for another week.

I want to thank Ken Block, creative director Brian Scotto, director Ben Conrad, and the rest of the Hoonigan Racing crew for letting me tag along. My corny jokes can drive anyone mad, and I applaud them all for suffering through them for an entire week.

I can only imagine what sort of trouble Ken and the gang will get into for the next installment in the Gymkhana series. All I know is, I want to be there again shooting one photo every 18 seconds. Enjoy the Bonus Images chapter below, and don’t forget to leave a comment for Ken about what you thought of the video.

Larry Chen

Some of you long-time Speedhunters fans have probably been wondering, ‘What’s gotten into Larry?’ Or more precisely, ‘What’s up with all the off-road coverage recently?’ Well, the short answer is that I’ve been bitten by the off-road bug. But of course, it’s a bit more complex than that…

I actually started getting into off-road racing a few years ago as a means to keep taking pictures during the sports car racing and professional drifting off-season. Because with off-road, rain or shine, snow or sleet, they race; and therefore the season starts much earlier in the year.

It all started with the King Of The Hammers and the Mint 400, and since then I’ve covered the Imperial Valley race as well as recently my first race in Mexico.

Previously, I’ve been able to either borrow a press car or hitch a ride with a friend. But of course, if I wanted to take it to the next level I would have to invest in the proper equipment, which goes way beyond proper camera gear.

I’ve taken it seriously to the point of actually purchasing an off-road-capable vehicle for myself, as a way to chase these races.

Because there is no point in even trying to photograph off-road racing if you can’t even make it out to the shooting locations yourself.

So what is it that draws me in so much? It starts with the race course: nature’s playground.

While I still love and appreciate sports car racing and nicely paved racing circuits, I’ve come to realize something recently.

The road courses that I love the most are organic and they have character. Street circuits are my favourite, because they are imperfect and harsh. I love the fact that there is no run-off and you really have to have some guts to push it out there. Pikes Peak and Circuit De Guia are perfect examples.

Of course, I also love race tracks with lots of character, like the Nürburgring Nordschleife and Spa. However, we all know there are never going to be race tracks like that ever again. New racing circuits are very sterile with no character at all. No grittiness, just perfect in every way with miles of run-off area.

What I love about off-road racing is that the race track will always be the same – it’s in nature. But in saying that it does change, sometimes significantly after just a single car passes through the dirt.

Another thing I love about off-road racing is the competition itself. It’s just insane what these drivers put themselves through to finish an event.

While I am not saying that road racing is any less glamorous or dangerous, off-road racing has such a rawness to it. You could go off-course without anyone being able to find you for hours. Before the invention of GPS, you could straight-up disappear.

The best part of it all? The teams, drivers and fans are all out there for the glory. There is no glamor; there is no big prize money.

It’s all for bragging rights and knowing that you are the best. Either that, or you just had the most luck on the day.

The Polaris RZR Mint 400 Presented by BFGoodrich Tires is known as ‘The Great American Off-road Race’.

This year the grand marshal was off-road racing legend Rod Hall.

The week’s festivities kicked off with Rod driving down Las Vegas Blvd in his 1969 Baja 1000-winning Ford Bronco, with the full 2016 field of race cars behind him.

I don’t think there is any other city in the United States that is more appropriate for hosting such an event. This is where American off-road lives.

Over the next few days I covered all the activities that the Mint had to offer, including time trials near the California/Nevada border.

The Mint 400 is one of the few races in the world that holds a qualifying session open to the public for viewing.

It also provides the perfect opportunity for me to get some awesome shots of drivers going full-tilt in an effort to get a better qualifying position.

If you start too far back in the pack, it does not matter how fast you are – you simply won’t see where you are going due to all the dust.

Along with qualifying, one of the biggest events leading up to the race itself is contingency and technical inspections.

Las Vegas native and all around crazy guy BJ Baldwin was on hand to take pictures with fans and cause a traffic jam while doing so. What a showman.

It seems like the entire week is buzzing with activities, including one of my favorite events where the Mint 400 challenges pit crews to compete against each other in a tire-changing speed test.

The night before the big race all the teams gather at the Golden Nugget hotel in downtown Las Vegas for a drivers meeting.

As always, the mornings are never easy on these events. My alarm went off at 3:00am and we were headed to the pits around an hour later.

The drivers are off the line for the first race at 6:00am sharp, so they don’t get to sleep in much either.

While normally I would wait until a few cars had started, the race was run backwards this year, so I didn’t have a chance to stick around. If I wanted to catch drivers out on the course in the soft morning light, I needed to leave right away.

Just as the sun was rising, the first racers were passing through an area called the ‘Shooting Range’, which is exactly what it is. All that stuff glistening in the sun? Empty shell casings and targets that people bring out into the desert to shoot at. Fun, eh?

While the first race had slower cars, they are always just as interesting as the bigger, badder and faster trophy trucks. I spotted this awesome Honda Ridgeline doing everything but driving straight after coming out of a silty corner.

The lighter cars sometimes get even more hang time due to their limited amount of suspension travel. It’s just so cool to see these buggies flying through the air.

While I was not chasing a particular story, I was definitely trying to hit up as many spots as possible.

Of course, we always try to go out of our way to follow a few of our friends. We caught Casey Currie in for a stop at one of the remote pits.

He brought out his Ultra4 rock crawler and had run into some minor issues out on the race course.

I love the fact that you can see so many different types of vehicles in one race on the same course. How cool is that?

Midway though the day, the fast guys started leaving the line. We caught them for the first time on one of the many dry lakebeds in the area.

You don’t really get a sense of the speed that these rigs can achieve unless you actually get close to them when they fly by. Some of these guys can go well over 150mph (241km/h) through these sections.

We made a point to chase the lead pack as much as we could, and actually caught them six times over the course of the day before the sun set completely.

The great thing about shooting a race like the Mint 400 is that there are so many competitors running at the same time, so there’s always race traffic to be found anywhere on the course.

Because, by the time the trophy trucks are well into their race, the competitors in the first race are still working on finishing up.

The course itself is about 120 miles (193km) long, so the fast guys have to do three whole laps, while some of the lower classes only have to complete two.

Due to the popularity of the Mint 400, the Martelli brothers had to turn away quite a few competitors this year. There is a very long waiting list to race.

This makes me wonder if it will soon become a two-day affair. Who knows, maybe even motorcycles will make a comeback…

We pretty much followed the race till the sun started setting, and then chose one final spot to shoot from.

Outside of one of the remote pit areas was a big silt bed that everyone had to run through. While in some places on the course it’s hard to tell what line the racers are going to take, it’s easy when there is really only one way to go.

This of course meant that it was the perfect spot to get some epic sunset colors as well as some roost shots before they racers drove into the night on their last lap.

So what do you guys think about all of the recent off-road coverage. Do you like it? Or do you hate my guts for it? I want to know… Like I said earlier in my post, there is an endless amount of things to enjoy in the Speedhunting world, so why not take a look at what other people are doing?

Till then, you will find me at more races like the Baja 1000 and hopefully the Dakar Rally soon enough. It’s definitely on my bucket list. Enjoy the Bonus Images chapter below!

Larry

Chapter One: Beginnings

If you guys follow us on Instagram, you’ve probably seen that I recently picked up a 6-speed manual Toyota FJ Cruiser as a project car. While it’s a fun rig to go camping and over-landing in, that’s not my intention for the truck. I am building a media chase vehicle that will allow me to follow and photograph desert and off-road racing. There was a problem however, as I know nothing about building an off-road vehicle.

My newbie status must have shown through on social media as Jordan from Brenthel Industries contacted me asking if I needed help with the truck. Of course, I wanted to check out what they were about before I let them do anything to my FJ, but as it turns out they are full-on off-road race rig builders who actually race as well. It also turns out that I’ve seen plenty of their trucks, and even shot some of them over the years too. I sat down with Jordan Brenthel and his brother Jonathan to learn a bit more about their operation in Anaheim, California.

Larry: Let’s start with the obvious question: how did it all start for you guys?

Jonathan: I was working mortgages and Jordan was still in high school. I wanted to do something different that required my hands. Unlike some off-road racers, we didn’t grow up financially wealthy. I was looking into buying a transmission shop, and mentioned to Jordan,”Hey, let’s start a company and build race cars.” He had just come out of high school, was 18, and told me I was crazy and that it wasn’t a good idea. Both our parents were self-employed and struggled along the way, and they were also against it. Jordan said, “I’m going to have a job. I don’t care if I make $4 an hour.” The next day he came up to me and said,”Let’s do it!”

We went to work for about 12 different people in the beginning. It started with the both of us working for some really low sand car builders for minimum wage, and we learned from everyone around us. We also took night classes for welding, machining, marketing, and pretty much everything else at a local community college.

Jordan: We had our shop in Santa Ana but had other jobs in San Diego and Hesperia. I’d drive to Hesperia and it would be snowing down the side. I’d eat all of my meals in my truck on the drive there. Jonathan did the same on his way to San Diego. We’d get back to the shop late at night around 10:00pm and get as much done as possible.

We were both designing at the time. He was doing more fabrication and I was kind of bolting stuff on, but we both did everything.

Jonathan: We found where our strengths were. I was better at the fab and he was better at the solid works and design, so we kind of went on from there and did those things more and more. We both have done, and can do, everything at the shop though.

It was really hard for the first few years, but we then started to slowly pick up and started racing ourselves. We had a customer that wanted to race with us and he said he’d help with the vehicle.

From that point, we won the championship. I won the first year racing and Jordan won the second year racing the same truck. That just boosted our name and our truck with the yellow and black. That was around 2012/2013. The whole process took 12 years though.

Larry: Was there a gap?

Jonathan: I started out making snowboards when I was younger. That didn’t go too far. I saw the off-road industry and noticed that they had bad-ass fabricators; their business side was lacking a bit though. We came up with a process between the places that we worked at where we could use all CAD engineering for the builds and make all our products flawless with super precision. We made the vehicles the same, tuned them the same, and we could do it in a quicker time.

Larry: How many competitors did you guys have?

Jonathan: About three or so. They’d been around for 20-plus years and had their names, but there are guys like us coming in now and people are seeing the quality of the vehicle and say that it’s a better product.

Jordan: We try to be more innovative with things. When you come in second position you’re a little more hungry, and I guarantee we offer better customer service. Just last week while we were pre-running for the San Felipe 250, there was a guy also pre-running who had a problem with his truck. I gave him one of our trucks to use while we took a look at his.

Chapter Two: Dakar

Larry: So someone wanted to race Dakar and came to you guys?

Jordan: Yeah! Jonathan is unique because he can make anything happen, with or without the finances, haha!

Jonathan: Someone won what’s called the ‘Dakar Challenge’ and got a free entry. Entry alone is $50K, just for the vehicle. The guy that won, who was a well=off individual, said it was too much and didn’t want to spend half a million dollars, especially with only three months to go. He called me up and said that it was mine to have. So I was happy that I got the entry but I just needed the other half million bucks!

Larry: It’s kind of like getting free wheels, but needing to buy a car to fit them on.

Jonathan: Exactly! It was just ridiculous. It was cool, but it just wouldn’t work. So we called the guy back and asked what’s the deal. We made a deal because he had the finances. He bought a car from us and wrapped it in Brenthel. It’s our wrap and our program. He paid for the both of us and two of our mechanics to head over, because each mechanic has their own entry fee as well. The only thing he didn’t pay for was our services and labor – we took care of that. It was a great experience but we didn’t have enough test time. We built the car in 45 days, start to finish.

Ultimately, the driver had never driven in sand before and there was a huge number of sand stages. He got stuck four or five times and eventually timed out. The first three were all sand. It was really unfortunate because we talked about about getting a support truck, like those big trash trucks. Most of them are racing but some of them are out there just to support, but they’re $100K. Sometimes you can split it with three teams but it’s still a lot.

Jordan: You know happened to Robby and BJ in the first three days? They both got pulled out by their support trucks. You can only get pulled out and towed to the finish line by a competitor, which is why the support trucks have to enter into the race, and why it’s so expensive.

Chapter Three: Baja Kits

Larry: Let’s talk Baja Kits. How and why did you start making these? You guys seem to have your hands full with race trucks.

Jordan: People would ask us to make kits for their trucks because we made cool stuff and they wanted it for theirs. We kept turning them away because that’s just not what we do – we build race trucks. But people kept asking and asking, so one day this guy came in with a Toyota and we finally agreed to make one. He was actually referred to us by our dad at a gas station.

It was the first one of that particular kit and it wasn’t that great, but since them we started a process. Like our race trucks, everything goes through Solidworks. There is not a single thing here that’s not done in CAD; we cycle it all in the computer. We get all the factory frames from Ford, GM, and work with the engineers over there. The only exception is Toyota as they don’t offer it so we have to scan them.

Larry: Was there a difference between Baja Kits and the race trucks for you guys?

Jonathan: The difference was the potential. We tapered off when we did 90 per cent race trucks and 10 per cent Baja Kits. It was really hard for me, Jordan was doing design and it was really hard to sell kits because they were only a thousand bucks and we needed more than that to sell these big cars for a quarter to half a million. So Jordan focused more on Baja Kits and I focused more on race cars. Race cars go up and down in price but Baja Kits have more potential and a broader market.

Larry: That’s one thing I noticed about off-road car culture: followers are so into it with their own cars. You go to King Of The Hammers and stuff and you see how much they spend on their own rigs, whereas the community in, let’s say drifting or rally, is just not at the level of the off-road guys.

Jonathan: It’s crazy because the Ford Raptor has helped us significantly. It literally boosted everything for us. Guys would come in and drop $50K on a front and rear end. They initially came in for Raptor products but asked about our race trucks, not knowing anything about them. We thought they were joking when they said they wanted them, but two months later, yeah. We have two builds right now that ultimately came from Raptors.

Jordan. It was a gateway. They found their way to us then got more into off-road. Some of them went on to go on trips with Cameron Steele on trailing missions.

Larry: It’s interesting because the Raptor is kind of the pinnacle, whereas on the road, you start with the tuner cars, then your Porsches, then your Ferraris. In off-road, what’s higher than a Raptor?

Jordan: That got me thinking – if I had a million dollars and could buy whatever I wanted, what would I get? I’d probably still get a Raptor; they’re a rad truck!

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Bonus Chapter: Cutting Room Floor

Chapter One: A Different Type Of Car Show

When I first started shooting car shows, the people who attended would pay $25 to have a photo taken with their arms around a scantily clad import model. I would also have to wear ear protection because of how loud some of the stereos were.

What I just explained could have very well been a past SEMA Show, or any other import car show that toured around the Southern California area for that matter. While I didn’t dislike the scene, I never really understood it.

In the time since, it seems like the taste of the car community at large has changed drastically.

Now your average Cars & Coffee Sunday morning meet-ups have turned into family-friendly events.

Has car culture matured? Events like Luftgekühlt have definitely help. This was even more evident as I brought my family along to check out all the cool Porsches.

No burnout competitions, no stereo show-offs – just the occasional mega-dollar ride rolling in at a snail’s place.

And the best part? All of the cars drove in under their own power, and most of them were not trailered to the event location itself. Even some of the race cars were driven all the way from their Los Angeles homes.

To non car people these cars all look the same – so what’s the big deal?

Well truth be told, I’d seen many of these rides before.

But because this was only the third ever Luftgekühlt event, there were still new and old builds that showed up which were totally new to me.

Then again, it’s not all about the cars anymore. It’s a social event. There’s good music, good food, and most of all good people.

Chapter Two: Capturing The Moment

So what’s the secret to photographing these events? My advice: go very early or go late.

Sure, you won’t be able to see everything, but that’s not the point. In this case I went very late, which was awesome because I had the chance to shoot many of the cars on the street as they were rolling out.

Plus, you don’t have to battle the crowds to get the good shots.

The event itself was held at Modernica near downtown Los Angeles.

If you are a big modern furniture buff like I am, then you’ll recognize Modernica as the company that purchased the original equipment to make fiberglass shell ‘Eames Style’ chairs after Herman Miller discontinued them.

Since 1989, Modernica has been producing its own modern furniture with a Californian design twist. The guys even made a few special edition chairs for Luftgekühlt.

While it’s definitely not the first car show/meet to utilise such an amazing space, founders Patrick Long and Southern California creative director Howie Idelson did an awesome job curating the cars showcased in and around the facility.

On top of that, there were plenty of spaces for regular attendee cars. You could park your patina-covered air-cooled Porsche next to Jerry Seinfeld’s like-new 959 if you really wanted to.

I’m really sold on these type of events. It makes me wonder what’s next for Southern California’s car show scene.

I’ll leave you guys with one awesome machine. My good buddy Joey Seely built this 1985 911 Carrera rally car which was auctioned off at the event for charity.

It sold for $275,000, which is great because the proceeds went towards pancreatic cancer research.

If there’s one thing an event like Luftgekühlt isn’t good for, it’s the air-cooled Porsche bubble. It seems like it’s forever expanding and it won’t be popping anytime soon. Or will it?

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Bonus Chapter: Cutting Room Floor

Chapter One: Gridlife

The shirtless man stood in the middle of the roadway and yelled, “THOU SHALL NOT PASS… unless you do a burnout.” I was instantly reminded of Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings, but instead of holding a wooden staff with a magical crystal in the end, this guy was waving around a giant staff made out of empty beer cans and duct tape. I took a moment to really soak it all in. I’ve seen and experienced so much of the car culture world, and any new experience is generally a good one, so when I got invited to check out Gridlife Midwest at Gingerman Raceway in Michigan, I could not say no. However, I was totally caught off guard and I unknowingly stepped into what I consider the American Gatebil.

I will get into what happened with Gridlife’s ‘Gandalf’ later on in my post, but I can tell you what occurred next made me laugh to the very core. As cars pulled up to do a burnout, spectators nearby poured their beers out on the rear tires as lubricant. The smell of beer and burning rubber is something I will never forget. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Gate… I mean Gridlife.

As many of you will know, regular track days can be very boring. Well, they are at least for those who are not driving. If you’re behind the wheel, it’s pretty much the best time ever.

Gridlife has solved this problem – as have many other event organisers around the world – by combining music and other activities to create a festival worth going to, even if you are not a big car culture fanatic.

Along with an actual time attack competition as well as on-site instructors for novice racers, Gridlife assembled an all-star cast of drivers from all over the United States and Canada.

Many of these guys are local to the midwest drift scene, including Risky Devil, whom I’ve had a chance to hang out with quite a bit over the years.

They also went out of their way to get a few pro drivers to give ride-alongs.

Geoff Stoneback brought out La Flama Blanca, also known as Chris Forsberg’s VK56-powered M45.

Drifting is only one part of the three-day festival though, so I will highlight my favorite time attack cars and other interesting rides in my next post. I managed to feature four builds while I was out there too, so stay tuned for those.

Getting crazy on track by day and getting even crazier on the stage by night – this is what Gridlife is all about.

Various artists performed over the two evenings, including the likes of Savoy and Paper Diamond for you EDM freaks out there.

Chapter Two: Paddock Shenanigans

As with any events I go to, I take my time to walk around the pits and take in what is going on. I swear these guys were doing some major engine work when I saw them on Friday, and by Saturday night they were still working on this beast of a BMW.

Do you think Elmo likes to do burnouts on Sesame Street in his Miata?

There is one word that came to mind as I strolled around the place: chill.

It was a great departure from what I am accustomed to covering serious motoring events.

And the quality of rides? Second to none. Although, I couldn’t really understand why someone would bring a drag car to a road course event… I like the dude’s dedication all the same, though.

It was almost hard to find the cool rides as there was a constant flow of traffic; people were going on and off track as well as just cruising around the place.

Along with all the cool track builds, there were quite a few show cars. I know what you are probably thinking – show cars are stupid, but this was actually really awesome. The quality was right up there.

With such a long weekend’s worth of festivities, it really allowed me the opportunity to slow down and catch up with friends.

‘The Voice of Formula D’, Jarod DeAnda, was at Gridlife announcing all the drift action. Did you guys know that Jarod is an ordained minister and he actually married my wife and I in Hawaii? Well, now you know…

You know it’s going to be a good time when the Hoonigan boys show up to an event.

Also on site was Mr. Car Thrasher himself, Ryan Tuerck.

Ryan brought out his ‘street car’, which of course is powered by a 600hp 2JZ. Very street-able indeed…

One of my favorite drift cars on the grid was built by my good buddy Stevie from Risky Devil. It’s such a clean E30, and it sits oh so right.

On top of that, the little BMW really goes too, as it’s powered by an SR20. It just looks so good pitched sideways.

Since Gingerman Raceway is quite a long way from any major city there are not many hotel options around, so most of the people who attend this event just camp out on the grass. It was a quite warm weekend, so these guys improvised a redneck jacuzzi on wheels in the form of a Toyota pickup truck.

Here’s my buddy Greg, who also runs the drift portion of Gridlife, taking a dip. Nice way to cool off, Greg!

As I delved deeper inside Tent City, there were all sorts of interesting activities going on.

If Jeff Goldblum had a classic Nissan Z car, I wonder if it would look like this?

Remember what I said about the quality of show cars? Only concours-worthy builds were allowed in.

This is what it’s all about: spending time with your bros and talking cars. Suh, dude!

How about a little big rig diesel action in a Miata… If it fits it ships, right?

If you guys have been following Speedhunters of late, you’ll know that I’ve become obsessed with the off-road scene. I love seeing these builds out in the wild; what a great way to camp out at Gridlife.

Oh you know, just wakeboarding a Miata. Nice one, Canada!

Chapter Three: Thou Shall Not Pass

So, back to the improvised burnout box I talked about at the beginning of this post…

There was only one road that led from the campground to the main track area, and it was guarded by this man and his gang of merry men.

If you wanted to pass through in a vehicle, you at least had to attempt to do a burnout. Front-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, minivan – nothing was exempt.

This was not actually sanctioned by Gridlife and of course very dangerous, so we definitely don’t condone this sort of behavior. But it was one of those interesting moments where car culture just sort of happened, so therefore I was obliged to document it. Because Gridlife.

It’s like it could not be contained. Modified cars: check. Spectators with booze: check. Let the good times roll…

I swear, I’ve never seen people so excited to watch someone do a burnout. It was actually emotional; it was just… beautiful.

These dudes in a diesel pickup truck rolled up, and of course they wanted to pass. But the driver did not want to do a burnout.

But with some convincing and a few high-fives, the inner burnout king was unleashed.

Just look how happy this guy is; what an incredible scene.

Of course, things got rowdy really fast, and the officials at Gridlife and local authorities were soon on their way to shut the pop-up party down. But not before one final burnout to rule them all.

Everyone helped by emptying out their beer cans (mostly Pabst Blue Ribbon) on the rear tires of the powerful turbo Nissan, and then the driver let rip.

Cool as cucumbers, bystanders stepped in to ensure the burnout tracked true and straight.

And just like that the party was over. From then on out, not a single puff of tire smoke was produced from Tent City. Truth.

The aftermath? My buddy Shane filmed the entire thing using a gimbal-mounted camera, but seeing as he was shirtless, he got pelted by scolding hot rubber bits. What a trooper; anything for the shot, right?

Gandalf The Drunk and his friends’ work was done.

Chapter Four: Doing It Sideways

While the off-track festivities were fun, the on-track activities were even better.

As I mentioned before, I am putting together a completely separate post on some of my favorite time attack cars from Gridlife, but without a doubt, the drift cars were the stars. Hundreds of people lined the track to watch these boys tackle the first few corners.

The best part? There were so many different machines; from all-out pro-spec cars to very stylish street cars.

Many of the latter did not have crazy horsepower figures, but they still managed to put on an amazing show for the spectators.

Given that these events have a much more relaxed atmosphere, I’m generally allowed free reign in terms of capturing imagery.

But since I didn’t have my own chase car on hand, I went out in search of those willing and able to perform driving duties for me. Enter my buddy Scott Sengpiel.

He brought out his Radical to drive a few sessions on track, and being one of the Gridlife instructors was happy to shuttle me around the place. I didn’t want his awesome Hayabusa-powered machine to get dinged up too much from insane dirt drops, so I only rode with him for a few sessions.

The resulting shot? Not bad, but also not as close as I normally get in my Z car. Then again, Ole Orange Bang is pretty much built for the purpose.

Along with Jarod, Matt Farah from The Smoking Tire was also on the mic. Matt had a BMW M2 press car with him and had heard that I was looking for drivers dumb enough to perform chase car duties, so he offered to be the wheelman.

Matt has driven pretty much everything under the sun, so I figured this would be an easy job for him. It was, and we had a blast in the process.

He even shot a little video of it, which will soon be releasing on his YouTube channel. Here is one of the resulting shots from his handiwork; it’s just too much fun to get these types of shots, because it’s pretty much impossible unless you are moving with your subject at speed.

What really interested me was how many of the Final Bout drift teams came out to join in on the fun. Here is Team Proceed cresting the hill into Turn 1. Such great looking drift cars.

What I love about these events is the mix of cars that you see show up. It can get so boring watching the same type of cars going around a track, but not here.

One big difference between Gridlife and Gatebil is the fact that no classes mix at the same time. That’s good and bad.

It’s good in that you can run a tandem train all day long with your buddies and not have to worry about time attack cars whizzing past you like it’s rush hour traffic. Although, I definitely miss the chaos that is Gatebil. With 25 drift cars and 25 time attack cars on the circuit at once, it’s dumb and awesome at the same time.

A couple of my friends made the trip all the way from the West Coast just to attend the event, including Hert from Hoonigan.

I’ve featured his car before, but now it’s a totally different animal with much more power and attitude.

Also on site was Rob Parsons, also known as ‘Chair Slayer.’ He drives his really awesome S13 competition car with hand controls, and you can bet I did a quick feature on this beast of a Nissan.

While the dynamic duo did not get in as many runs as they would have liked, It was still awesome to see them shredding on track.

And that’s really the thing about these guys; the dedication to get their cars working properly just to put on a show and nothing else, is so cool to see.

Ryan ran into troubles all weekend as he loves to push his machines to their absolute limit, and beyond.

I always found him and his mechanic underneath the car swapping out differentials and various other broken bits. Check out that form as his mechanic jacked up the diff. Of course, I had to snap a few shots of this before I stepped in to help out as much as I could.

Time on track was the name of the game; the more sessions and tires that Ryan went through, the more people he could give rides to.

As the day went on, he initiated his drifts earlier and earlier, which reminded me of this photo I took a while back.

To close out Gridlife’s on track activities, the last session of the day was given to the drift guys.

As the sun began to set, I took the opportunity to bring cars on track to feature. Others did the same, but mostly they just goofed off.

As we shot these cars, we could hear the music thumping louder and louder. Now it was time to party.

This was the real deal – a professional stage and an awesome light show to go with it.

Previously, I had never understood why some people went to these type of events just for the concert, but now I get it. Each part is so incredibly cool that they can stand on their own.

There were quite a few people crowd surfing, so Rob decided to do some surfing of his own.

The next morning it was time to do it all over again. I was up for the challenge and so were the Hoonigan boys.

Gridlife is holding its next event in Georgia at Road Atlanta, so I highly suggest you check it out if you are in the vicinity. Heck, if you want to drive, then it’ll be even better. Either way, I am so glad that I had a chance to attend one of these grassroots events again, as I feel like I’ve been going through withdrawals lately having only been shooting professional drifting and racing.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Bonus Chapter: Cutting Room Floor

I see Rhys Millen every couple weeks, so when I approached him after qualifying at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, the first thing he said to me was how full and thick my afro was coming in. Yes, I have poofy hair, and I was glad he opened our conversation with a jab at it. I returned the favor by telling him that he needs to change the siren on his electric race car to something a little louder.

Because they run so quiet, and therefore it’s very hard to hear them coming, every electric race vehicle – even motorcycles – require a constant siren blaring as they attack the Peak.

Rhys absolutely hates it. It’s basically the equivalent of a car alarm going off inside your race car, except much louder; hardly ideal when you’re trying to run inch-perfect lines through the 12.42-mile long and 156-turn deep highway course to the 14110ft summit.

I joked with him that instead of a car alarm siren, he should play Mexican mariachi music instead, because you can hear that miles away.

But it’s not so easy to make fun of Rhys – especially when he’s wearing an oversized belt buckle that proudly proclaims ‘King of the Mountain.’

Since 2011, I have documented Rhys’ attempt to break the 10-minute mark, take the overall win and the overall record, and put down the fastest time in a rear-wheel drive car. I skipped out on Pikes Pikes in 2015 due to a scheduling conflict, so this year I was really excited to follow his PPIHC record-setting attempts again.

With so much experience in drifting, rallycross and hill climb, there are very few people who have the driving talent and skills to handle a beast like the Drive eO PP100.

After all, Rhys’ right foot is the only thing controlling the 1190kW (circa the equivalent of a conventional 1595hp) and 1858ft/lb (2520Nm) of torque at his disposal, at zero RPM, so it’s definitely a beast that needs to be tamed. And let’s not forget that it only weighs 2645lb (1200kg) either; it’s practically a giant battery disguised as a race car.

The Pikes Peak lead-up week is very long and drawn out; so much effort is put in for just for a few runs during practice days. On top of that, practice is only in the mornings, and as you can tell from this shot, it gets quite cold up on the mountain even in the middle of summer.

That said, this year the Peak was a comfortable 32 degrees (0°C) most mornings; I’ve been up there before when it’s dipped to 9 degrees (-13°C).

I’ll explain shortly why this fact would actually hurt Rhys in the end, but all went well in qualifying and he was slated to run second off the line on race day.

The race itself has changed so drastically in the past few years, and I’ve seen the evolution with my own eyes. Rhys’ competition has changed too.

In the Modified Electric class he really only had two major competitors, the first being PPIHC legend Nobuhiro ‘Monster’ Tajima in his Pikes Peak E-Runner.

The second was Japanese racing driver Tetsuya Yamano, who while not as experienced as Rhys or Tajima on the mountain, could not be discounted as a threat driving the Acura NSX 4-Motor EV Concept.

Because the all-electric NSX was quick, and just a few seconds off Rhys’ pace during practice.

As far as outright honours go, there was really only one man standing in Rhys’ way – #1 qualifier Romain Dumas. The French driver vowed revenge on Rhys after getting beaten by him back in 2012 by the margin of just 0.02 of a second.

Race day was incredibly crowded; I woke up at 2:00am just to wait in line to get on the mountain. There were spectators from all over the world who came to witness PPIHC’s 100th running; it was one for the record books without a doubt.

Kristaps, the crew chief and mastermind behind the project was stressing out as usual, and double-checking over everything on the vehicle. Nothing could be left to chance.

Since Rhys would be the second car to leave the line, it was imperative that the tire warmers were on and running from very early on, and therefore able to get enough heat into the Hankook rubber for the record attempt.

No electric race vehicle has ever broken the nine-minute barrier at Pikes Peak, and with that as the goal, everything had to be absolutely perfect. With all calculations made, Rhys had a really good shot at achieving it too.

Everything from the HRE wheels to the Alcon brakes were tailored to the goal of an eight-minute time.

The morning dawned clear, but there was rain, snow and hail in the forecast for later in the day near the summit. Rain tires were on standby just in case, but the team didn’t even want to think about using them, as that would most certainly quash their record attempt.

Rhys was nearby with his family trying his best to relax. Even though he has competed at Pikes Peak many times, this was not going to be a walk in the park. It never is.

Also present was Rhys’ dad and legendary racing driver Rod Millen. I’ve been lucky enough to photograph many of Rod’s racing antics over the years, including his short stint in Formula Drift driving a Mazda RX-8.

Since then I’ve photographed him a few times in Toyota electric cars on the mountain, but of course he is most well known for his legendary Pikes Peak Tacoma and Celica, which between them held the overall PPIHC record for more than a decade.

While he was there to provide moral support for Rhys, Rod was also hamming it up pretty good with the fans. I may or may not have asked for a signed Hot Wheels Pikes Peak Celica…

Some things never change, and just prior to getting in the car Rhys was acting exactly the same way he does every year.

He paces around back and forth; no one knows what is going through his mind except him. I can’t imagine the amount of pressure that a driver has to deal with before suiting up for a single run.

All the time and effort that’s poured into a Pikes Peak challenge boils down to one chance. It’s make or break.

Right before Rhys was scheduled to make his timed ascent up the mountain, the crew checked the tire pressures one last time and then removed the warmers.

Rhys would need every last bit of traction the Hankooks had to offer, as the track surface is not prepared at all. On top of that, thousands of spectators had just driven up the very same road.

I don’t know if Kristaps is a religious man, but it seemed as if he was making a little prayer while Rhys sat at the start line. Everyone wanted Rhys to do well of course, but also come back down the mountain safely.

Rhys’ launch was a bit unassuming, because it was so quiet – minus the siren. But the car accelerated away so fast; it was honestly like watching him in fast forward.

Kristaps headed straight into the timing trailer along with the rest of the team, and together everyone was fixated on the monitor waiting for sector times to pop up.

Waiting for text to appear on a screen has never been so exciting, and Rhys made it through sector one with a blazing time of 1:30.609, which was only about half a second slower than Dumas. Of course, being an all-electric car there was going to be no power lost as the altitude increased and the air became thinner, so any shortcomings in the lower sections of the course could be made up in the higher sections where Dumas’ conventional gasoline-powered car would suffer from a lack of oxygen.

As Rhys was powering through the middle second of the course, Romain Dumas crossed the finish line in 8:51.445.

Of course, I was not on the mountain as I’d just watched Rhys leave the line a few minutes earlier, but our friend Linhbergh was.

By the time Rhys had reached the end of the middle section, he was tracking about three seconds slower than Dumas. At the same time, his EV competition – Tajima and Yamano – were both at the start line and ready to make their respective runs.

Monster Tajima ended up finishing with a strong 9:51.978, which is still very fast for the 66-year-old hill climb veteran. It was good enough for a 5th overall finish.

Right behind Rhys was Tetsuya Yamano in the NSX with an overall time of 9:06.015. This new car seriously shocked everyone, as in one sector it was quicker than Rhys’ open cockpit prototype. As Rhys’ third sector time popped up on the screen Kristaps and the rest of the crew cringed; it was much slower than expected. They had no idea what had happened. Then I got a message from Linhbergh from the top of the mountain. He spun out and had momentarily came to a complete stop. Rhy had quickly got back on the accelerator and was on his way again, but the damage was already done.

Who knows how much time he would have made up if hadn’t spun, but there was still a lot to celebrated in the 8:57.118.

The skies opened up and it started to snow on the summit. As Rhys headed down the mountain, fans came out to greet him; he had the Modified Electric winning flag with him, as well as the Latvian flag to honor his Drive eO PP100 race car.

So what exactly caused Rhys to spin? The track temperature was much hotter than expected, and the tire compounds chosen for race day may have been incorrect.

By the time Rhys got near the summit, he had much less grip than anticipated, due to heat, wear and other factors. It’s just one of the many challenges that Pikes Peak throws up.

Who knows what the outcome might have been if it had all gone exactly to plan. Rhys’ last sector time was almost a full three seconds faster than Dumas’, which shows just how much of an advantage EVs have at higher altitude. Check out all the snow built up near one of the cooling ducts.

Rhys yelled, “Here, I brought you guys some donuts,” and threw a bag full of the iconic treats from the Summit House restaurant to a smiling Kristaps.

Even though Rhys did not take the outright win, everyone was still very happy that he’d broken into the eight-minute range and won the Modified Electric class at the same time.

With any kind of racing there are so many factors and ‘what ifs,’ and it’s fun to think what could have been done to make the car more competitive. While Dumas’ winning margin was six seconds in the end, an overall win seems much more obtainable when you think about the fact that Rhys came to a complete stop on course.

Either way, the team was ecstatic about achieving their main goal and celebrated with some shrunken donuts. You can literally watch them shrink as you descend from the summit where they are baked.

As for Rhys? He said he wants to go for it again, and next year he wants to win the overall race.

How is he going to do that? Well, the talk of the team after the race seemed to be focused on weight reduction. If it is at all possible to lose some more weight from the chassis without sacrificing battery power or safety, then there is a very good possibility that he could win outright, and maybe even in the future break Sebastian Loeb’s 8:13.878 record from 2013.

Only time will tell, but you can be sure that I will be there to document the next attempt. In the meantime, you can check out Rhys’ 2016 run in the video above.

Pikes Peak is such a visual place, so I wanted to do something different with my ‘Art Of’ story this year. We’ve already covered Rhys Millen’s quest to get into the eight-minute club, but for today’s post I figured it would be a good idea to let the photos tell their own story, with a few captions added here and there as needed.

I’ve chosen 100 of my favorite photos to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and am going to open this up to any questions on how I obtained each image. I know what you guys are already wondering – how did I trigger the flash in the lead image? Well, the answer is, I didn’t. I was shooting from around 12,500ft, and the distance from me to the flash was probably around 3000ft. Someone down below was shooting with a 500watt strobe triggered with a remote tether; I noticed this, so I tried my best to shoot as his flash was going off, hoping to catch it, even though it was very unlikely. Keep in mind these cars were going full speed; I caught it about four times. For two of the shots the timing was off a little bit and the subject was out of the flash. One of the images was published in the latest story on Rhys’ event, but it was later in the day, therefore the flash did not have as much of an effect. The shot I used for the header image here was seriously pure luck, but sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Enjoy the photos…

Without a doubt, the Evasive Motorsports’ 86 had my favorite livery on the mountain this year.

Plus, I could tell when it was coming; there’s no boxer motor now, instead a very powerful 2JZ.

I love this so much; the fact that someone brought along an Audi Quattro and pushed it pretty hard up the Peak makes me so happy. It reminded me of PPIHC’s dirt days…

The look on the faces of the Evasive team as they found out their car did not make it to the summit.

I love the color on this guy’s rollcage. It makes for such a photogenic interior.

The new Acura NSX was very quick on the mountain, and it sounded amazing.

The famous W’s. Gee, I wonder why they call it that?…

It was far more warmer on the Peak this year than expected; I was wearing a t-shirt most of the time, even near the summit during practice days.

If you couldn’t already tell, this is my favorite spot to shoot from on the mountain. From this vantage point you can see about a third of the race course.

Mike Ryan is always a showman in his insane drifting Freightliner, but the 2016 event was not kind to him. First he had a run that nearly went to the top when the race got red flagged. Then, after he restarted his run, he lost his brakes and crashed pretty badly at Engineer’s Corner.

This year I had the privilege of following the antics of the Hot Rod magazine crew in their attempt to take the Time Attack 2 class win with their Dodge Viper. Unfortunately, they came in 2nd place after the NSX. You can read about it in detail in their next issue.

I cover so much motorsport that I am fairly desensitized to incidents on the track. This was my fifth year covering Pikes Peak, but going into it I had yet to see an accident on the mountain.

Because the race course is so long, the chance of seeing a crash is slim, but this one that I caught seemed particularly bad from the outside looking in.

I watched as the former IndyCar accelerated down a long straight into this corner, then locked up all four tires and hit the guardrail very hard. Thanks to the rollcage design, the driver was able to walk away with his head still on his shoulders.

In fact, the first thing that we heard after the initial impact was a large string of profanities, which at least let us know that he was okay.

As funny as that sounds, we were still a bit shaken up. This man walked away with his life from an incident that could have easily taken it.

The driver will live on to climb the Peak another day, and myself and the other photographers who witnessed the crash will sleep well knowing so.

Not tire smoke, more like smoke from the engine. I’m not sure if they had a chance to fix the issue.

Oh you know, just turbo bits lying around on the road…

I was pleasantly surprised by how quick this car was, and also really impressed with its braking abilities.

Without a doubt, the best sounding machine at this year’s hill climb.

Sunrise at 12,700ft.

The view of the Glen Cove toll booths from Devil’s Playground. Notice the tree line is about 700ft below.

It was such an awesome treat to see the first car to win Pikes Peak go part way up the mountain.

Sometimes the race cars going down the hill make for just as cool of an image as when they’re heading up.

The legendary Rod Millen.

I hope you guys have enjoyed my selection of images. I am going to try to do more of these image dumps; I’m shooting so much every week, that it’s really hard for me to keep up with publishing articles.

With that said, I will try to keep everyone on Speedhunters much more updated with what I am shooting. Thanks for your support as always!

Chapter One: Battle At The Brickyard

I find it interesting, that in some way, shape or form, motorsport can be found in pretty much every country out there. And when you’re taking about racing leagues for kids, they’ve now become comparable to football or basketball as youth sports.

In different countries there are different forms of racing available to youngsters. Europe has oval racing for young drivers, but kart racing dominates. In North America it’s all about the oval. Whether it’s dirt or pavement does not matter, but turning left is king.

So many kids play peewee sports growing up, but just a tiny number of them actually become star athletes competing on a national level, or going one step further and making a career out of their chosen discipline.

With auto racing it’s a bit different. It seems like many of the kids who participate end up having a career in racing or the wider racing industry. It just breeds a different type of competitor.

Just to give you an example, I posted a few of these photos on my Instagram and received a barrage of messages from professional drivers who told me that they started in this form of racing. Quarter midget racing also appears to be a breeding ground for NASCAR drivers. I had no idea it was this big.

In my relentless pursuit of hunting speed, I recently found myself at the the ‘Brickyard’, also know as Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

There gathered most of the country’s best quarter midget racers at what is also the largest race of its kind.

There were a total of 502 entries and some 279 drivers, many of the kids competing in multiple classes.

And the ages ranged from as young as five to as old as 16.

Competitors had families from all walks of life, from all over North America.

Many of the parents are racers themselves, including Jimmy Keeney, who I had just photographed the week prior as he competed at Pikes Peak. I’ve also watched him race in Global Rallycross.

The special aspect of this quarter midget event is that every racer entered gets to run one lap around the actual Indy oval.

This was a sight that I can honestly say I had never seen before. 280 race cars on the huge oval was actually the most the track has ever seen at one time.

On the front row was Famous Rhodes II, one of the winningest quarter midget racers of his generation.

His father, Famous Rhodes Snr., works for AutoNation, which actually sponsors the series, and it was he who invited me along to check out the ‘Battle At The Brickyard’ event. More on the Famous team shortly…

Chapter Two: Quarter Midget Racing

The race day started off like any other typical motorsport event with an opening ceremony as well as the national anthem.

However, this time it was a bit different as the kids paid tribute to a fallen racer, who sadly lost his battle to cancer.

Walking a quarter midget paddock for the first time really gave me a sense of what this kind of racing was about, as well as the budgets that go along with it. Some have plain liveries and some have very extravagant ones to say the least.

The chassis themselves can cost between US$2,000-$3000 on the used market, but you can easily spend more US$12,000 for something brand new and shiny with titanium construction, a carbon fiber body, and all the bells and whistles to go along with it.

But that’s just the start of it, because a chassis doesn’t include an engine. And to compete in different classes you have to get different types of engines, with the higher end ranging from US$5000-$6000. Most classes require an engine that will cost between US$500 and $2000. Altogether, with that much money you could build yourself a nice full-size race car, but only the best for your kids, right?

I just could not believe how professional looking and perfectly built some of these race cars were. For example, this quarter midget by Sherman Race Cars gets torn down and rebuilt in between every single race, just like how pro racing teams do it.

Just look at all those CNC machined parts and that carbon fiber body.

While there are a few different engine classes for the different ages of the racers, they are all four-stroke, with some putting out over 20hp. All that purple paint is applied by the officials to ensure nothing is altered on an engine setup during a race weekend.

What also amazed me was the logistics that go with moving a quarter midget race team around the country. Sure, given their size it’s easy enough to transport one of these things around on a single trailer, but what if you compete in many different classes. The costs quickly add up and many parents ultimately fork out big bucks for a nice truck and trailer unit.

Everything is scaled down from what I am used to, but it’s largely the same sort of ritual that I photograph on a weekly basis.

But instead of your crew chief helping you get into the car, it’s your mom or dad. Little race suits, little HANS devices, but big wills to win.

What I witnessed amazed me. It even made me a bit jealous. I never got the opportunity to race as a kid, so in my eyes these youngsters are very lucky indeed.

I was fully expecting to see crazy helicopter parents yelling and screaming at other parents as well as their kids, because I understand how things can get a little heated; every single dollar they earn goes towards funding their child’s racing dreams. While that sort of thing definitely exists in this world, it was not so evident at this event. Instead, I saw caring parents sacrificing everything, including their own time, to support what their child loves. Some kids actually want to be racing drivers, and some just want to be a part of it all.

Chapter Three: When Push Comes To Shove

Quarter midgets are exactly what the name suggests – 1/4 the size of a midget race car. And just like their full-scale counterparts, these things are also direct drive.

Which of course means they need to be push started. But instead of having a push vehicle, the parents themselves are the ones pushing the kids out onto the track.

To me, this was one of the coolest aspects of the sport, as parents and helpers are essentially part of the process by physically helping the race car move.

The cars stall all the time due to racing incidents and red flags too, so when that happens they have to jump on course to help start them up again.

It’s also cool when a race car comes into the pits but there’s not enough time to place it on a stand to make a repair. When this happens the front or back end is simply lifted by hand, with the driver still sitting in the cockpit.

It’s such a normal thing for these parents and teams, but I thought it was so interesting. How cool would it be if that was the case with full-size race cars? Who needs air jacks!?

There’s a big speed difference between the lowest and highest tier classes as they race around the quarter midget standard 1/20th mile ovals. At the upper end it’s flat out, intense racing.

The hard part of racing on an oval course is navigating around the other racers. There is so much strategy it’s insane.

This is not just about turning left and going around in circles. Each and every lap is different from the next.

In fact, the top drivers like to start off at the back of the pack, because the more passes you pull off, the more points you earn. If you do start from the front, you better make sure you finish there.

While most of the classes allow for foot-to-the-floor racing, the higher horsepower race cars actually require drivers to lift slightly into the corners.

So from a very young age these kids learn the basics and get comfortable with over and understeer as well as running the optimum driving line.

With so much racing experience under their belts, it makes it so much easier for these youngsters to transition into full-size race machines.

Over the course of the weekend there are more than 100 races that take place, which pretty much means non-stop racing. Each race is about 10-20 laps for heats, 15-25 laps for lower Main classes, and 20-40 laps for the A Mains. Of course, it all depends on the class and division, but the higher lap counts are generally reserved for senior and upper classes.

The top teams are so closely matched that they really have to push hard for position.

Which of course results in minor incidents where the cars will flip over or crash into each other. Over the course of the day at Indianapolis Motor Speedway there were many of these types of incidents, but nothing too serious. The officials always take every precaution to ensure the kids are safe.

To get a bit more of an insight into what it’s like to run competitively in quarter midgets, I decided to follow Famous Rhodes II around for a bit.

Famous II is only 12 years of age, but he’s already a very seasoned racing driver. He’s the 3rd all-time USAC winningest quarter midget driver, and has already moved up into full-size midgets powered by Ford Focus turbo engines, recently becoming the youngest driver to ever podium in that series.

So how is it that he’s tasted so much success at such a young age?

It’s because he has the best support system anyone could ask for. His dad, Famous Snr., never raced himself, but he grew up around racing watching his father race. His father wanted him to become famous, so he named him just that.

While Famous Snr. knows his way around these karts, he is a busy man. The only way to win is to hire experienced professionals in this sort of field, which is where DJ Rice and his father come in.

DJ’s father, Dennis, has been in the industry for years. He once even ran a team for legendary racing driver Jeff Gordon.

DJ also used to race himself, so he knows the ins and outs of what it’s like to be on track, and what it takes to be a top-level competitor.

On top of building Famous II’s chassis, running the entire team and transporting the vehicles coast to coast, DJ and Dennis also spend time building Team Rice race chassis for other competitors from their Northern California shop.

Team Rice does not mess around, and Famous II is running the maximum allowed five race classes. As you can probably imagine, he gets quite a bit of seat time compared to any other casual small-budget team. They go as far as running brand new tires for every single race if it means just getting a 10th of a second advantage over their competitors.

Not only does Famous II have a perfectly prepared race car for every single class, he has a driver coach who knows how to go fast. Many of the parents are not racers themselves, so it’s very easy for them to get frustrated trying to tell their child to go faster, without actually knowing how.

This sort of racing is serious business, and since Battle Of The Brickyard was the biggest event of the season, many top-level teams were in attendance, each one with a support system that is just as intense.

It’s actually really interesting to watch Famous II race, because he is always pushing to the extreme and often driving on two wheels.

This kid just loves starting in the back because eventually he will make his way up to the front. In fact, he has had five wins at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

I asked him if he prefers racing full-size midgets or these quarter midgets, and he said the latter, because they actually accelerate better, corner harder, and pull more g-forces.

What seems crazy to me is how much time and effort is put into just one child. At this point I wondered what will become of someone like Famous II, because surely he has a future as a professional racing driver. It seems that the hard work has already paid to some extent too, because he is one of a few drivers in the paddock to have major sponsors backing his race program.

As much as the team pushes due to budget limitations and time, they just can’t make every single race out there, so they pick and choose their battles.

At the end of the day it was time to make that previously-mentioned lap around the Brickyard and also set a record for the most race cars on Indianapolis Motor Speedway at one time.

It was cool to see so many cars lined up on the front straight with a little wheelman in each one.

So how do you push start 280 quarter midget race cars? One by one. You can bet the parents and staff were tired beyond belief after firing up so many cars. By the time the last cars were leaving the line the first cars had almost made an entire lap.

It means so much to these kids to be able to do something like this, and it will be that much sweeter if just one of them actually gets to race at the Brickyard for real later on in life.

I want to thank Famous Rhodes Snr. for inviting me along to check out where racing drivers cut their teeth. I wish him and his son good luck too, because I have a feeling that the pair are just getting started. After all, they have names to live up to…

Chapter One: LA Car Culture

In recent years, I’ve been seeing quite a bit more car culture tourism. I get emails on a weekly basis asking about the places and shops that I visit in my Speedhunting travels, and I know Dino has it pretty bad too since he lives in Japan and many people from all over the world can only dream of checking out the roots of JDM car culture.

But what if you’re an F1 driver and you want to experience Los Angeles car culture?

If you’re Daniel Ricciardo, you hit up your friends at Donut Media and have them help plan out an amazing day of car culture in Southern California, the result of which can be seen in the clip above.

Daniel is just like any other car guy, and for his short summer break he decided to hang out with his mates from back home in Australia. But instead of him going there, Daniel invited them out to Los Angeles for some fun in the sun. In true Speedhunters fashion, I tagged along for the ride.

We started out in downtown LA at the ID Agency, who had arranged some nice lowriders for Daniel and his friends. The ID Agency is also the group who helped organize the Momo Rally I was on last year.

I’ve hung out with racing drivers from all walks of life and motorsports disciplines, and Daniel was just like any other one of them.

My buddy, James Kirkham from Donut Media, was also along for the fun.

I brought over a copy of The Drive book for the guys to check out before the ride. I think they liked it.

What amazed me was how genuinely happy Daniel was to be sitting in a car like this. He’s driven pretty much every exotic car under the sun, yet this was a completely new experience for him.

Daniel was a happy man as he hit the hydraulics and bounced down the street. There is no escaping that signature smile.

Chapter Two: Burritohunting

Our first stop was some authentic Mexican food in Boyle Heights at El Tepeyac Cafe, which is an East LA hotspot.

Here Daniel was explaining how he had to make so many steering corrections just to keep the lowrider driving in a straight line. That’s all part of the fun, bud.

While El Tepeyac is known for many things, its Monster Burrito is the signature dish.

The cruising continued after lunch, and soon enough we were headed out to Beverly Hills.

Chapter Three: Ultimate Garage

We entered a nondescript building on Rodeo Drive to check out Bruce Meyer’s personal collection of cars.

Who would have known that a garage like this was hidden in the middle of Beverly Hills?!

This is seriously my absolute dream garage. Could life get any better than this?

I had no idea that Bruce’s collection included so many iconic cars.

This was actually one of Clark Gable’s personal cars.

His luggage is still in there with the tags perfectly intact. How cool is that?!

There were so many impressive cars in the collection, but the 1979 Le Mans-winning Porsche 935 has to take the cake. Bruce once drove this car on the street from Beverly Hills to Culver City for the Luftgekühlt event.

And check out this Le Mans-winning Corvette, still with tire marbles all over it and even the champagne stains from the winner’s circle.

If you haven’t figured it out already, the theme of this collection is Le Mans-winning cars.

The engine bay in this Bentley reminded me more of an intricate espresso machine than a combustion engine.

Here’s Bruce showing us photos of time his friends pranked him by pretending to be the FBI and DEA as they confiscated the 935 he’d just bought. When you have billionaire friends, they will go through great lengths to play jokes.

Of course, Daniel could not leave without driving at least one car from the collection, and Bruce brought out one of his many ’32 Fords for him to cruise around Rodeo Drive in.

It blended in quite nicely, don’t you think?

Chapter Four: Supercar Thrash

Our next stop was PZero World in West Los Angeles. This is basically the most high-end tire shop I have ever seen.

The shop sell an assortment of wheels, but only Pirelli tires.

You make think that only luxury and sportscars are welcome here, but in reality PZero World will fit and maintain any car with Pirelli tires.

We stopped by for two reasons: one was for the espresso, the other was for the supercars.

The last part of the tour was a run through the canyons after a drive up the coast, which of course meant we needed some suitable cars for the drive. Daniel’s friends picked up a McLaren 650S…

And Daniel himself got behind the wheel of a brand new Aston Martin Vanquish V12.

Let me tell you guys, this GT car sounded awesome. Every time Daniel accelerated past us it was a pure V12 symphony.

These suckers were thirsty though. Here’s my buddy Jacob Agajanian from Donut Media filling up the McLaren.

See, F1 drivers are just like us!

I grew up around the Santa Monica area, so we had soon entered my old stomping grounds. Whenever me and my buddies needed to let off some steam we would head up to Malibu for some of the best canyon roads California has to offer.

I decided to show Daniel one of the trickiest and twistiest canyon roads in the area, also known as Tuna Canyon Rd.

The road is one way, and it descends all the way to the beach. It has over 100 tight and twisty corners for your motoring enjoyment.

While the McLaren and Aston are suited to more open roads, the boys still had a blast, and I think everyone had a chance to experience real Southern California car culture.

It was cool to play tour guide for a day with Daniel and the Donut Media guys. Who knows, maybe one day the tables will turn and the Red Bull Racing F1 driver will show us a bit of Australian car culture.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Chapter One: One Can Only Dream

In an ideal world, manufacturers would re-release certain enthusiast cars in an updated version. It’s happened before; Nissan rebuilt a few 240Zs from the ground up, and Toyota brought back the FJ70 series for the Japanese domestic market. Just like you can do in video games, I imagine being able to buy a brand new ’90s Japanese sports car off the showroom floor. And why not? Having growing up around these type of sports cars, they’re what I love.

Automotive audio company Clarion feels the same way, probably because it’s run by bunch of true car enthusiasts. I’ve previously featured a BMW 2002 that Clarion fastidiously restored and modernised, but that car was eventually sold at charity auction, increasing the value of those wonderful sports coupes at the same time.

For its next project, Clarion wanted to follow a similar build ethos, but this time using an iconic ’90s Japanese supercar as the base.

If you could buy a first generation NSX brand new today, this is exactly what it would be like. But this particular car is far from new, it’s a 1991 model with 230,000 hard-driven miles on the clock. Talk about Honda reliability! Could you even imagine a Ferrari 348 with half as many miles?

The build was entrusted to AutoWave in Huntington Beach, a company that’s previously worked on 728 Acura NSXs, which is about 10 per cent of the cars in the whole of the United States. When Acura needs a car restored, AutoWave is who it calls.

I had a chance to get behind the wheel of this beauty and push it to its limits on the track, but more on that later.

Chapter Two: The Inside That Counts

The main point of the build was to modernise the ageing supercar, and Leatherseats.com did an amazing job of the interior which once really screamed the ’90s.

All the leather-wrapped panels were reupholstered with some trick stitching, and the steering wheel had its bottom chopped off and was rewrapped by EuroBoutique.

Given Clarion’s line of business, a big focus was placed on technology, so you definitely won’t find a cassette player in here. There’s a Clarion NX706 7-inch touchscreen, Clarion 32-band equalizer, a new Clarion Full Digital Sound system and a 360-degree camera. And check out that trick subwoofer setup; a carpet panel places over the top to complete the subtle restomod look, but I think it looks pretty neat exposed.

Real carbon fiber trim pieces have be used throughout, and the ignition switch was even updated with an S2000 push button starter.

It’s the little things that make all the difference, like this laser cut shift pattern trim piece. All the controls for the sound and security systems are integrated flawlessly too.

I wasn’t lying when I talked about the miles this car has done since 1991, and it’s still racking them up after the restoration – many at track days.

Chapter Three: Supercharged

Along with the interior and exterior overhaul, the heart of the NSX was also updated.

More specifically, the original 3.0-liter V6 was swapped out for a 3.2-liter unit out of a wrecked 2004 NA2 NSX.

AutoWave completely refreshed the bigger capacity engine before adding a CT Engineering supercharger package, and AEM built a custom intake and a high-flow exhaust. Now it puts out 403hp to the wheels, which is almost double the car’s stock horsepower.

Of course, you can’t upgrade the go-fast bits without improving the brakes, and in this department StopTech provided one of its ST40 kits.

As for the exterior, Clarion went with an interesting color choice – Blu Caelum two-stage, which is also found on the Lamborghini Huracán. An Italian supercar color for a Japanese supercar? Why not!

You can’t go wrong with bronze wheels on a blue car, and the RAYS Volk Racing ZE40s look absolutely superb.

The forged ZEs are wrapped in Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, 225/40ZR18s at the front and 265/30ZR19s out back.

In order to accommodate the wider wheels and tires properly, AutoWave fitted Downforce factory fiberglass fenders, which makes the front end two inches wider than stock. There’s also a Downforce carbon fiber NSX-R-style hood.

In order to keep everything planted, KW Variant 3 coilovers were fitted. The ride quality is improved and it sits just right, not too low. You could call it function and form all rolled into one.

As I mentioned earlier on, I did have the chance to run a few laps around the Mountain Road (touge) course at Willow Springs, also known as Horse Thief Mile. It was a blast, even though I drove it with low boost, which was only around 344hp to the wheels.

I wasn’t going to break any lap records, but just banging through the gears in a supercharged, manual, rear-wheel drive vehicle was heaven on earth.

To me, this car is the perfect daily driver, and the fact that it felt brand new with a classic updated look just blew my mind. On top of all that it’s comfortable. It has air conditioning and a fully digital sound system. What more could you ask for?

Gone are the days of audio companies cramming 20 screens and twice as many subwoofers into the cars that they build, and thank goodness for that. I love the direction that Clarion is going with these types of builds, because this is exactly what we want to drive. I just can’t wait to see what the guys will build next…

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Clarion Builds 1991 Acura NSX

Engine
Honda 3.2-liter VTEC V6 from a 2004 NA2 NSX, CT Engineering supercharger, AEM custom intake, AEM custom exhaust, CT Engineering fuel pressure regulator, Walbro 255lph fuel pump, NGK spark plugs, AEM Performance Electronics Infinity 6 engine management sytem with CT harness, Koyorad aluminum NSX radiator, AEM wideband O2 sensors, Injector Dynamics 1000cc injectors

Drivetrain
Honda NSX 6-speed manual gearbox swap

Suspension & Brakes
KW Variant 3 coilovers, CT sway bars, Okuyama Carbing rear shock tower brace, StopTech ST40 Big Brake Kit with 328mmx28mm 2-piece rotors (front/rear)

Wheels & Tires
RAYS Volk Racing ZE40 18×9-inch +45mm (front), 19×9-inch +33mm (rear), Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires 225/35ZR18 (front), 265/30ZR19 (rear)

Exterior
Downforce carbon fiber NSX-R-style hood, OEM front bumper with Downforce fiberglass diffuser, OEM rear bumper with Downforce fiberglass diffuser, Downforce factory fiberglass fender replacements with marker light delete and 2-inch wider than OE, Downforce NSX-R-style carbon fiber spoiler, Downforce 2nd gen NSX styled rockers, 2nd Gen NSX OE tail lights, Clarion Surround Eye cameras, US-spec front markers deleted, Blu Caleum metallic 2-stage paint by Glasurit (BASF)

Interior
OE dash with dyed lower panels, LeatherSeats.com rewrapped & hand-stitched shift knob, OE steering wheel modified by EuroBoutique to have flat bottom & sport grip with matching color accents, custom leather hand stitched shift boot from LeatherSeats.com, custom leather hand stitched e-brake boot from LeatherSeats.com, Downforce fiberglass center console trim for 2-DIN head unit, custom mats from NSXcarpets.com, headliner, A-pillars & visors recovered in black Alcantara, JDM NSX navigation screen

Audio/Electronics
Clarion NX706 7-inch touch screen high-res source head unit, Clarion Full Digital Sound system processor, Clarion Z25W 10-inch Full Digital subwoofer, Downforce sealed sub enclosure for floor of NSX, Clarion Z7 Full Digital midrange speakers, Z3 Full Digital tweeters, Optima Blue Top battery, Science of Speed display for JDM screen pod on dashboard

Clarion Builds

Given the number of oddball car features and events that I’ve shot, I thought I had seen it all. I was wrong.

Toyo Tires had the bright idea of modifying a 1959 Ferret – an armored scout vehicle – to fit its off-road tires, and then got the one and only BJ ‘Ballistic’ Baldwin to drive it in a video shoot.

I had a chance to hang out on set and take some shots while BJ drove the funny looking, old school military vehicle off road, all around Southern California. You can check out the final edit above.

I figured it would be fun for me to share some of the photos and give you guys a little insight into what went on behind the scenes.

The Ferret’s original Rolls-Royce motor was swapped out for a much more powerful LS V8, although due to the weight of the thing it was not going to break any speed records.

The inside was super cramped for someone as tall as BJ, but the Ferret was originally built for battle, not for comfort.

However, the guys at Action Vehicle Engineering did fit a Sparco Evo II US seat, but that’s pretty much as far as they went in terms of luxury items.

Once again, my friends at Tempt Media were filming the video. That’s my buddy Bryan Moore, professional helmet holder.

On the left is helicopter shooter Eric Everly and his best pal Sasha ‘Suh Dude’ Sogolow.

Could you imagine driving in this thing into battle?!

The naturally aspirated LS3 has much more power than the gigantic motor it replaced, and does a good job of moving this very heavy beast along.

An air cannon turret was fitted in order to shoot out a grappling hook. Pretty cool if you ask me.

King shocks were specially made to fit this vehicle and handle all the jumps and crazy stuff that was planned for it.

While it was hard enough for BJ to drive with the blast doors open, it was nearly impossible for him to see where he was going with all the armor in place.

In terms of weird vehicles, I think this took the cake for BJ as well. It was not at all easy to drive, but he managed just fine.

By now you might be wondering what the middle wheels are for, and the answer is simple. If the Ferret gets high centered on rough terrain, the extra two hydraulically-powered wheels can be individually controlled from inside.

Water crossings are always fun; I may or may not have splashed through with Project FJ after we were done shooting this scene.

That’s my buddy Chris Adams filming in the danger zone.

And this is our very own Louis climbing a mountain. Almost there little one!

Having seen what this 57-year-old Ferret can do with an LS V8 powering the wheels and BJ at the controls, it only makes me wonder what Toyo will build next. Something with eight-wheel drive perhaps? If so, why not 10 then? I think the more the better. What do you guys think?

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

It was like any other lazy afternoon at my home in Los Angeles after returning from an overseas trip. I was just beginning to recover from all the jet-setting when I received a call from a friend telling me that he had a 2017 Lexus LC 500 for the afternoon and asking if I wanted to take a few photos of it.

One of the perks of being a Speedhunter is having access to exclusive cars to shoot, and this was an offer I simply could not pass up.

However, the day was almost done and it was rush hour traffic every which way, so I told him to meet me in Palm Springs, about 100 miles outside of LA.

We got there just in time; the soft, smog-filtered light really showed off the curves and shapes of this luxury 2+2 coupe.

The LC 500 was debuted in Detroit at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) back in January, and is the production successor to the LF-LC Concept that Lexus showed us back in 2012.

It was great to shoot this car; my only regret was that I did not have a chance to drive the beast, which is yet to go on sale to the public.

Just like the Lexus RC F that I shot in Japan with Dino last year, the LC 500 is powered by a naturally aspirated 5.0-liter V8 outputting 467hp and 389lb-ft of torque.

Just check out the taillights, it’s like a hall of mirrors in there.

The interior was typical Lexus luxury. I didn’t even have time to play with all the bells and whistles.

In terms of styling, the LC 500 is a very good looking machine, and I especially like the headlight treatment. In my eyes, this is definitely a modern SC 400.

Next time I have an encounter with a LC 500, hopefully I will be putting it through its paces on some Southern California canyon roads. My buddy did hint to me that he may or may not be building one of these for this years SEMA show. I guess we will have to wait and find out.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Chapter One: Raw Industrial Playground

Given it amassed 10 million views in the space of a week, I’m sure you guys have watched Ken Block’s latest Gymkhana series video by now, and that means it’s time for me to take you behind the scenes.

This is Gymkhana Nine: Raw Industrial Playground.

The tricks that Ken pulled off this time around really brings the franchise back to its roots. Instead of focusing on location and road closures, the Hoonigan team focused on what made Gymkhana such a success in first place: awesome driving.

It’s hard to imagine what sort of things could top all of the crazy stunts and tricks Ken has done in the past, but with Gymkhana Nine, I think the element of danger made a welcome return.

From the insane train race to basically hanging the rear of his Ford Focus RS RX off the edge of a dock, this video really brought precision driving back to the series.

Although the shooting location was Buffalo, New York, the Head Hoonigan in Charge was actually supposed to tear up Sydney, Australia, for this ninth video. Could you imagine seeing perfect four-wheel drifts around the Sydney Opera House? It surely would have been epic, but red tape got in the way.

Brian Scotto stepped up from Creative Director on the previous Gymkhana videos to Director on Gymkhana Nine, which also happens to be the first Gymkhana video handled entirely in-house by Scotto and Block’s all-new Hoonigan Media Machine production company.

It was pretty cool, but also how it should be; lots of surprises and more focus on perfectly nailing the driving sequences.

Pretty much all the key players were back, many of which I call my friends.

Ken’s Hoonigan Racing team was there with lead mechanic Skippy (top right), who also built one of the coolest Pontiac Trans-Ams I’ve ever seen.

The shoot itself took four days, and throughout the course of this post I’ll be running you through each and every one of them.

Chapter Two: The Warehouse

This warehouse space was pretty much home base for the team to change tires and adjust settings on the car in between scenes.

The crew got into it right away with some smoky four-wheel drifts and close proximity moments.

As I’ve not had a chance to make my way over to Europe for an FIA World Rallycross round, this was the first time I’d shot Ken’s Ford Focus RS RX. It was also the first time he’d hooned this thing outside of World RX competition and testing.

Anything to get the shot, right?

A 600hp rallycross car driving inside is not something you see everyday, and the mix of abandoned factories and warehouses provided some interesting shooting locations for sure.

The first day is always the toughest as everyone gets into the groove of shooting and moving locations quickly, but it’s almost second nature for Ken and the crew now.

Before we packed up to call it a day, this Sikorsky helicopter landed on set. Its normal duties include installing spires and large air conditioning units on skyscrapers, but of course on Gymkhana it had an entirely different job altogether.

Chapter Three: Buffalo Central Terminal

The next morning we were shooting at two locations. We started at the Buffalo Central Terminal and then moved our way back to the first day’s location to film the helicopter scene.

Built in 1929 in art deco style, the Central Terminal is a really amazing place.

It’s hard to believe now, but at one point in time there were 200 trains going through this station.

Now it’s the perfect spot for a Gymkhana course. Who would have thought?

As always, the race team worked very hard throughout the day to ensure the car was running perfectly.

Just another day in the office for Kenny from the Block.

While it was a little bit sad to see what would once have been such a majestic place now in such a dilapidated state, there’s actually an organisation planning on restoring the terminal, but of course not for train use.

Already it’s quite the draw for Hollywood productions and even concerts.

For sale, brand new Ford F-150 Raptor, slightly lifted.

The pilot was so precise with his movements, but he whipped the Raptor around like a rag doll once at altitude. The best part? After the F-150 was unhooked, the crew just drove it away like nothing had happened.

The next stunt required a couple of scuba tanks in the car and US Coast Guard divers to be on standby, just in case Ken and his Focus went for a dip in Lake Erie.

Ken got close to the edge twice, but the first time he just did not have enough speed to complete the rotation out of the donut box area. The second time is what you see in the video. I feel like any more rubber over the edge and things could have easily ended in disaster.

Mission accomplished; time for a nice swim in a race suit.

East Coast sunsets don’t get much better than this. While it would have been cool to shoot down under, Gymkhana Nine was really coming together nicely at this point.

It was absolutely beautiful inside Central Terminal, and the light quality was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

A quick trip up a few floors revealed more of the building’s story. It was an urban explorer’s dream – that newspaper is from 1978.

It was blast shooting in the terminal, and the third day was largely spent capturing the opening sequence shots.

The start of the video shows the RS RX on a rotating platform. I like that it’s an added element to the film that makes it that much cooler.

Here’s a shot of the turntable in action and another of the crew building it out the day before filming this scene.

Sometimes it takes quite a while to rig up cameras, so naps in between scenes are encouraged.

It sounded absolutely amazing when Ken used launch control to exit the building in full rallycross mode.

With the intro out of the way there were just two more scenes to film before the end of day three.

One was the roundabout in front of the station, which once a upon a time would have once been bustling with taxis and buses.

And the other was the world’s cheapest donut box, which of course was a far cry from the world’s most expensive donut box in Gymkhana Eight.

But instead of a cone, they used a wooden spindle, which was pretty cool. As much fun as it had been to shoot at Buffalo Central Terminal, the final day of filming was upon us.

Chapter Four: The Train

The Hoonigans searched far and wide for a local level crossing that also had a jump leading up to it, and I think they found the perfect spot. Ken was practicing his moves with his bicycle before he jumped in the car.

So how did they pull off such a stunt? With impeccable timing. First, Ken made some attempts at the jump to see how long it took him to cross the tracks and to feel out the optimum line.

Then they timed the train, did some quick math and figured out the exact time both needed to be moving at given speeds. What made everyone on set nervous was the fact that it takes about a quarter mile for the train to come to a stop while travelling at just 15mph.

It felt like an eternity when the train started its run; the goal was for the driver to run it up to 15mph and then hold it there, at which point the Focus would launch. By the time Ken dropped the clutch, it seemed like there was no way he was going to make the crossing in front of the train, but of course he did, and with style.

Chapter Five: South Park Avenue Bridge

The last scene was shot on the South Park Avenue Bridge. This truss bridge doesn’t get used much these days, because large ships don’t sail though the area as often as they used to.

Hoonigan Racing Division’s Ron Zaras and I decided it would be a good idea to climb one of the towers. I can tell you that I was shaking in my boots, but I was going to the top no matter what.

The view from a maintenance platform was incredible and well worth the sweat that was pouring out of me.

Here’s Speedhunters’ friend Will Roegge on his way down the ladder to access the little platform.

From a visual standpoint, it was awesome to be able to get these aerial angle shots. The local Police were also standing by in boats with scuba divers, just in case Ken drove off the end of the bridge as it was being raised up.

Apparently it had not been used in months, and it’s also been years since anyone has been up in the towers while the bridge lifted. We soon found out why.

It started swaying back and fourth and shook intensely. But of course, I just had to concentrate on getting photos as we only had one take with this scene and the light was fading quickly.

What a way to end Gymkhana Nine.

My buddy Eric Everly and company were filming from a helicopter, and they did a few passes under the bridge for good measure.

I hope I’ve been able to provide a little insight into what it was like to be on set and how the crazy stunts came together. I also suggest you watch the very first Gymkhana video to see just how far this series has evolved in eight years.

Our Gymkhana Nine coverage is not stopping here though; stay tuned for a Q&A session with Ken and the boys as we continue our look into taking a video production like this from concept to tire-frying reality.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Chapter One: Latvia RX

There is nothing more fun for me than shooting motorsports. While car features are cool, there are so many more variables that are out of my control when I’m at an event and the action is unfolding live in front of my camera.

What you guys may not realize is that I shoot just as much rallycross as I do drifting. I follow the Red Bull Global Rallycross series, but ever since the FIA launched the World Rallycross Championship (World RX) in 2014, I’ve wanted to check out a round.

This past weekend, I finally got my chance in Latvia. This was also the first time the series had competed in Riga, so it was a new experience for most of the drivers and teams.

It was nice to be able to photograph some of the best drivers in the world yet again, like Sébastien Loeb, who I followed closely when he smashed the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb overall record in 2013.

Earlier in the year, I was all ready to check out the World RX France round, but I got the flu and couldn’t attend. The flu is pretty much the only thing that stops me in my tracks when it comes to photographing car culture.

Luckily for me though, Ken Block and the boys at Hoonigan Racing Division invited me out to Latvia to see what World RX is all about.

For the past few years, I’ve been following Ken quite closely as he’s competed in Red Bull GRC. This year he stepped up from a Ford Fiesta RX to a Focus RS RX and has committed to competing full-time in the World RX series.

With that said, he also added a driver to the Hoonigan Racing Division team – the very young, but seriously talented Andreas Bakkerud.

A rallycross prodigy, the 24-year-old Norwegian has really made a name for himself in his first year with HRD. Right out of the gate, he has been running at the top end of the series, and is currently placed fourth in the Supercar championship with two rounds left to run.

It’s really fun to see the dynamic between teammates, as one was born a racing driver and the other only started racing after establishing a career in marketing and business.

Of course, both of them have an equal amount of passion for rallycross, but it’s cool to see them feeding off each other. Ken is getting faster, and Andreas is learning a thing or two from the Head Hoonigan In Charge.

Chapter Two: Bikernieki

What I immediately loved about World RX was the amount of cars competing in the series and the variety that was offered through the many different classes.

It’s the battle of the energy drink sponsors. In the US, it’s Red Bull with GRC, while Monster Energy has naming rights for World RX.

Qualifying day was dry and the light was amazing, but the main race day saw torrential downpours.

It was so awesome to watch Petter Solberg drive. His style is unlike that of any other rallycross driver I’ve seen.

Unfortunately, Petter did not have the best weekend and he was out before the finals.

Conner Martell made the trip over from the US for a run in the RX Lites class. He totally lived up to his sponsor’s name crossing the finish line during practice.

I could not believe how many people showed up to watch the race. Rain or shine, the stands were packed beyond belief. I guess they really love rallycross in Latvia.

That’s one way to work on the motor – just sit on it.

I love this shot of Andreas’ cars getting blasted with water. I myself did not have very much fun standing in the rain.

Friend of Speedhunters Will Roegge was also in Riga shooting video for Ford Performance. We were in the trenches together and suffered the same. I was definitely not as prepared as I should have been for the wet and cold.

Chapter Three: Hoonigan Racing Division

When watching rallycross on television or over the internet you only get a small sliver of what goes on during a race weekend. It’s amazing how much effort goes into planning for each and every qualifying session, and there are meetings on top of meetings with drivers, spotters, crew chiefs, engineers and mechanics.

A professional rallycross team has so many moving parts.

I always love to watch Ken prep before he steps into the car. He likes to get his heart rate going and warm up with intense physical activities like sparing with his personal trainer, Kit Cope.

What many people don’t realize is that a session in a rallycross car is so physically demanding. I liken it to being out of breath after sprinting 100 meters. Or at least that was the case for me after I did a quick session at a track day.

The course itself was recently constructed as an addition to the Bikernieki race track located in Riga. The original track is a 50-year-old, Soviet-era race circuit which also looked the part.

I love the liveries in World RX, including the Castrol colors on this Kia Rio.

There were a few small puddles at the end of the front straight which made for some interesting driving.

The Norwegian rallycross fans are really on another level, and around 150 of them flew in from Norway on a private charter jet. Normally there are no direct flights from that region – where Andreas grew up – to Riga, but they pooled their money together to make it easy for everyone. I’d never seen anything like it.

While at the event, I also had a chance to check out Kristaps Bluss’ shop which is actually located inside the Bikernieki circuit. His new 2017 Formula Drift build looks like it’s going to feature a lot of carbon-Kevlar.

I love joking around with Ken during photo shoots. He is not so keen on being a professional male model, but he finds himself in front of my lens pretty often when it comes to sponsor obligations. So in turn, I do my best to shoot as quickly as possible. After all, it’s hard to be really ridiculously good looking in front of the camera.

Just a few more shots of the inner workings of Hoonigan Racing Division.

Andreas is always a joker in and around the paddock.

Ken did not have the best result this round as he missed both practice sessions before qualifying due to a mechanical issue. Basically, he had to qualify without any practice at all.

Best looking Kia ever.

Jan Tore is Andreas’ manager, and also someone I worked with when he was managing Speedhunters activities at Gatebil a few years back. At the time, he was also working closely with Fredric Aasbø on sponsorships and all that other fun stuff racing drivers like to do when they are not competing. What a small world.

The track itself is pretty much carved out of a forest, which made for some really picturesque backgrounds.

Warm up and practice sessions happened first thing in the morning; it was really nice because I rarely get to shoot during the soft and side-angle light at rallycross events.

Nice headlights bud. It’s always a great time hanging out with the HRD mechanics.

With just a few events left, it’s really up to Andreas and the Hoonigan Racing Division team to buckle down for a strong finish in his first season of FIA World RX. I have no doubt in my mind that next year he will be a true championship contender.

Shooting in Latvia was a real eye-opener for me, and it’s just so cool to see the huge following that rallycross has in Europe. It only makes me want to check out more of these events.

Till then, enjoy the these photos, through my lens.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Bonus Chapter: Cutting Room Floor

Chapter One: Dealership Drift

A drifting Lamborghini… I know what you guys are thinking, ‘We’ve seen it all before.’

To a point that would be true, because Daigo Saito did go nuts drifting an Murcielago. I know this all too well because I was there, on the ground, during filming of Battle Drift with Vaughn Gittin Jr. But I can assure you, the Lamborghini in question today is very different.

For a start, this V10-powered Huracán is actually just a regular street car with a few minor modifications to help it get a little bit more sideways.

That said though, it does have a drift connection: it belongs to a world champion drifter and his wife, who herself is also quite handy behind the wheel when it comes to oversteer.

Say hello to the Hübinettes, definitely not your average Swedish couple living in Southern California.

I haven’t seen much of Samuel since he left Formula Drift, so when the Donut Media guys told me to come along and check out a little video project for Nitto Tire they had going on, I was all ears.

The filming itself took place at one of the largest and most well known Lamborghini dealerships on the West Coast.

Lamborghini of Newport Beach had many amazing machines in the showroom and workshop, including this Diablo customer car.

I just love that classic ’90s look, and I especially love this car’s gated shifter.

There were so many supercars in one place, but none of them were anything like the Hübinette’s Huracán.

I’m pretty sure this is the world’s only modern Lamborghini fitted with a hydraulic e-brake setup for drift.

Only a mad Swedish man would do such a thing to his brand new Italian supercar. All in the name of fun, right?

Because this model Huracán came in rear-wheel drive, it’s the perfect start point for supercar drifter. Wilwood supplied the extra 4-piston rear calipers, and the wheels are made by Vorsteiner, who also supplied the body kit.

The handbrake itself was made by Trinity Motorsports.

All the carbon bits and pieces are also made by Vorsteiner and I think they really set off the rest of the subtle build.

But the stock V10 powerplant is more than enough to get the massive 285-section Nitto Tire NT555 G2s spinning.

The Donut guys always like to come up with creative ways to capture all the action quickly and efficiently. Mouth cam? Check!

No fancy camera tricks here, that is an actual street car drifting.

Even with the stock steering angle Sam and Stina could pitch it sideways no problem.

Shooting at an exotic car dealership has its perks.

One of my favorite scenes came about as we were shooting from inside the dealership and Samuel threaded the needle through millions of dollars’ worth of cars.

I always make fun of my buddy James Kirkham from Donut Media as he usually wears ripped pants, so the supercar lifestyle suits him well. But this time there were no holes in his pants.

We hid the sound guy behind the Aventador LP 750-4 SuperVeloce. Where else would we hide him?

As you guys would have seen in the video, Sam was not the only one driving on this particular day. His wife, Stina, is also a professional stunt driver hired for Hollywood films and commercials.

While Stina has never actually competed at a professional drift event, she did a really good job creating little puffy clouds.

Even though Sam does stunt driving for a living, it still made us wince when he did some proximity drifts next to these curbs. Hitting the curb in your Lamborghini is one way to ruin your day very quickly.

Of course, Sam was straight-faced the entire time.

That’s one mean looking front end. While I am not generally a big fan of vinyl wraps, I think this matte gray looked really nice for the application.

Former Speedhunters driver and all around cool dude Matt Powers made a quick cameo as the tire changer and car wash guy.

Matt is also a Nitto Tire-sponsored driver, so they figured it would be fun for him to play a small part.

This is what happens when you quit professional drifting, you end up having to wash cars.

Sam drifted the Irwindale Speedway big bank with this car to test it out before this video shoot, so we know it’s capable of much more than just a few donuts and 2nd gear drifts around a dealership.

Which begs the question: what’s he going to do with it next? My vote is for tandem 360-degree drifting with Matt Powers.

What’s funny to me is that Sam and Stina actually bought this Huracán from Lamborghini of Newport Beach. I guess if you sell a supercar to a stunt driver it would be stupid of you not to invite him back to do a few drifts at your dealership. I wonder if the same thing would happen if he bought something from a Ferrari dealership? Probably not.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Bonus Chapter: Cutting Room Floor

Chapter One: Furious Outlaws

If you guys have not already seen or heard about it, Sung Kang and Magnus Walker released a film during SEMA 2016. For Furious Outlaws, they swapped their favorite cars and drove the absolute piss out of them together on the canyon roads surrounding Los Angeles.

The guys invited me to come while they were filming the video so I could capture some photos of the action.

Seeing as both cars were originally from the early ’70s before digital cameras were invented, I figured it would only be appropriate to shoot this feature entirely on negative film.

Before we go any further, those that haven’t seen the film yet need to watch it, and those that have might want to do so again. Hit play above.

Don’t you just love the way these two canyon carvers sound? While both cars barely make over 200 horsepower apiece, we have all learned that power is not the be all and end all of a great driving car. It’s about balance and feeling.

I find that I have the same sort of mentality when I choose my film cameras. I am a stickler for how they should look and feel in my hands, as well as how they should perform. I decided to load one single roll of black and white film in my Leica M6 for this project, and only brought along a 35mm lens.

For the longer shots, I decided to use my Nikon FM2/T, which I think is the world’s best analog camera. Using a battery just for metering, it has a maximum shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second, which is just so amazing to me. The titanium body and shutter curtain make for a durable body and it’s lightweight as well. I also brought my 50mm f/1.2 which is Nikon’s fastest lens.

For color film, I went with what was easily available at my local camera store. I picked up two rolls of Kodak Ektar 100, which worked perfectly for shooting in the afternoon.

Sung is such an easy guy to work with. The first time I met him he offered to let me drive the FuguZ, and being a Z guy myself, I could not resist.

I was one of the first people outside of him and the builders who had a chance to get behind the wheel, and I loved every moment of it.

Filming the video for eGarage was my good buddy Frazer Spowart from Autocraft Media. I have to thank him too, as he usually gives me the exclusive to shoot these types of productions.

I met up with Sung and Magnus mid-shoot, so they already had plenty to say about each other’s car.

While Sung is not your traditional car fanatic, he does have a passion for automobiles and that’s what matters.

I also think he’s single-handedly changed the worldwide 240Z market for the better. I’ve already owned my 240Z for 11 years, and in that time I’d never seen one displayed at the SEMA Show. This year there were three.

Just because Sung was a part of the Fast and the Furious franchise does not mean that he instantly garnered respect from the car community. The late Paul Walker worked very hard to earn respect by becoming a real enthusiast and also getting behind the wheel of a time attack car.

Of course, Sung is nothing like Paul, but I think he really gets it. I am so glad that he’s as passionate about cars as he is the culture behind them.

Chapter Two: Rolling Shots

One of Frazer’s favorite things to capture are rolling shots, so we put together a game plan and rolled out. Magnus and Sung were to chase us as we hung out the back of a minivan.

I love using film, but it’s definitely hard to transition from shooting machine-gun style to being very careful with my shots. The added difficulty of manual focus also makes it that much more fun.

The great thing about shooting at this location is the nearly limitless amount of angles that you can get on the canyon roads running through the San Gabriel mountains. You could spend your lifetime here just trying to find all the different shots that are possible.

Seeing as I was going to shoot into the near darkness, I figured Ilford HP5 black and white film would be perfect as I can push it to 800 ISO no problem. I actually got this rolling shot at 1/15th of a second with the Leica. I developed the black and white film myself in my sink, but I sent the color C-41 out to a local place for processing.

As fun as it was shooting out of the back of the van, it was quite difficult and I really only captured two good slow-shutter shots with my short lenses, this with the 50mm on the Nikon and the previous black and white shot from the Leica.

The sun was setting and I was running out of light, so I snapped a few more with the Nikon on color before having to switch to black and white completely.

Having driven both cars myself, there is really no way to pick a favorite. Both drive completely differently, but the power delivery is quite similar. The brakes on the 911 are much better, but that just comes down to a tuning issue; once the 240Z is dialed for the track, it should stop even better.

It was fun to watch the pair show each other photos from the day, as shot on their phones. Everyone’s a photographer, right?

It was already dark and these two car nerds were still swapping stories, so it was the perfect end to an epic day in the canyons.

Despite being a Hollywood actor, Sung is so humble and good to his fans. Because while he is not obligated to take selfies and make small talk with anyone that came up to him on this day, he did not hesitate one bit. It seemed like there was a non-stop supply of fans too, which was pretty amazing given we were in such a secluded area.

I also have to thank Magnus for all the access he has extended to Speedhunters over the years; he is definitely a car culture ambassador and it helps to have people like him supporting our efforts.

I didn’t finish my two rolls of color film shooting Furious Outlaws, so I figured I would shoot a bit more on another day. For that, I called up a few friends and had them join in on a little canyon carving session near my home up Azusa Canyon. Enjoy the bonus images!

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Bonus Chapter: Cutting Room Floor

I’ve shot top fuel and nitro funny cars before, but up until very recently it had been a while since I’d experienced the eardrum-shattering and heart-thumping power of a 10,000hp drag car.

I figured it would be a good idea to check out the final round of the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series. After all, Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, California, is the closest race track to my home; I live just a few minutes away.

I tried my best to capture some unique angles, like this top-down shot showing how much a top fuel dragster’s chassis flexes at launch.

Because I was not there to follow a specific team or storyline, I was free to shoot how I wanted to, which is definitely my favorite kind of Speedhunting.

These are a collection of my favorite photos from the event, with some added insights throughout the gallery.

Panning a car as it accelerates to well over 300mph within 1000ft is definitely no easy task. The motion is more like swinging a baseball bat at full speed versus a slow and steady golf club arc.

The eyes of a drag racer. Concentration is high as races are often won and lost within hundredths of a second.

The surface of a prepped drag strip is very sticky, and if you don’t tie your shoes on properly you will lose them. I speak from personal experience. It’s quite embarrassing standing there with your shoes stuck on the strip.

Not only do these machines pull insane wheelies, they also hop around the burnout box.

The legend himself, John Force. I caught him in a quiet moment right before his qualifying run.

All that stuff coming out of the exhaust is unburnt nitromethane. Stand too close while a nitro-fueled machine is doing a burnout and you are in for watery eyes and burning lungs, possibly not too unlike inhaling full shot of tequila. I also learned this the hard way.

This shot of Leah Pritchett reminds me of a scene out of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Check out the rear tire wrinkle as she leaves the start line.

I love the license plate.

It may look like a tilt-shift effect, but I can assure you that it’s all exhaust fumes blurring the bottom half of the image.

Drag racing itself is such a simple concept on paper, but when you actually get to experience it in person you quickly learn just how complex it really is.

These are the quickest race cars in the world, and so much goes on in the lead up to them powering down the strip that you don’t get to see.

Hopefully next year I can try for some more in-depth stories surrounding this amazing motorsport.

Baptism by nitro. These guys stood behind one of the funny cars as its engine was warmed up after a rebuild. If you can’t tell from the photo, they were really suffering from the fumes.

Where’s the nearest jump?

It’s so cool when you see drivers wear nitro gas masks. Does it get any more badass?

I am kind of a weenie so I wear double ear protection, plugs for inside my ears and earmuffs to go over the top. With all that, I still flinch when these guys drop the hammer.

It’s so violent that my camera even gives me a flicker warning, which normally only comes on when I am shooting a fluorescent light. The camera shakes so much from the shock waves that it freaks out.

Just a few feet away from the start line you experience up to 150 decibels of nitro fury.

To quote an article from Dragzine.com: “It should come as no surprise that the World Health Organization considers the output at close proximity to a fuel car to be in their “do not expose yourself to this” range, while the 127dB in the spectator area falls within the recommended range of only 1 second of exposure per 24 hours.”

With that all said, it amazes me that there are those who are into cars and the surrounding culture who think drag racing is boring.

Trust me when I say this: it’s only boring to you because you have not been to an NHRA event. After one of these nitro funny cars shakes your bowels your outlook will be altered forever.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Chapter One: The 49th Baja 1000

As a Speedhunter, life is pretty much an endless number of bucket list motoring events being ticked off, new builds and breakthrough moments in car culture.

As I always say, there are infinite things we can photograph and present, but within those are a few events that really stand above the rest. For me, the Baja 1000 is among those and right up there with the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Believe it or not, up until a few weeks ago I had not shot all three of these events. The Score Baja 1000 has always been on my radar, but over the past few years there has always been a scheduling conflict of some sort.

However, this year my schedule was wide open, meaning I could finally tackle the Baja head on.

I wanted to follow the big names, like BJ Baldwin, pictured here hitting maximum speed just a few feet away from a sheer drop into the ocean.

But how can you possibly cover a race that is more than 850 miles long and runs over some of the roughest terrain and backcountry roads in the desert?

Well, as luck would have it, Monster Energy hired a very expensive helicopter for me with a very seasoned pilot who I have flown with plenty of times before. More on this shortly.

To prepare for such a grueling event, Louis and I actually practiced our plan of attack during the San Felipe 250 race earlier this year, but our roles were reversed then.

Louis was in the air following Tyler McQuarrie and Pat O’Keefe in the Nexgen Fuel/Safecraft trophy truck.

And I was on the ground, using my FJ Cruiser to get me from point to point.

For the big event though, Louis would be shooting from the ground, where he’d sure to be tossed around like a rag doll on the very unforgiving Baja California roads, and I would be flying in comfort.

Louis: The night before contingency, it was agreed that I’d tag along with Chris Adams from Tempt Media as he followed the race.

I’ve never seen any planning quite as complex as this when it comes to shooting locations for any type of race. Chris had divided the team up into various groups, each one tasked with between two and five different locations.

There was a screenshot of each section, complete with an extensive description detailing everything from the estimated arrival times of the racers, to nearby food and fuel outlets. Chris had five planned locations for our group, spread over the entire race day.

Larry: It looked more like a war room than anything else; there was enough video and camera gear to shoot a feature film. Tempt even had an editor on standby for the full 24 hours, his job to load cards and pump out videos during the course of the race. It was amazing.

So many people have different perceptions of Mexico, but I don’t think anyone should knock it until they’ve experienced it for themselves. I travel to Mexico a few times a year and it’s been nothing but awesome.

I know all the off-road geeks will agree with me, but the people, food and culture surrounding this form of racing really is something else.

The city of Ensenada comes alive during race week, and it really made me wonder if it’d be possible to hold a motorsport event of this size anywhere else in the world. Not likely, I’m guessing.

Louis: It’s crazy what you sometimes see during contingency. My favorite moment was when this luchador snapped his head towards my camera as soon as he saw me raise it to my eye.

To say the people of Ensenada have a huge interest in desert racing would be an understatement. Because cities in the Baja Peninsula don’t have professional sports teams, they turn to motorsports as their primary. Big-name drivers like BJ Baldwin, Rodrigo Ampudia and Robby Gordon are basically seen the same way North Americans look to stars like Kobe Bryant, Michael Phelps and Tom Brady.

Chapter Two: Race Day

The day started pretty early for me; I woke up around 5:30am (while I’m sure Larry still would have been fast asleep) and within a half hour we were on our way. Our plan was to head to Race Mile (RM) 80 and catch bikes 1X and 3X as they powered through. The trucks weren’t scheduled to start the race until 12:00pm.

After what seemed like an eternity, the bikes finally reached our location. They were an hour later than their estimated arrival time, but I found out this was due to a late start and the nature of the first section of the 850-mile course, which is exceptionally slow.

By now it was around 8:30am, and after catching 1X we bolted straight back to the car so we could try and catch him again passing RM120.

I was able to get one more shot in before Chris started yelling at me to hurry up.

Larry: As Louis, Chris and the rest of the Tempt Media crew were darting around the peninsula, I woke up to a cool ocean breeze blowing outside of my window. We were staying at a friend’s house at Race Mile 140, which is appropriately named ‘Rancho Relaxo’.

Parked outside my room in the yard was the AStar, all fueled up and ready to go. This was my first Baja 1000 race and I was already being spoiled beyond belief.

I would be flying with my good friend Eric Everly who co-owns Tempt Media. I’ve flown with him all over the world in helicopters, and for this event he was operating the Shotover F1 camera system attached to the nose of the helicopter.

Clean windows means cleaner photos. This is Dave Vernick, owner and pilot of this beast of a helicopter. His company is Icon Helicopters and he operates out of the San Diego area. I’ve been lucky enough to work with him over the past few years and I trust his skills as a pilot more than anyone else.

Just as Louis rubbed it in my face when I had to wake at 4:00am to make it to my first shooting spot at the San Felipe 250, I made sure to take some nice photos of my hot food.

The coolest thing about this Mexican villa? That the race course literally runs down its driveway.

Just moments before Louis had his last shots of 1X and 3X, we were strapped in and ready to go. Then, as soon as they whizzed by the house, we took chase from the sky.

Here’s Eric on the sticks of the Shotover; it really amazes me how stable this camera is. He really got me thinking of the possibilities when mentioning that I could mount a still camera in the system and get some extremely slow follow shots from the nose of the helicopter.

For now, shooting out of a tiny window will do.

Within moments we had caught up to 1X and I started firing away.

It actually took a while to get back into it, because the feeling of shooting out of something that can potentially move and follow another vehicle just a few feet off the ground going over 100mph is somewhat uneasy.

Chapter Three: Party Time

Louis: While Larry and Eric were up in the helicopter, horror struck for Chris and I. He had factored in everything for race day except one thing – a local parade that blocked the only road that would take us to around RM170. I’m 80 per cent sure the place was called Punta Colonet.

I still don’t know what the parade was for, but it was definitely an interesting one. We saw men on horses and children dancing.

In total, the parade and some unforeseen road construction only held us up for five minutes, which doesn’t sound too bad.

But it was bad. Right as we arrived at our second location we saw the dust trail of 1X. If we had arrived just a minute sooner we might have been able to at least salvage a shot or two. As we came to a stop to try and assess our situation, the bike in second place passed us by, so I grabbed a shot. While opening my images up in Lightroom at HQ later that night, I realized that it was actually 3X that I had photographed, so not all was lost at this location.

Larry: While shooting the two bikes was important to us, the priority was to head over to Ensenada in time to see the trophy trucks leaving the line.

But first we would have to land at Ensenada Airport and clear customs. In total there were 25 helicopters following the race, which is just insane. Can you tell this is a rich man’s sport?

We took off after getting a splash of fuel and hovered at the start line as the big dogs prepared to begin their race.

While following the bikes was fun enough, seeing the trophy trucks leave the line really got my heart pumping.

The first section was extremely crowded, and it seems the spectactors as well as some media did not care about being splashed with waste water. These are some diehard fans for sure.

As much fun as it was shooting the leaders blast through the wonderful city of Ensenada, it was time for us to head back to Rancho Relaxo for lunch and wait for the trucks to reach the more picturesque areas after Race Mile 140.

Louis: While Larry was having the time of his life up in the helicopter and its awesome leather seats and air conditioning, I was shooting everything that passed by.

It was about 1:00pm or 2:00pm by now and we were slowly making our way to shoot the trophy trucks. We didn’t have plans to catch 1X again until RM470 and RM480 later in the afternoon.

Instead of shooting at RM180, we slowly traversed our way a few miles north to RM183 because it looked like a better shot.

RM185 was next, but instead we ended up right by the beach, which turned out to be way better than our planned spot.

Chris and Max, another of the Tempt Media team, were praying that we’d be able to catch the race bikes once more after the trophy trucks. I had my fingers crossed for it as well.

Larry: We touched down back at the house just in time for short ribs and homemade chili. What a tough day in the office for me.

While we enjoyed our lunch, we kept track of where the leaders were because we too had the same plan to shoot the trophy trucks. Once again, we’d be waiting for them to pass by the house which would give us the signal to take off and give chase.

With a few minutes to go, I stepped outside the front yard to get a shot of the leader passing by. It was Kyle LeDuc and he was coming in hot. This exact shot was about 50 feet from where the helicopter was parked and maybe 100 feet from my bedroom. It just does not get any cooler than that.

As soon as we lifted off, Eric and Dave decided it would be best if we headed back down the course and worked our way up to the leaders, getting as much coverage of each race truck as possible. Here’s a great shot of us ‘buzzing the tower’ if you will; everyone staying at Rancho Relaxo decided to come outside and watch the race.

See that window by the blue staircase? That was my bedroom.

Even after about 150 miles of racing the trucks were still fairly evenly spaced out, but the dust had a lot to do with that. It’s really hard to make a pass when you can’t even see where you are going.

To me, the coolest thing about the Baja 1000 was the landscape. There were some serious pucker moments, especially when you can see that a truck is going absolutely flat out just mere feet from a sheer drop and you know one tiny mistake will turn a good day into a very bad one, very quickly.

Then, without notice, the course would duck inland again only to pop back out onto the beach a few miles later.

Baja California is beautiful beyond words. Can you believe that this is a race course?

While it was cool to shoot on the coastline, we soon headed back up to the leaders to catch some inland action. I loved the way the dust lingered, but I’m not sure the drivers thought so highly of it.

The best part of shooting from a helicopter in Mexico is that we could land pretty much anywhere we wanted to.

Need to change cards in the Shotover F1? No problem. Need a bathroom break? You got it!

I’ve been following BJ Baldwin pretty closely over the years and seen him drive from the ground quite often, but up until this event I’d never chased him in the air at race speed. He was in his element and hellbent on ‘Iron Man-ing’ the race, which means he was going to drive the entire 850 miles himself.

Chapter Four: Background

Louis: Soon enough, 2:30pm rolled around and the first few trucks came blasting through. Kyle LeDuc looked extremely comfortable and provided me with a nice little two-wheel lean.

The Riviera Racing trophy truck he was piloting is somewhat dated by today’s measures, but you couldn’t tell from the way he was driving it.

The high speed section we were at led straight to a hard 90-degree left turn followed by a low speed whoop section, followed by another hard downhill right turn.

It proved to be a very difficult section for many drivers; a good few of them braked too late and understeered while blindly hitting the whoops.

By now we’d received word that bike 1X was about 20 minutes faster than what we had estimated, meaning we would not make it to RM470 in time, especially since we traversed an extra 15 minutes to arrive at the beach. Not only that, but we also had intentions to shoot the UTVs at sunset near RM205. But the specific UTV driver we were following, Marc Burnett, was having technical issues and was running at a far slower pace than we had hoped for.

We grudgingly decided to remain at the beach and let it be our final shooting location until the sun went down.

I didn’t know this until we were looking at our pictures afterwards, but while I was shooting Steven Eugino pass through the beach, Larry was tracking him from above.

Larry: I figured that there was going to be a very high chance that Louis and I would cross paths during the event, and I even spotted the truck that he was riding in from the air. But for the life of me, I could not find Louis on the beach. That is, until we looked at the photos later on.

You can barely tell, but if you look at the top right of the frame where the sand touches the water, you will see a black dot. That’s Louis. In the full resolution photo we could even tell that he was using his 400mm lens.

There was a great battle going on between BJ Baldwin in his Monster Energy Toyota truck and Alan Ampudia in the Papas & Beer truck. Alan was closing in fast, but it didn’t last long.

There was a very fast downhill section after a long straightaway; BJ slowed right down for it, but I guess Alan was going full attack mode and wasn’t able to make the corner. Thank goodness he and his co-driver were able to walk away from it. You can see the video here.

The crash looked bad enough, but what was really unsettling for me to watch was some guys driving a pickup truck backwards on the race course just so they could grab some body panels as souvenirs. Luckily for them, no race trucks came over the blind crest during the senseless moment.

Even though BJ was pushing super hard, he didn’t finish the race either. Late at night he crashed into a boulder going around 70mph; the truck was very damaged but both he and his co-driver were just fine.

This was actually one of my favorite shots from this event, as it really illustrates just how bad the dust is. The ground looks like it’s on fire.

It really amazes me how fast these guys can go in such trying conditions.

Louis: As Larry went on his way, I continued down the beach.

The Nexgen Fuel guys were running a brand new diesel truck and passed me in almost complete silence.

Casey Currie was running the Baja for the very first time this year, and at contingency he said that it was all about testing a new car, his team, and the race itself. He ended up crossing the finish line in 43rd overall, which is an achievement in itself as only half the grid of almost 300 entrants make it to the race end.

Larry: We were almost out of fuel so we landed near the south end of the race course around RM400. Dave has been doing this long enough to know what to expect, so he checks the fuel every time before filling up in Mexico to make sure what he’s being sold is legit. And sure enough, this time they tried to fill up the AStar with high octane piston petrol instead of jet fuel. That could have been a very costly mistake, not to mention disastrous.

This is why I only work with the best in the industry. Many things can go wrong when you are pushing the time envelope.

The sun was setting so we decided to catch up to the lead motorcycles one last time before we headed back. Flying at night was not an option.

After a bit of searching, we found 1X, which was the lead bike. He would go on to finish in 1st place.

As we flew towards Rancho Relaxo, I was blindly shooting every race craft I could see. I just happened to catch Shannon Campbell in his Ultra4 truck going full-tilt on the ocean side of the course.

Louis: By now, the Tempt Media guys and I were just waiting for Shannon Campbell to pass through too.

I snagged one more shot right as the sun started dipping below the horizon.

We didn’t shoot the night portion of the race as we had intentions to leave early morning the next day.

Larry: With only 10 more minutes of flying time after the sun disappeared we made a final few circles around the house.

It was at this time we ran across our friend Heidi Steele limping along at RM140. Her truck was hurt bad, but she was still pushing hard and making passes around the lower class guys.

I grabbed one last shot before we completely ran out of light.

Shooting Baja from the air was absolutely incredible, and I count myself very lucky to get to do what I do for a living.

I’d like to thank Monster Energy, the guys at Tempt Media, Eric Everly, Chris Adams, Brian Moore, and of course Dave Vernick the X-wing fighter that kept us all safe. After the bird landed safely the night ended with tequila shots and storytelling by the fire. Perfect!

As the tequila warmed me up, I sat outside the house panning race vehicles as they went by. It was going to be a long night for many racers as they have up to 36 hours to officially finish the race. Keep in mind that the fastest trophy trucks can finish it in just 15 hours.

Even though we were up in the air for as long as possible, the winter days were very short and we actually had very little daylight compared to the summer time. While I loved shooting from the air, I know I won’t be able to experience the full Baja 1000 atmosphere until I actually shoot it from the ground. Maybe I will switch places again with Louis next year. Probably not though.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Additional Words & Images by Louis Yio

Bonus Chapter: Cutting Room Floor

The Gumball 3000 is one of those events that you hear about as a car enthusiast, but something only few can actually take part in given its prohibitively expensive entry fee. For 2017, a spot in the rally was set at around US$45,500 per car, and that’s before all the other associated costs that come with the event.

Over the years there have been many similarly-themed road rallies popping up all over the world, but none are as big or as crazy as the Gumball 3000. It’s why I jumped at the opportunity to take part in this year’s event on the back of an invite from our friends at Motorhead magazine in Japan.

Primarily, I was there to ride with Motorhead and document the event for an upcoming issue of the magazine (which is out now, by the way), but the editor-in-chief, Ko-hey Takada, was happy for me to share the behind the scenes story here too.

The event itself has really evolved over the years. Originally, the Gumball 3000 was more focused on the cars and the culture surrounding them, but now it’s like a giant – and very expensive – rolling party.

It seems to me that there are three types of people that compete in this event. The first group are the pure speed junkies who have little to no regard for authority and drive foot to the floor at triple-digit speeds. They almost always arrive to the next location first, but are the smallest group among the 150 entrants.

Then there are those who love driving fast, but not at the expense of getting themselves in trouble. They’ll occasionally push the limits on public roads, but in a more responsible manner. This is the largest group of teams, mostly consisting of supercars and exotics with a few GT cars thrown in for good measure.

The third group is in the Gumball 3000 for the party; leaving late and arriving late is their style. Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, Range Rovers and other luxury cars and SUVs make up the bulk of the vehicles in this group.

The Motorhead team fit somewhere in between the first and second groups; we were in it to drive fast, but we also wanted to stay out of trouble – which we did.

The rally itself started in Riga, Latvia and would eventually end up in Mykonos. Greece. Due to Goodwood Festival of Speed commitments, I joined the Gumball party at its first stop in Warsaw, Poland.

When I arrived at the stadium where the cars were going to regroup, I was unsure if I was at the right place. There were so many people around I thought there was some sort of festival going on.

It turned out that everyone was just there to see the cars showing up – nothing else. There was no side car show and no other event of any kind. Amazing.

I quickly realized that these people were genuinely into the cars, and that seeing so many exotic machines in one place at one time was something special. The Polish in general love motorsports, so I guess it was only natural that there would be a lot of excitement for the Gumball 3000 passing through Warsaw.

There were so many people trying to get a closer look at the procession of cars that it was tough for me to even see what was coming down the pipeline next.

Some of the locals even brought out their own cars for an impromptu and unofficial car show. This super-clean RWB Porsche was a standout.

The atmosphere was truly festival-like. I could never imagine anything like this in the US.

Early the next morning, I met up with Ko-hey and we all hit the road.

You might be wondering why Motorhead wanted to do the Gumball 3000 this year, and the answer is simple. For 2018, the event starts in London, but finishes up in Tokyo.

If the rumors are anything to go by, the entry fee will be well over US$100,000, but that price includes flights for the cars on three chartered Russian cargo planes from Europe to Japan.

For this event, Motorhead lined up a bunch of sponsors including Bingo Sports, the goal being to get firsthand experience of the Gumball and gather assets in order to promote it in 2018. The organizers are hoping that a few Japanese teams will sign up for the renowned road rally.

This is why they airfreighted a brand new Lexus LC500 to Europe just for this rally. With the outlay for the car and over US$30,000 just to fly it one way to Europe – plus the aforementioned entry fee and other expenses – my head almost exploded just thinking about how much this mission of sorts would have cost in total. Lucky for me, I got to tag along and experience it all for myself without having to spend a penny.

Every day we had a lunch stop in between our start and end cities, and on day two that happened in Krakow.

It’s interesting, because at some stops the cars were absolutely mobbed, but at others there was hardly anyone to greet the teams. It all depended on where we stopped and how populated the area was.

I know what you guys are thinking, why not save on the US$45,500 entry fee and just follow the rally in your own car at no cost? Well, to be honest, there is nothing stopping anyone doing this.

In fact, there were a few cars that tagged along, and one group that didn’t even try to hide the fact – they just labeled their vehicles Gumball 3000 Fan Cars with Gumball-style stickers.

As I mentioned, the entry fee is just the beginning because it only covers one hotel room and two dinners each night. A van or SUV full of support crew need accommodation and meals as well.

Then there are the bar and club tabs, and at the end of the whole thing is a charity auction, which this year raised around half a million pounds from all the teams. One competitor who wanted to party the event away even brought along his butler to do the driving.

Wherever we went, there seemed to be some sort of police presence. I’m guessing that as soon as the group passed a patrol car, the police would radio ahead to their buddies letting them know that some fast cars were on their way.

Lucky for us, our Lexus flew under the radar compared to some of the more flashy cars.

Driving from Warsaw, Poland to Budapest, Hungary via parts of Czechia and Slovakia, we clocked up around 900km on this day. The scenery was absolutely stunning too, with endless sunflower fields in all directions for a lot of the way.

When we arrived in Budapest, the Gumball frenzy was in full effect. Once again, I could not believe how many people gathered just to watch some fancy cars roll into town.

Among the normal participants – if you can call them that – were a few celebrities, singer/rapper/songwriter CeeLo Green being one of them.

The sights and sounds of multiple cars revving, backfiring and spitting flames was crazy enough, but the party was just getting started.

People in the crowd were essentially jumping over the top of each other in an effort to score free swag from the teams. This boy was begging his heart out asking for t-shirt, but with none left he had to settle for the next best thing from the Gumball participant: an open bag of potato chips, which he proceeded to happily eat. True story.

If there was one show-stopper, it was this real-deal Lancia 037 Group B rally car.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the most reliable machine; after a few miles it would break down and need to be towed.

It was the least reliable car on the rally this year, but my favorite by far. Who brings a historic rally weapon to the Gumball 3000? This guy.

It was pretty awesome that Mr. Gumball 3000 himself, Maximillion Cooper, and his lovely wife and talented rapper/actress Eve also drove the rally. Their ride was a sick looking Twisted Defender.

The cars rested for the night in Budapest, but the very next morning we’d be waking up early to do it all over again.

Although we were travelling in luxury with the LC500, the car had one drawback – its Japanese market 190km/h (115mph) speed limiter.

While that speed can’t be considered slow by any means, when you’re on the Gumball 3000 and trying to keep up with McLarens, a Porsche 918 and a bunch of Lamborghinis all running at 150mph+, it’s a real disadvantage.

I guess you could call it Gumball cruise control; we had the Lexus pinned at 190km/h for longer than I’d like, and other competitors passed us like we were standing still.

Still, it was such a blast trying to keep up with other Gumballers. With long stretches of highway and 950km to the next overnight stop, no one was taking it easy.

This meant some interesting stretches during rest stops, especially if you’d been stuffed inside the tiny cabin of an exotic car.

Refueling also happened on a frequent basis, but it was always fun to catch up with other teams while filling up.

In a way, I do envy the teams that brought full-on luxury vehicles. Because if you’re going to do a massive road trip, you might as well do it in a massive Bentley.

For those unfortunate enough to break down during the touring stages, there was a support vehicle also known as the Gumball Rescue Team tagging along. We witnessed them helping out competitors on numerous occasions, so it’s definitely a great idea.

There was a massive line at the border as we crossed into Croatia from Hungary.

It was also the perfect time for a bit of a break.

Generally speaking, we never had any trouble at any of the many border crossings that we had to go through. Some weren’t as lucky though, and had to go through a secondary screening.

Of all the countries we passed through, Croatia had the best driving roads, not to mention countless tunnels to hit at full speed (190km/h).

Ko-hey and I were both amazed by how incredibly smooth the roads were. It’s like they were built for speed.

On top of that, there were almost no other cars on the road besides those in the rally.

While I like to complain about our meager top speed in the LC500, it does not compare to this Mercedes-Benz lorry which was limited to only 90km/h. Amazingly, this thing made it to every single city in time for dinner, but of course with no unscheduled stops in between.

This was pretty much the sight we got used to while driving a Gumball 3000 vehicle into the lunch stops.

This time it was Rimac Automobile.

Rimac build electric supercars, one of which Richard Hammond recently had an unfortunate experience in.

It was cool to check out Croatia’s only auto manufacturer and also to see how clean of an operation they are running. As we walked through the assembly area a few cars were being put together.

In what felt like no time at all we were hitting the road again; this time I’d drive while Ko-hey caught up on some much needed shut-eye.

Back on the highway, I can only describe this moment like the one time I drove on the Autobahn in Germany, topping the Toyota 86 at a healthy 210km/h.

I had a lot of fun battling this 991 GT3; the roads really were smooth as glass and the company wasn’t too bad either.

Just look at this impressive infrastructure. I am serious when I say there was barely anyone else on the road.

Driving a right-hand drive vehicle on the right side of the road had its challenges, because I’m just not used to it. I often found myself drifting over to the left side of the lane, just like when I drove Magnus Walker’s right-hand drive 930.

Seeing this made me wonder what other hidden gem highways there are in the world that I don’t know about…

Everywhere we stopped people wanted to take photos of our car, and no matter where we stopped we would run into other Gumballers on the side of the road, like Afrojack here.

Before we crossed over in Dubrovnik we had to drive through a little part of Bosnia that separates the north and south parts of Croatia.

I made Ko-hey stop just for one picture, just so I could say that I’d stepped foot in Bosnia.

At border crossings we would often pull up next to other Gumballers and share war stories. Often, these involved bribing the cops and top speeds.

In terms of behind-the-wheel time and driving roads, this day was definitely the best. I was reluctant to hand the keys back over to Ko-hey as the LC500 is a spectacular grand tourer.

And just like that we arrived at the pearly white gates of Dubrovnik.

Of all the cities we stopped at on the Gumball 3000 route, this was easily the most beautiful.

The locals as well as tourists welcomed us with open arms.

It was such a nice contrast of modern exotics and supercars with an old school backdrop.

Partially due to our heavy right feet, Ko-hey and I made it with time to spare and the view of a perfect sunset.

That night we were treated to a seaside fireworks display. Even though I was far away from home for the 4th of July (America’s Independence Day), the festivities were fitting.

We were even treated to an impromptu concert by the one and only CeeLo Green. There were many four letter words being sung on this particular night.

It really made me take a step back for a moment and reflect on what I was witnessing. This is a side of car culture that I never thought I would have a chance to experience. What has this man Maximillion Cooper created?

I thought about it the next day as we left for Tirana, the capital city of Albania.

For me, the worst part of a vacation is not going home, it’s always the planning stage. It takes forever to figure out where to stay what to do, because if you go with the flow you can easily have a bad experience. Gumball is pretty much the ultimate party vacation for car enthusiasts who have the means, and planning is not required.

Some of the people I met on the rally just rented exotic cars for the duration of the trip, and many of them didn’t even drive them back.

The point is, you can just enjoy a week of non-stop action morning till night, eat at the best restaurants, drive the best roads and party like royalty.

And if you want to drive the entire thing in a real Miami-Dade County police car while dressed up as a policeman, you can do just that.

Our lunch stop was in beautiful Montenegro; a dip in the infinity pool and some well deserved espresso was exactly what we needed. Minus the swimming part, I just watched everyone else get chocolate wasted.

From this point forward we lost all of the fan cars that were just following the rally – we were now crossing into the country of Albania.

What happened next is pretty much the reason why you pay for such an exclusive experience.

I never thought I would visit the country of Albania, let alone drive the Gumball 3000 rally through it.

The locals didn’t even really know what to think when they saw an army of supercars blasting down their highways.

The kicker? The Gumball 3000 hired 2000 Albanian police officers to block off the roads through the entire country. This meant full-speed passes at any given moment, and the police won’t even bat an eye – something that I never even thought was possible.

The roads were blocked off on the way to Mother Teresa Square, and the very next morning the roads were all blocked off for us intersection by intersection all the way to Greece. Just unbelievable.

On top of this, the reception in Tirana was unlike that of any other city we went to. There were people lined up, sometimes 10 rows deep, just to catch a glimpse of a burnout.

I just couldn’t believe it. They were so happy to see the cars it was out of control.

Heck, people even started to climb on the buildings surrounding the area.

My mind was already blown from how many people showed up in Warsaw, but this was just another level of commitment.

At the very last stop I asked many of the teams which was their favorite city, and all of them said Tirana.

The music was blaring and the fans stayed out till the very last car arrived.

The variety of vehicles that showed up to this year’s rally was super cool. Because how often does a GT3 RS and a Indy 500 pace car Camaro drive in the same event?

That night I decided not to be lame and I went out to the club where the biggest Gumball 3000 party was happening.

Of course, DJ Afrojack performed; my eardrums hurt just thinking about the night.

The next morning we would leave for Athens, Greece for our last big-city stop before catching a ferry to Mykonos.

So what was it like to drive empty roads with the police blocking every single intersection? It was kind of freaky in a way.

You really could go as fast as you wanted in the Albanian countryside, but of course there was the occasional dirt road, so it was probably good that no one brought an Enzo Ferrari or a McLaren P1.

Open roads and police escorts sound too good to be true, but all good things eventually come to an end.

At the Albania and Greece border, the border patrol agents immediately took a liking to our caravan and welcomed us.

There are so many different types of people who spend their vacation days on the Gumball 3000, and of course there are those on permanent vacation. This LP710 was broken down at a petrol station, and I heard a rumor that the owner bought a new car that day just to finish the rally. When you’ve come so far, you might as well see it through to the end.

I met some really awesome people on this adventure, from gentleman racing drivers, to car collectors and wealthy entrepreneurs.

Yes, there were some unsavory characters on the rally too, but luckily they were few and far between.

Our night in Athens was pretty relaxed as there was just one more driving leg to go before the goal, but trouble was already stirring outside of our hotel.

Smoke coming out of a Ferrari is never a good sign.

The last leg was only a few traffic-packed miles through downtown Athens to the port.

There awaited a ferry large enough for all the Gumball cars.

One by one the cars were loaded in for the five-hour journey to Mykonos Island.

I’d been on something similar before when I covered Deuce Days for Hotrod magazine, but instead of a boat full of exotic cars it was a boat filled to the brim with ’32 Fords.

This was the first and last time I saw the 918 on the trip.

Before we knew it, it was time to unload. With everyone revving their cars’ engines in elation that they’d actually made it all the way, I nearly passed out from the exhaust fumes.

Interestingly, I think out of all the cars driving in the event there were only five with manual transmissions, this ACR Viper being one of them.

Team Motorhead breathed a collective sigh of relief as the LC500 rolled off the ferry.

We proceeded to take a parade lap around the tiny island, sharing the roads with ATVs and the occasional scooter.

Many of the tourists and the locals had absolutely no idea what was going on, but it was all in good fun.

The 2017 Gumball 3000 was such an interesting event from beginning to end, with so many new experiences that I never thought I would ever get to be a part of. We made it without a hitch and I was very glad to be a part of the Motorhead team for this one.

I want to thank Ko-hey for having me on board, and Katsu Takahashi who was the video producer for being a great camera car precision driver.

Loren and I ended up staying two nights in Mykonos and this was the view outside of our room. I would say that I could get used to this, but honestly this life of wealth and showboating is not for me. I love cars and car culture, and while partying is fun once in a while, my idea of a vacation is sitting at home working on my cars. I guess that makes me pretty boring.

But all joking aside, if I were given the opportunity to go again, would I? Well, let’s just say I am curious to see how they are going to fly 150 cars from Europe to Japan for the 20th anniversary event next year…

Covering all aspects of car culture for Speedhunters means shooting off-road action as much as I shoot on-road stuff. If you follow the site religiously, then it will come as no surprise to you that over the past few years I’ve been diving deeper and deeper into off-the-beaten-path car culture.

The last time I hung out with Casey Currie and his family was when Louis and I checked out the Moab Easter Jeep Safari  for the first time last year.

Casey has become a lot like Vaughn Gittin, Jr.: They are both fun-havers, they are both very lucky to do drive what they want where they want, and are both champions in their respective disciplines.

Of course, Vaughn dabbles in everything including off-road, while Casey has become more focused on driving over dirt and rocks.

So when Casey invited me, his video guy, and a couple of Monster girls to ride with him on the Rubicon Trail during Jeepers Jamboree, I couldn’t accept his offer fast enough.

The Rubicon Trail used to be the quickest trade route used by native Americans, and was the easiest way to cross the Rubicon river.

In the 1800s, many people flocked to the area with the prospect of gold in the hills, the route providing the fastest way to get from Georgetown to Lake Tahoe. But it was only after World War II that it became popular as an off-road trail, something brought upon by a surplus of decommissioned military Jeeps.

Owners would attempt to cross the trail in their Jeeps, and in the process one of the world’s first natural off-road adventure parks was born.

In 1952, the Jeepers Jamboree was created as an event for people from all around the world to drive through the amazing Sierra Nevada mountains together.

Casey and his family have been coming here since he was a little boy, and this year being the Jeepers Jamboree’s 65th anniversary event, made it that much more special. That is Casey’s dad, Ray.

Casey brought his latest build, which is a Jeep JK four-door converted into a truck for overlanding duties.

The frame was extended allowing the bed to be stretched, and all of the other one-off parts were made by Bruiser Jeep Conversions in Florida.

It’s rumored that Jeep will eventually come out with a production truck, but until then this is the next best thing.

Casey’s family and friends brought out a variety of builds, including the two-door Jeep that I had a chance to drive in Moab.

The more places I get to while chasing car culture, the more I’ve come to realize just how much Norwegians love traveling. I swear I see more Norwegians in more places around the world than any other nationality.

Due to the sheer size and weight of this JK truck, it was actually more difficult to off-road. The two-door and four-door machines had an easier time squeezing through trees and tight rock obstacles.

On this particular morning I woke up at 4:00am in order to make it onto the trail by around 3:00pm.

The trip itself through the Rubican Trail took four days – three days of wheeling and one day of relaxing.

Not that far into the trail, our friends from X-Comp encountered a serious problem: They had fitted some prototype drive shafts before the event, but those failed leaving the Jeep in rear-wheel drive. Welding on the spot, the guys were able to fix things up, or at least they thought they did. More on this shortly.

The sun was going down quickly, so we had to get a move on in order to make it to camp (which was located on private land), while there was still daylight.

Home sweet home for the night.

I brought along a crude tent, while Casey and some of the other crew guys glamped in style.

The Monster girls, sisters Caitlin and Chelsea Nordby are used to roughing it for days at a time – they are actually a Class 1 Buggy racing driver and co-driver team.

Some of the crew, including Ray Currie, opted for a more simple approach.

This was my setup for the next three nights – bathing in lakes and using the great outdoors as your toilet. The last time I roughed it like this was on my first ever King of the Hammers event.

The camp itself was quite impressive with structures brought in by helicopter.

The spread on this night was incredible; we dined like kings in the middle of nowhere.

That’s Chef Currie serving up a salty bathed steak, while my buddy Kyle Chandler films him in slow motion.

One of our friends, Matt Chapman, started on the trail a few hours behind us, but he got lost along the way. We could talk to him on the radio, but it was already dark and he had no idea where he was. He sent through his GPS coordinates, but they showed him nowhere near a trail, and to complicate matters even further his Jeep Cherokee was stuck on a rock and he was worried it was going to flip over if he tried to move it without spotting assistance.

I jumped in the two-door Jeep with Casey’s head mechanic Justin, and we headed towards the location coordinates that Matt had provided.

On our way there, we occasionally radioed over to him to make sure he was still doing alright. With no cellphone reception on the trail, it made communicating a little tougher than what we’re all used.

Shortly after, Matt radioed through to tell us that he had successfully made it off the rock when someone in a Suzuki came by to spot for him. We soon caught up to the Samurai, and then Matt.

It was a relief that Matt was safe, but he burned up way more gas than he had counted on and there was no way he would make it through the entire trail without more fuel.

His Cherokee was undamaged though, so at least we could rest for the remainder of the night.

It was one of those nights where you think you’ve barely closed your eyes before you need to wake up. At 5:00am we packed up and headed for Rubicon Springs, which is the biggest campground on the trail and where the Jeepers Jamboree festivities are held. Yes, Matt watched movies as he was wheeling.

The radiator cap on the Cherokee kept leaking, but sometimes a trail fix with a rock is all you need to keep going.

With large clearings, the trail itself was completely different to what I experienced at Moab. The biggest difference though was the amount of trees and plant life.

Along the trail there were teams of people helping spot the less experienced drivers.

The morning light through the trees and dust was absolutely amazing. This was my favorite shot from the entire trip.

Before we had even got on the trail, we stopped at a store in Georgetown for breakfast burritos with the intention of sticking them in the engine bays of the Jeeps for a warm meal in the morning. I was looking forward to this moment as soon as I heard that this was a thing.

After an hour of wheeling and the Jeep oven at full tilt, it was time to check out my glorious breakfast.

This was without a doubt the best breakfast burrito I’ve ever had, and I had a pretty good view while I ate it.

I’ve shot cars in many different situations, but nothing is like rock crawling. You have to drive the Rubicon Trail so slow – at a snail’s pace sometimes – but often you can be on the absolute limit.

The lines you take are everything, and most of it has to do with how much experience you have on the rocks.

Outside help from spotters is invaluable and can often mean the difference between getting stuck on the trail with a broken truck or making it through unscathed.

Since we were in group of around 15 Jeeps, it was priority to ensure everyone got through each major rock obstacle safely and with the least amount of damage.

As we got deeper into the trail we came across a number of smaller camps and all manner of overland and rock-crawling rigs. With the rainy weather this season there were also few water crossings to negotiate, but nothing too crazy.

It seemed like every few meters I needed to step out of the cars to get some shots of the amazing backgrounds.

We were about halfway to our campsite when we came across a mobile service and repair center for those unfortunate enough to break things on the trail. Thankfully, we could just continue on past.

When you kind of get into the groove of things you forget that you haven’t had cellphone reception for the past few days. I can honestly say this was the longest time I’ve been disconnected from the outside world.

The tables turned, as Casey got behind the lens.

Kyle made the most of it by jumping off a dam.

As we got closer to Rubicon Springs, which is near the center of the trail, the obstacles got tougher and the path became narrower.

Many of the spots were only wide enough for a single car to pass through.

It was especially tough for Casey given the width of his Jeep.

Just check out that tuck!

Due to the heavy snowfall in this area, the rocks actually move quite a bit. So an obstacle that is easy to navigate one year can be so much harder the next, or vice versa.

Since the Cherokee is much narrower, it can take the hard lines with ease.

Which is also why it’s possible to pass through the Rubicon Trail in a Jeep that’s only upgraded with wheels and tires.

Why is Casey doing squats? It’s because the crew played a pretty evil game, where if anyone said the word “rock” while on the trail, 10 push-ups or 10 squats was the punishment.

I love the Toyota FJ40, but in recent years these things have appreciated in value like air-cooled Porsches.

At this point there was just a couple miles left to go, but first we had to cross this rickety, single lane bridge.

I gladly walked across on foot.

There was just one last obstacle to tackle before our next campsite at Rubicon Springs. This was a very tight squeeze for the wider Jeeps, and a few of the guys sustained a bit of roof damage to their rigs while going through it.

Casey’s Jeep truck was so wide that there was no way he would even attempt the pinch, so he just went around.

That is what you do when you have a monster of a Jeep.

We got into Rubicon Springs after a little stream crossing to find many people already settled in for a relaxing weekend. Some view, eh?

There is just something so cool about driving through bodies of water.

It was time to set up camp, which for some was a lot easier than others.

This is what we had worked hard to get to. Rubicon Springs is like an oasis of sorts with many natural swimming pools and nice hiking trails. There’s even a natural shower, making it everything an outdoorsman could dream of.

In the middle of it all was a tiny village, the buildings of which were new after the existing structures were destroyed by snow last winter. Breakfast, lunch and dinner was all served in the village for each Jeepers Jamboree attendee, which by the end of the weekend was estimated at around 1000 people travelling in 500 vehicles.

Of course, everything including the food and supplies was brought in by Jeeps.

As to be expected with so many vehicles, there were a huge number of machines and cool builds that I was super jealous of.

Check out how cool this FJ40 campsite was. You have everything you need, including a shower.

It was all about having fun without contact to the outside world.

I nearly had a heart attack every time we needed to cross this stream with all my camera gear.

Caitlin and Chelsea made it look super easy though.

The next day was all about relaxing; the Currie family always brings a huge river raft to just float around on all day.

There were so many natural pools and the water was quite warm.

Slipping and falling was on my mind whenever we came across a challenging piece of terrain.

We hiked a few miles to this cliff jumping spot that seemed a little bit sketchy to me.

It was basically a small pocket of water that was deep enough to dive into.

Too short of a jump and too far to the left or right equaled certain death, or at least broken limbs. My buddy Kyle jumped in straightaway.

Fearless Caitlin jumped in as well.

Most of the Jeepers would be returning to civilization the following day, so a party of epic proportions went down at night.

I took the opportunity to reset myself as traveling has been pretty insane recently. Just slowing down for a weekend and hiking around in the mountains helped a lot.

The next morning we left early for Lake Tahoe. I thought the trail to get into Rubicon Springs was hard enough, but getting out was even tougher. Here’s Matt pushing off a rock as he went through this pinch. Even though it’s a quick way to lose your arms, it seems like the natural thing to do.

He got through with ease since his Cherokee is far narrower than a JK Jeep.

Casey had a bit of a trouble getting through this tight section and used his winch for the first time on the trail, but mostly because he didn’t want to damage the truck.

The trees didn’t help either and it was tough at times to clear the massive roof tent.

Casey’s dad got through this obstacle with no issues, but there was no way to predict what would happen next.

The X-Comp Jeep made it surprisingly far in two-wheel drive with foot-to-the-floor driving, but its transmission broke trying to get over this rock.

Just as everyone feared, it would have to be pulled the rest of the way through the trail, which still had many miles to go. On top of that, Matt eventually ran out of gas as he suspected would happen, so we syphoned fuel from the broken down Jeep. Everything happens for a reason on the trail it seems.

Ray Currie daisy-chained to another Jeep and hooked onto the disabled rig for a seriously rough ride all the way through to Lake Tahoe.

Not a quarter of a mile had gone by when everyone had to stop again though. One of the tow ropes had gotten snagged on the brake lines of the middle Jeep, so now one Jeep could only steer and brake, while the other had steering and power but not brakes. Sounds about right.

Ray floored it and tugged on both Jeeps to get everyone up the hill.

It was a wild ride for all three, as stopping would lose momentum. I didn’t see them again till we hit Lake Tahoe.

Hitting the finish line was bittersweet. As the floods of text messages, missed calls and emails popped up on my phone, I was immediately brought back to the real world. Despite being a city kid, I can still enjoy bathing in a waterfall and sleeping in a tent for a few days, and I am already looking forward to revisiting the Rubicon Trail for Jeepers Jamboree again. Next time, I think I will have to bring my own off-roading vehicle though.

A few years back, I had the pleasure of being part of the dream team that was Speedhunters at Gatebil. We had all of our drift athletes at one track, as well as most of our photographers, minus Dino of course since we always forget about him. There was nothing planned out really, but we watched magic happen when Fredric Aasbø, Vaughn Gittin Jr. and Mad Mike Whiddett free-styled on the track like there was no tomorrow, hence making probably one of my favorite stories to date. Here’s a video of what happened.[/intro-text]

The Doonies series for Monster Energy is essentially the same thing; the company gathers as many of its motorsport athletes as possible with sole purpose of letting them shred all day in the dunes with a massive film and photo crew.

This year was no different, with a few new faces added to the shred-fest, including Liam Doran, who for the first time brought a rallycross machine out to the Glamis Dunes in California.

Also new to the series were the real-deal monster trucks. More on these beasts later.

In addition to the new players in the game, the snowmobiles were brought back out for some sand action.

And it wouldn’t be a Doonies video without some two-wheeled fun.

There were more riders than ever before, and they all really pushed their boundaries.

It’s funny that these two monster trucks don’t actually look out of place, however they look more like scale R/C trucks than anything else. I can assure you they were very real, and insanely large.

Doonies is the brainchild of Ash Hodges, who is also the creator of Dirt Shark.

With this post, I want to give you guys a little insight into a typical day filming Doonies. For this project I teamed up with Tempt Media and Icon Helicopters, just as I had for the Baja 1000. Dave Vernick was behind the sticks and Eric Everly was at the controls of the Shotover camera, which captured the majority of footage you see in the final edit.

One of the few scripted scenes of the video featured an abandoned fuel station.

Liam Doran ripped into the station with his 1.6-liter Citroën rallycross car, unrestricted and pushing over 800hp. He doesn’t know exactly how much power it’s putting down because it was spinning all four on the dyno.

There’s nothing like hearing a rallycross car launch off the line with no restrictor.

That’s probably the face that I made the first time I saw such a sight.

As soon as Liam left we lifted off and gave chase. The full speed transition from sand to tarmac made for an awesome sight.

With a relatively short run up, Liam said he hit this train crossing at around 130mph (209km/h).

He hit 180mph (290km/h) before running out of gearing on the straightaway.

The nice thing about having the main road through Glamis closed is that we could refuel anywhere we wanted, which included landing right in the middle of the highway.

The next shot was to follow Kurt Busch doing a full speed run down the road.

Kurt said he had always wanted to go flat out in a real NASCAR on public roads, but had never previously had the chance.

What is scary to me is that this thing was still setup for left turns. He did a few donuts to warm up the tires, and then he was off.

I’ll never forget it – we were maxed out 130mph (209km/h) ground speed in the helicopter, when Kurt passed us by very casually.

The road was not actually perfectly straight – as you can clearly see in this photo – and was very dusty, but Kurt still topped out at 185mph (298kph).

The coolest part for us was that when we were actually following behind him we could feel his draft in the helicopter, which felt like we were hitting turbulence. It’s amazing to me how much air these things move when at speed.

Next up was a shot that incorporated the rest of the crew rolling out at the same time.

Liam and the Harley guys were already waiting on the road, so I figured I would shoot from the ground for a few of these shots.

We landed the bird and I jumped out.

Trying to get everyone in one shot was like herding squirrels, but we managed to get it in one take.

The fun part for me were the freestyle sessions – especially when the motorcycle guys were going for it. They would get into the groove and keep hitting awesome jumps.

Because we were shooting in the dead of winter, the days were unfortunately super short.

If you guys are wondering how the production crew as well as photographers got around, we pretty much bummed rides whenever we could.

Lucky for me there was always an open seat in Casey Currie’s awesome King of The Hammers rig.

Most of the other crew rode in sand rails and whatever other UTVs were available.

The Monster Energy girls on the other hand had the luxury of getting shuttled around in a Toyota Tundra driven by BJ Baldwin. Lucky guy.

I talked to Damon Bradshaw and Coty Saucier – the drivers of the monster trucks – and they told me that they’ve never had so much seat time behind the wheels of these nitro beasts.

The reason being of course they are so expensive to run. They go through engines much faster, plus they were never meant to run for such long periods of time.

It was a constant worry that their engines would overheat, so Damon and Coty took turns; while one would cool down the other would go out and thrash.

It was also crazy to see how much they would bounce after they landed a huge jump. There was always someone standing by with a remote kill switch, just in case the truck went out of control.

I found it amazing how quick they were and how much sand they moved just making a turn.

The evenings were absolutely breathtaking; there is nothing like the desert sunsets.

The last day of filming is always the most fun as the athletes go all-out. If something breaks now, it’s no big deal.

We headed out to one of the largest jumps in the area and the four-wheel guys went for it.

I was really surprised at how well Liam’s rallycross car handled the dunes. It looked like a blast to drive for sure, but I don’t want to think about the clean up afterwards. There was so much sand in the cockpit.

Every year it’s a question of who’s going to go really big in terms of the jumps, and young Ultra4 driver Wayland Campbell absolutely sent it in his rock-crawling buggy.

How something so heavy can fly so far is amazing to me.

As always, Rodrigo Ampudia did not hold back in his Pro2 short course truck. I love it when there’s sand still bleeding from the bottom of a truck as it’s flying through the air.

The last session of the day was dedicated to the snowmobiles.

The light was perfect, so I guess you could say I went a little overboard with the shots.

In the space of a year, the snowmobiles used in Doonies have evolved to run custom radiators with electric fans.

Normally the snow and freezing temperatures would keep them cool enough, but because they are riding in sand they need some help to keep temps in check.

Of course, not everyone got away unscathed; a few snowmobiles overheated quickly.

But compared to last year it was crazy how much more run time they had, which allowed the snowmobile riders to pull off some impressive tricks.

That’s it for my Doonies 3 behind the scenes coverage, but if you have any questions just ask them in the comments section and I will do my best to answer you guys.

Being a Speedhunter or an automotive journalist in general really is an automotive enthusiast’s dream job.

While it’s sometimes hard to convey just how hard the work really is, I can honestly say that I sacrifice a lot for this job. My personal life with friends and family suffers, as does my health; believe me when I say that it owns me. Every waking moment I am thinking about what I need to shoot next or what pictures need to be edited and captioned.

But I just get enough of it.

But every now and then I get to do some really cool things and be pampered by auto manufacturers to the point that I have to pinch myself wondering if this is real life or just dream. I really appreciate such opportunities, which is exactly why I want to stab myself in the neck with a fork whenever I hear an automotive journalist complain about anything while away on a manufacturer press trip. It’s a common occurrence too.

When I told the Speedhunters crew that Toyota had invited me to to Switzerland for the 2017 Geneva International Motor Show, followed by an epic drive through the Swiss alps in the revised Toyota 86, I was challenged to do something that auto journalists rarely ever do. That is, talk about the actual trip and the experience, rather than just concentrating on the cars.

While I normally take this approach with press events I’ve shared on Speedhunters, I figured it would be only appropriate for me to continue the trend. After all, I was the first one to ever post food photos on Speedhunters.

People often ask me what the hardest part of my job is, and without a doubt it’s the travel. Don’t get me wrong, I love traveling all over the world photographing cars and the culture surrounding it, but there is nothing worse than the actual transiting part. I do more air miles than anyone else I know, but out of all the flights I’ve had in my life, I’ve only flown business class on a manufacturer press drive.

Normally I am cramped in the worst seats possible, but when Toyota flew me from LAX to London Heathrow in business class, it was a much needed break from the battle that is flying anywhere with all my camera equipment.

After a short flight from London to Geneva we were greeted by a nice gentleman with one of my favorite signs in the world. It signifies the beginning of an epic journey.

Our first stop was my home away from home for the few days I was covering the Geneva show, Hotel Beau-Rivage.

This had to be one of the nicest places to stay in Geneva, and came complete with a lakeside view. It made me wonder though – if we were based here for the humble 86, where were the Lexus journalists being put up for the week?

Events like this are always a bit of a reunion with friends that I’ve made over the years. Sitting next to me for a fondue meal was Craig Taguchi, who I’ve known for 12 years now. As I mentioned in my previous post, we used to work together when he was leading Drifting magazine in the US. Talk about a publication that was ahead of its time.

So what do you do for work? I play an instrument from the second floor of a restaurant. Dinner and a show, what more could you ask for?

On the Geneva show floor the following day, it was cool to see Kato-san all dressed up for Liberty Walk’s official European debut. He has always been a big support of Speedhunters and my photography, so I really appreciate his efforts in the car culture world.

It’s always great to see former Speedhunters journalist and one of the best motorsport photographers of our time, John Brooks. If you guys are wondering who I look up to, John is one such person, legendary for sure.

Fast forwarding a few days, the morning of the Toyota 86 drive started at another Beau-Rivage hotel, this time in Lausanne. Coffee and treats were served, but I was more interested in what was parked outside.

There were a bunch of 86s in different trim levels all fueled up and ready for a drive. The best part? They were all 6-speed manuals.

We had a quick briefing on the driving route we’d be taking, then packed up the cars and headed out for the day.

I sat shotgun as the Detroit editor of Motor Trend magazine, Alisa Priddle, took the wheel. Unfortunately for us, the roads were a bit slick due to the recent snow and rain, but they were still a blast. For the drive, we were heading into France and then back to Switzerland before reaching Zurich.

The first stop was a little cafe on the side of the main road for a quick coffee break; then it was my turn to drive. I am in a constant state of jet lag, so any caffeine throughout the day is more than welcomed.

At this point I had not been behind the wheel of an 86 since it the model was first launched. I took an epic road trip in one and shot it with a camera that was made in 1986.

I also got to drive one of the prototypes in Japan, which was the first time I actually met Speedhunters’ editor in chief and everyone’s favorite Japanese Italian, Dino Dalle Carbonare.

Back to my European 86 adventure, our next stop was a very fancy lunch spot indeed – Restaurant du Peyrou in Neuchatel.

Although I had only driven the car for a short amount of time, the 86 was everything I remembered it to be. It was fun around town and so easy to reach the limit in, the latter helped by winter tires being fitted.

While many complain about a lack of power in the 86, I think it comes down to the simple fact that most of these people have not driven one of these cars at the limit. Let me just say, it’s a blast.

Furthermore, I challenge you to name a better new driver’s car than the 86 in the same price range. The closest thing Alisa and I could come up with is the Mazda MX-5.

Sure, there are plenty of used vehicles out on the market that can provide more bang for your buck, but that’s not the point. If car manufacturers don’t make fun driving cars now, there won’t be any good used cars later on for the next generations of car enthusiasts to modify and enjoy.

It’s very rare for a manufacturer to build a standalone chassis from the ground up for a low-volume model, but that’s exactly what Toyota has done with the 86.

A fancy lunch does not begin to describe our experience at Restaurant du Peyrou. Not pictured is the best duck I’ve ever had, which was devoured before I remembered to take a photo of it.

Next up was a long-haul drive to Zurich, the route taking us through many small towns and some awesome back roads.

Of course, there was a coffee stop midway too.

At this point it was pouring rain, so we headed straight to our hotel for the night.

After some interesting stop and go traffic coming into Zurich, we arrived at Hotel Baur au Lac.

It was here that I had my second-ever Michelin star meal. The first was at a hole in the wall Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco.

On the menu was veal and the fanciest hash browns I’ve ever seen. This time I remembered to shoot before I inhaled.

As if dinner was not enough, chocolates and a little winter clothing gift were there to greet me in my room.

Toyota really spoilt us.

Day three started early with a drive from Zurich through the tiny country of Liechtenstein, into Austria and then eventually onto Germany.

Liechtenstein made me think about that meme going around where its last military engagement sent 80 men but returned with 81 as they made a friend. This place was absolutely beautiful.

There were so many tunnels during this first leg, and since we were driving through four countries, at times it was tough to know where exactly we were.

I made a point to try to stop as many times as I could, but it was tough as we really had a strict time schedule to stick to.

The highlight of my trip was driving with Tetsuya Tada, who was the chief engineer for the Toyota 86. Here is Tada-san enjoying a bit of Pokémon Go during one of our coffee stops in Austria.

It was great to reminisce about the time the 86 was launched in Japan. As you can imagine, there is so much on the line when journalists are given the keys to prototype cars and a race track to use them on. It was at that event that Ken Gushi drifted the entire course.

not to mention the same day Ken Gushi drifted the entire track with one of the cars for the first time.

I also had a chance to photograph Tada-san racing an 86 at the 24 Hours of Nürburgring a few years back, which was the same time Gazoo Racing was campaigning a Lexus LFA.

It was fun to pick his brain about what inspires him, and what he loves about cars in general.

He is a diehard racer and he loves all things that go fast. I asked him what he wants to buy when he retires, and he replied: “a new Porsche.” That’s my kind of answer.

In fact, one of the things that he told me really surprised me. He said a few things about the 86 were inspired by his Porsche driving days, such as the simple analog gauges as well as broader things like the Toyota’s driving characteristics.

The 86 version I had a chance to drive with Tada-san had a revised intake manifold and an updated exhaust which together added around 5hp, bringing the 2.0-liter boxer engine up to 205hp at the crank. This is standard in all the manual versions of the 86 in the US, but sounds different than the other ones I’ve driven previously, being much louder from 5000rpm.

Our final stop for the day was at Schloss Elmau in Bavaria, Germany.

I had no idea such a place existed as it was breathtakingly beautiful inside and out.

It really was like something out of a fairytale.

Parked in front was a special edition 86 that was being revealed to us a full 12 hours before anyone else would lay their eyes on it.

But before that we were to have what would be my favorite meal of the entire trip.

Pretzel tree anyone? From now on my life is ruined due to how amazing this pork belly was. Do you guys hate me yet? I can’t really stand myself either, so don’t worry about it.

With food coma in full effect, the 860 Special Edition was revealed.

Toyota is planning on making 860 units with the Supernova Orange paint job seen here, and a further 860 Halo White models.

Think of this as the most premium 86 you can buy new, with suede all around and orange stitching to match all the paint on all the leather surfaces.

Aside from the special wheels, it also has other features not seen in any other version of the 86 including heated seats and auto climate control.

The 860 is for the enthusiast who wants all the bells and whistles on their everyday sports car, but I could not help to think how cool this would look lowered with a set of nice wheels. That’s the Speedhunter in me talking!

It was back on the road and onto our last leg of the trip to Munich, which of course meant a nice cruise on the autobahn.

For much of the trip we had to stick closely to the posted limits as the Swiss police don’t really have a sense of humor when it comes to speeding, but I have to say that it was really nice to finally stretch the 86’s legs. With my c0-pilot sound asleep I drove with the flow of traffic and had a chance to top out at 210km/h (130mph), which the car happily did. While it could go faster, there was no point in testing the limits on winter tires.

Our final stop was the Mandarin Oriental in Munich. I know what you guys are thinking – how is it that press events like this are even a thing? And, what sort of stories are expected in return for what is essentially a 5-star vacation with cars? Well, let me tell you guys that I couldn’t be any less expecting of this sort of treatment.

There was once a time where I went to the SEMA Show and slept on the floor of four different hotel rooms, one for each night of the event. And in order to save the cost of flights, I used to help some of the Formula Drift teams tow their race cars across the country, just so I could get to events to photograph them.

So, when I get to eat at a place like Nobu at the Mandarin Oriental, I definitely count my blessings that I have made it to this point.

Of course, no trip to Munich is complete without a stop in at the famous Hofbräuhaus beer hall. Many stories from the trip were shared over a constant flow of liquid gold, so it’s a bit hard for me to recall what we actually talked about.

The next morning I boarded a direct flight from Munich back to Los Angeles. Despite it having been an amazing trip, I have to say it was such a welcome sight to see my home having been on the road for three weeks, from hotel room to hotel room. It’s a very normal thing for me to wake up wondering where I am in the world or more importantly where the heck is the bathroom because it’s so very dark. Poor me, right?

Even before I started photographing professional racing I knew about Race Of Champions (ROC); the event was so ahead of its time in terms of media and putting out cool videos in pre-YouTube days.

I can specifically remember watching one ROC back in 2006 and being amazed by the way the stadium had been transformed into a temporary race track.

It’s always been one of those events on my radar to cover, and when I heard that an ROC event was going to be held on US soil for the first time, I knew I had to get along to it.

Once again the ROC team converted a sports stadium, and it worked perfectly.

It wasn’t just any venue either, it was the Miami Marlins’ brand new indoor baseball stadium.

It was beyond cool to see racing in the middle of Miami, and the weather was nice enough to have most of the large doors open.

Not only that, but the roof was slightly ajar too, letting in beautiful rays of Florida sunshine. More on this later.

The track itself was short, but it was very technical which made for a great show.

And the selection of race cars were second to none.

There were open-wheel race cars like this Ariel Atom.

As well as more prototype-like machines like this Radical.

Autonation, one of Race Of Champions sponsors, flew me out to Miami, and it was good to be involved as both businesses support Racing For Cancer. Founded by 2012 IndyCar series champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay, this is a great charity that focuses its efforts on beating cancer through education and support services.

As always, the event drew some big names in motorsport spanning a diverse range of racing disciplines; it was NASCAR drivers like Kurt and Kyle Busch versus F1 stars like Sebastian Vettel and Jenson Button.

That is really the magic of ROC: where else do you get to see such high caliber drivers battling it out for bragging rights alone?

NASCAR, rally, rallycross, F1 and IndyCar were all represented. All that was missing was a Trophy truck driver and a drifter.

The heads-up racing style was very intense and it made for some really close battles, many of which were decided by thousandths of a second.

And in many cases, these battles were contested with a passenger riding shotgun in the two-seater vehicles.

I don’t know of any other race series that allows this during competition; most of the time this sort of activity is restricted to practice or demonstration sessions. But it was great.

It did get a bit scary at one point when one of the three-wheeled vehicles flipped as it approached the finish line.

Luckily, neither the driver or passenger were hurt.

In between clean up and battles there was always something interesting going on. Terry Grant brought out a number of different vehicles and did some crazy things with them. I watched him work his magic on the set of Gymkhana 8 when he drove a Ford Raptor for over a mile on two wheels.

On top of Terry’s contraptions, there were other really cool demo vehicles including an Audi S1 Group B rally car.

The sheer range of vehicles that are raced at ROC make the event a real spectacle.

On top of that, the Miami backdrop and shooting right next to the Marlins Park dugout gave me one of those pinch me I must be dreaming moments.

While the production was focused on a ‘made for TV’ format, it was still exciting to watch in person. Every time cars crossed the finish line, massive flamethrowers shot up.

And the crowd absolutely loved it.

It really was great to see how precise these drivers were tackling the corners. It looks like someone is using the Initial D gutter technique here.

Shooting at Marlins Park was such a treat. It was bright and sunny outside, which allowed for a tiny sliver of light to peak through the massive doors and roof.

As the day progressed the light shifted and I moved quickly to chase it down.

The best part of the stadium is that it’s designed for each seat to have a good view of the entire field.

The truth is, anyone can watch the entire race to see all the action. As always, I was just there to capture some of the moments that may have been missed by the live broadcast.

While there was so much going, one moment truly resonated with me.

Before Petter Solberg went up against Scott Speed in the final ‘America vs. The Rest of the World’ battle, he was stopped by Sebastian Vettel for a bit of a strategy session.

Whatever they talked about must have worked because Petter took the Super Car Lites machine all the way.

It was awesome to watch everyone including Juan Pablo Montoya hitch a ride to the podium ceremony.

Having watched Race Of Champions from afar when events were held in Europe and Asia, I’m so glad that it finally made its way to my side of the world. Hopefully ROC will do it again, and perhaps on the West Coast next time.

Earlier this year, when I found myself in Miami, Florida, for the Race of Champions, I decided that I should take the opportunity to shoot a local car for a feature. I didn’t have anything lined up, but that changed quickly with a phone call to my buddy Magnus Walker, who was also in town.

He told me that someone had offered up their Ferrari F40 for him to drive, and that he would see if he could make it actually happen. A few more quick calls and a couple hours’ sleep later, I found myself standing in front of a tastefully modified F40 bathed in the blue pre-sunrise light. Does it get any more Miami than this? It could have easily been a scene out of a video game or a late 80s/early 90s action film.

After picking up the car from its trusting owner, Magnus and I pulled up to a causeway underpass right behind a group of partiers who were still going strong early on Sunday morning. Music was blaring and the drinks were still flowing from the night before.

The location provided the perfect spot to get a shot of the iconic Ferrari with the cityscape in the background, but there was a problem. An Aston Martin Rapide was parked in the way. Magnus asked me if he should ask them kindly to move out of the way, so I said sure.

He walked up as the driver was inhaling a peculiar white powdery substance from the back of his wrist while sitting in the passenger seat surrounded by lady friends. I think Magnus has a pretty non-threatening demeanour, so the guy looked up and agreed to move his vehicle, and then proceeded to drive off with his e-brake still on, which made the funniest noise.

I figured there was no better way to start such a morning – the Urban Outlaw and I enjoying one of the most sought-after Ferraris of all time in the Magic City.

So what sort of person lets someone they had met only once borrow their prized supercar? Well, let me tell you that he’s certainly a true car enthusiast.

His name is Juan Carlos Fernandez and his family emigrated from Cuba in the early 1960s. Juan was only 8 months old at the time, but he grew up in the USA admiring muscle cars of the era and dreamed of having a collection of his very own one day.

We instantly became friends when I told him that I had a 1970 Datsun 240Z, because Juan’s first performance car was a 1973 260Z, which he funded from selling shoes while he was in college.

Like my car, Juan’s 260Z didn’t stay stock for long. The moment he had spare funds he poured it into the Datsun, adding fender flares, Weber carburetors and headers among other things.

Next, Juan got hold of a pretty rough ’68 Chevy Corvette, which he used to learn and hone most of his mechanical skills on. He didn’t have the money to pay other people to work on it, so with the help of his family and friends he figured out everything from stripping paint to swapping the motor and transmission.

Some years later and having already become a true motor-head, Juan saw an F40 in person. It made him dream of an adventure that only a supercar like this could provide.

In Juan’s own words, “Approximately 15 years of 11-hour workdays with countless seven day work weeks later, there was an F40 in my garage”

Juan sells used cars for a living, and he worked his way up from the bottom. Now he has a collection of around 50 vehicles, and he still works on them and drives them.

When Juan purchased the F40 around 15 years ago, his goal with the car was to make it even more fun to drive, but without doing anything that he could not reverse. That’s why all the modifications made are limited to bolt ons.

On this particular morning, Magnus and I were given the chance to put the F40 to the test. And we both loved it.

First impression: it felt so much more mechanical compared to anything else that I’ve experienced. It pulls very hard, just enough to scare you a bit.

Driving on the Miami highways and causeways really made us feel like a million bucks.

Unsurprisingly, the car attracted plenty of attention too, and even that of the authorities. We were pulled up, but left off with a warning; it sure didn’t wipe the smiles off our faces.

With the help of Carobu Engineering, the first thing Juan changed were the original turbos, which were altered to F40 LM (Le Mans) specification with larger IHI compressors. After that he upgraded to a Carobu-developed Razzo Rosso chip for the factory Weber/Marelli engine management system.

During the first round of modifications the exhaust was changed to a Tubi stainless steel system, but when I shot the car that had been upgraded to a Tubi Inconel straight racing exhaust, which sounded unlike anything I’ve ever heard.

Interestingly enough, boost control is handled by an HKS EVC, the digital unit allowing Juan to push a few more PSI over stock.

Given their rarity and value, many F40 owners keep their cars locked away and never drive them, but not only does Juan’s example see regular street use, it also gets track day workouts. In light of that, next on the list was a performance upgrade in the brake department.

LM Brembos, which were specifically developed for the F40 race car, were fitted, but that meant the original wheels had to go. Don’t worry though, of course Juan has kept them and their original tires in perfect condition. As the car sits now, it’s on custom-made HRE 547 wheels.

Remember what I said about all the attention we were getting? Pretty much anywhere we parked the F40, people would stop and ask to take photos. Never mind that it was 7:00am on a Sunday morning.

As we wrapped up our shooting day, there was time to do a few more pulls in the car before we handed it back to its rightful owner.

It was nice to sit back and really take in all the details of such a groundbreaking machine.

During his ownership of the car, Juan was lucky enough to meet and become friends with a mechanic who had once worked for Ferrari’s F1 team, but later set up a shop in South Florida. He was friends with Michelotto, the Ferrari factory tuner and developer of the F40 LM, and through this connection Juan was able to purchase an LM-spec magnesium pedal box with adjustable brake bias, and a set of magnesium OZ Racing wheels.

What topped everything off though was the custom built LM wing – the last one Michelotto promised to ever make.

It did take a while for the one-off wing to be made, so as a token of appreciation for Juan’s patience, Michelotto graciously sent him a reverse lock-out shifter gate as a gift. Juan said he doesn’t think it’s very common, because he’s never seen another one like it.

Besides having all the original books and manuals, the full Schedoni F40 luggage set and all the factory parts, Juan has also collected every scale model and magazine relating to the car that he could get his hands on. He is a true enthusiast, and as I mentioned earlier, we spent quite a while talking about Z cars as well as Ferraris.

Juan put things perfectly into perspective before we parted ways: “I’ve been very fortunate to have owned many dream cars, and they have all been fantastic in their own way. They are possibly faster, have a higher top speed, are able to pull more cornering Gs and brake in a shorter distance, but no other car I’ve ever driven can match the totally immersive experience of driving an F40. The reality actually matches the dream.”

With all the other cars in his collection, Juan has taken a similar approach to modification; his goal is to make them look and perform the way he dreamed they would when he first saw them, whether they were in a magazine or on the road.

I want to thank Juan for letting Magnus and I take his prized Ferrari out of her stable for a morning. And you can bet I will be back in Miami to check out the rest of the collection.

Juan would like to thank his family who supported him and shared his passion for cars. None of the travelling to car racing events and track days would be fun without them.

As a photographer and a Speedhunter, there are some special moments that have defined my career thus far.

Along with shooting the Gymkhana series of short films, travelling down to Cuba to be on the set of Recoil 4 will be long remembered as a high point.

It’s tough, because if there is nothing cool happening in front of me, then it’s pretty hard to do my job. Being able to travel and shoot the greatest car culture events as they unfold is something that I appreciate each and every day.

Over the years, many productions have gone through the tiny little Caribbean island of Cuba, but nothing like this. As you may or may not know, not too long ago, then President Obama opened the floodgates by letting Americans travel to Cuba after it had been banned for 50 years.

We made history. Even before I snapped a single frame or a single shot was in the bank, we were told that the shoot could be shut down at any moment. We were told that Cuba may look and feel like any other Latin country, but it was closer to shooting something in North Korea. We had to tread as lightly as possible, but also produce something amazing.

I think we did just that – check out the finished video above.

The direct flight I took from Los Angeles had only existed for a few short weeks. Previously, you had to charter a flight from Miami to Havana, but the chances of actually getting in were not good. It would have been all but impossible to bring along an entire film crew, a million-dollar trophy truck, and the necessary support gear to shoot one of these short films. Yes, there were logistical challenges along the way, and I’ll touch on some of those as I take you behind the scenes of Recoil 4.

We were on the ground for eight days, but we only had four main shooting days; the rest of the time was spent scouting for locations and shooting B-roll. At the same time, it was great for me and the rest of the crew to experience Cuba for what it really is: a beautiful country with amazing people.

Some of you are probably wondering how BJ Baldwin went from desert racer to car culture personality. Well, it all started with him wanting to showcase the capabilities of these trucks on film.

Bryan Moore from Tempt Media was one of the few people that worked on the first Recoil in Las Vegas, and is the only production person who has been on set for all the videos in the series. While it’s great to make new friends, it’s always nice to work with familiar faces.

Our call time for our first day of filming was 3:00am in the hotel lobby. It really hit me that I was in Cuba as I watched BJ walk up the stairs to La Guarida, one of the most famous restaurants in Havana.

Why were we shooting the intro sequence scene so early? Well truth be told, BJ’s Toyota trophy truck was still stuck in customs, although word had it that it’d be released later in the day. With our time on the island bleeding away, the opportunity to capture a main storyline shot could not be wasted.

BJ gave me that ‘what did we get ourselves into’ look as he sat around a rickety table with a bunch of Cuban actors posing as gangsters. At this point it was about 4:30am; we still didn’t have a race truck, but we were having a grand old time.

The production company, Sweatpants Media, wanted a more cinematic look for this short film, and I think they achieved it right off the bat.

It felt more like I was shooting on the set of a crime thriller than the set of Recoil. No complaints, though.

The top dog on set and brainchild of the operation was Andy Bell of Nitro Circus fame. He provided the comic relief when we needed it, but I still don’t know how he did not pass out from all the stress associated with such a crazy task.

With the opening scene wrapped up but still no trophy truck in sight, it was time to head back to the hotel to regroup.

A few hours later we were back out on the streets with our super high-tech camera car, this Hyundai crossover SUV being the very best vehicle able to be rented in Cuba. No joke. With a generator attached to the back where the bumper normally goes and a Shotover G1 gimbal fitted, it was good to go.

There was some good news too: the truck was allowed to leave the port. However, there was also some bad news: the trailer with all the tires, parts and tools had to stay. That meant there was no spare motor, transmission, major components or body panels. BJ would basically have to drive perfectly and land jumps without damaging the truck. No pressure then.

Here’s BJ measuring the distance of a natural street jump. We had two stunt coordinators on set with us at all times; one was tasked with building artificial jumps and analyzing the natural obstacles, and the other ensured that everyone was kept as safe as possible.

This flatbed was pretty much the best thing that the guys could find to transport the trophy truck. Not only did BJ’s Toyota barely fit, but the tow rig was overloaded and would overheat at the sight of any incline.

With all the cars on the residential street moved out of the way, it was time for BJ to attempt the very first jump. And let me tell you – it was a big one.

Not even 30 minutes before this was shot, the truck was still stuck at the port in Havana. No time was wasted getting the show on the road.

It was absolutely amazing to see BJ hit the initial lip – the crowd that assembled had never seen anything like this before. Cable TV is still illegal in Cuba and the internet costs US$5 per hour when the normal wage is only around US$15 per month. So you can bet that most Cuban people don’t use social media like we’re able to.

Till this day, I have still not seen a single leaked picture or video from our entire time in Cuba. That’s pretty amazing given how many people turned out for each urban shot.

BJ’s longest jump from the natural feature at this location was a whopping 191-feet. Over the course of the entire shoot, he spent about half a mile in the air.

This one jump was completed no less than six times. At first we were afraid that BJ might launch right into the low-slung power and telephone lines.

In a communist country with no billboards or advertising, this was basically capitalism on wheels soaring through the streets. It was an amazing sight to see.

With Havana in the background and the rumble of the high-revving V8 engine reverberating off the surrounding buildings, it was definitely one of those ‘pinch me I must be dreaming’ moments.

Could you imagine this scene randomly happening on your street? I’m sure many of these people didn’t even know a vehicle like this existed, let alone were prepared to seeing it fly almost 200-feet over residential roadways.

It was only a few short minutes of action, but in that time the crowd really swelled in size.

When BJ climbed out of his rig, everyone cheered and applauded – it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. This definitely did not happen in Mexico when we filmed Recoil 2.

The spectators were so hyped that the Cuban crew had to form a human chain just so the crowd would not damage the truck.

As I shot pictures of the locals, they shot pictures of me.

You know you’re popular when someone hands you a baby for a photo-op. BJ could not move an inch before he got mobbed.

He was like the Pied Piper of Trophy Trucks. Kids were following him everywhere he went.

The locals were so amazed by everything we did, our camera equipment and the tools we had. But that’s to be expected in such a repressive country; there are no chain stores of any kind on the island, and no McDonald’s or Starbucks outlets. Out of all the countries I’ve ever been to, I never felt further away from home than I did in Cuba, even though we were physically only 90-miles from Florida.

The next morning we headed out to the only private location of the entire shoot – a farm far out of the city. It was still government owned of course.

The only section of public road that BJ drove on was leading into the farm itself. Just look how hard he is braking coming into that corner; there’s even sparks coming out from the brakes.

At this point the trailer with most of the spares was still stuck at the port, so the crew guys had to rent two passenger vans to carry what extra parts and tires they did manage to get hold of.

Quite a few Vietnam war movies have been shot in this area, the lush landscape lending itself to that fact. Here’s director Steve Haughelstine looking like a marine with all of his weapons.

Steve is not afraid to put himself close to the action to get the good shots. It’s a fine line between epic visuals and shattered lens glass, but he walks it for the cause.

It made me so happy to see genuine joy on the faces of kids when the truck blasted by at full noise.

It’s always fun to shoot BJ’s Toyota in an unnatural setting. We had done urban and forest settings previously, but nothing tropical like this.

Watching BJ fly-by hard on the brakes and transitioning from tarmac to dirt never gets old.

This old farm truck not only hauled our gear around the shoot locations, it took us from the airport to the hotel and everywhere in between. We are talking close to a million US dollars worth of film equipment in a farm vehicle. Amazing.

It was hard to tell what the farm workers thought of our antics, but it was great to meet them all the same.

We even stopped by a kitchen that provides food for all the farm workers. I am never going to complain about film set catering ever again.

The nice thing about shooting on a farm was the sheer number of natural features, plus to the freedom to create whatever jumps were required.

BJ would just go buck wild on what he thought would look cool, without putting the truck in too much danger.

Although, there was one drop off that he was a little concerned about.

It was something he has done many times before, but due to the minimal traction on the lip of the drop off, BJ ended up doing pretty good nose dive into the ground.

It slightly damaged the front end, but it was nothing the mechanics could not fix.

The next location was seriously out of this world – an old tank bunker.

I swear it felt like we were lost in the middle of a jungle.

BJ blasted through the tunnel, and of course I just jumped out of the way before getting run over.

Even though we were in the middle of nowhere, another crowd of spectators magically appeared.

The next feature was one of my favorites of the entire shoot. It was just a bunch of palm tree logs laid out on a straight-away to showcase the truck’s suspension travel.

Of course, BJ stepped things up by puffing away on a cigar while flying through the obstacle at 80mph (128km/h).

With the light fading away, there were just a few more shots left before day two was a wrap.

But not without a few jump drifts.

I can honestly say, I never thought I’d shoot a race vehicle in action with chickens as the foreground. But there you go.

The next morning, we headed down to Old Havana for our first shot, arriving just in time for me to catch the sunrise as the locals just went about their business.

The light was beautiful.

Although it was only our third day of shooting, it felt like an eternity due to a lack of sleep and the long hours.

A spectacular scene to tie a bit of the story together was planned, but we were about to get taste of the Cuban government’s changing demeanor.

Everything was in place; the 850hp truck was fired up and BJ was strapped in and ready to go when the local police shut us down.

The fact that we had the correct permits to shoot in this location did not matter in the slightest. Now it was a waiting game.

We quickly learned that the authorities were onto us; they never expected this sort of production to cause such a commotion. There was no choice but to pack up and move onto our next location, which was back out of the city.

The beach town we were headed to would allow for much more freedom in terms of where we could shoot.

The first feature was another natural jump on a residential street. But this time, instead of downtown Havana as the distant backdrop, it was the ocean.

The stunt here is something I will never forget. There was a road leading down to the beach that allowed BJ to go wheels-up at 100mph (161km/h).

A little dip in the road forced the front end to pop-up and at that precise time BJ would floor it, resulting in this.

Luckily, the local police were mostly on our side and allowed us to film without restriction.

Even though I’ve seen it in action so many times, it still amazes me how agile this 5000lb trophy truck is. It drifts, it does 360 spins, and most of all it jumps.

The beach jump over a river was easily one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen BJ do. Even though it wasn’t a natural feature, it was made more difficult by a landing onto flat ground.

Here’s BJ getting one last tear out before the high-risk jump.

I loved the great lengths these guys went to, to get their shots.

After a warm-up consisting of drifting around the sand for a bit, BJ put pedal to the metal.

Here’s one of the sequences I captured, which shows the whole jump from beginning to end. The landing was perfect.

Can you say slammed?

BJ proceeded to do victory donuts in the sand, which in turn sandblasted Bryan Moore and myself. No photo and video capturing devices were harmed in the making of Recoil 4; expect this Red camera.

A 4:00am call time signified our last full day of filming in Cuba, but with the word now out about what we were doing, we would have to tread lightly. There were just a few more key shots to capture before we wrapped it all up.

No one had been hurt and no major incidents had occurred, so it was only smart for the crew to shoot what they needed and not to push their luck.

The first task of the day was to wake up a quiet neighborhood in Havana with some super smoky burnouts.

Even with earplugs in it was still almost too much to bear. The V8 in this rig has some serious grunt.

After destroying a set of tires, the sky practically turned orange from all the smoke.

This stair jump was the last major stunt that BJ had to complete, and it was arguably the most dangerous.

Not for BJ, but for that dilapidated house right in the landing and braking zone.

This 95-year-old lady lives in that house, and it was literally falling apart after a major fire not too long ago. She even came out and asked if she could get a ride in the trophy truck, because her birthday was coming up.

This really tugged at our heart strings; the last thing BJ wanted to do was to knock down her house, given the state of disrepair it was already in. The outside wall was being held up by three sticks, so you can probably understand why he was so nervous.

The stunt coordinator calculated that BJ would have to go off the lip of the stairs at exactly 25mph (40km/h). Any faster and he’d end up in the living room; any slower and he would likely destroy the front of the truck and probably still hit the house.

The film crew and stunt coordinator took extra precautions and used ropes to reinforce the wall held up by sticks. But BJ was still pretty nervous, making many runs to the lip to get a feel for the required speed.

Of course, he did not flinch when it came time to actually jump the stairs. Hard on the brakes and all four tires were fighting for grip.

From BJ’s face you can tell that he did not end up in that sweet old lady’s living room, but he didn’t come out totally unscathed either. It was so slippery due to an abundance of weeds sprouting from the cobbled road that he actually took out all three support beams on the house. It’s a good thing the ropes were there to keep the wall up, and the film crew rebuilt the support beams even better than it was before.

Only in Cuba. I swear…

Celebration donuts were in order after such a crazy stunt.

The closing scene was filmed on the famous Malecon sea wall that stretches 8km along the city of Havana, as well as inside an old castle that’s been transformed into a nightclub.

It was a time to reflect on what was accomplished. All the shots necessary to make a legendary film were in the bag, which was a feat in itself; at any moment the entire production could have been shut down. It was very lucky that BJ’s rig didn’t suffer any major damage either, because the race trailer with all the spares was still stuck at the port.

The next day, after filming some B-roll footage with a drone – again, with the proper permits – we were escorted to the police station. Nothing ended up coming of it, but I’ll still touch on it in an upcoming post about Cuban car culture.

While I love following BJ when he is racing, being on the set of a Recoil shoot really is a dream come true. I’m not exactly sure how he is going to top this, but I say that every time.

I want to thank Andy Bell and the rest of the Sweatpants Media team for treating me as one of their own, as well as Monster Energy for bringing me out to document this production with still photography. Shooting in Cuba is something I’d always wanted to do, and I’m so glad I got to do it with this amazing crew.

How did I get to this point? This is a question that I get asked pretty often.

The bad news is that there really is no easy explanation. I do remember, however, how much I struggled to break into the industry, especially at the SEMA Show. The first time I stepped foot on the show floor was back in 2006, and I haven’t missed one of the annual events since. Back then it was so tough for me just to get any work at all. The first year I went to the show I lost money, but for the experience alone it was totally worth sleeping on the floor.

The next few years were tough going, too. I got a job at the show that required me to take at least one photo of every vehicle on the show floor. It was for little pay and I had to sleep on a different floor of a different hotel room four nights in a row, but I somehow still had fun doing it.

Fast forward to just after this year’s show, when I found myself behind the wheel of one of SEMA 2017’s standout builds. For some reason, the guys at Kelly-Moss Road and Race thought it would be a good idea to hand me the keys to their brand new Safari 4 supercharged rally car, and let me go loose. In the sand dunes outside of Las Vegas no less.

This is far from the traditional ‘show only’ SEMA build that we see all too often, and Louis got some great shots of me proving that point. But I’ll touch on this more later.

How things have changed in just a decade, though. All I had to do was push hard and follow my dreams, which is pretty much what everyone else in the industry seems to be doing. For example, as I was driving to the show on the Monday afternoon, I passed by Chris Forsberg towing his Datsun 510. The crazy thing is, he and the team still needed to assemble bits of it at the booth. Talk about dedication.

While I normally make my way to the show early as possible, this year I had Louis’s help. He headed to Las Vegas early and knocked out a few shoots while I finished up with work back in Los Angeles.

My alarm went off at 5:00am on the Tuesday morning, putting in motion what would undoubtably be the longest week of the entire year for me. On this day I had back-to-back press conferences to attend, meaning I barely had time to breathe let alone eat anything at all. In fact, the only time I had lunch during the whole week was when I stole a slice of pizza from Ben Chandler.

This year, SEMA invited me to speak on a panel about content creation. I didn’t think anyone would show up, but I was surprised to see the room was pretty packed. I definitely had fun speaking at the event and I am looking forward to doing more of these at future events.

With the sun setting I decided to scratch my action itch at the outside arena. On the main building, I saw a billboard featuring a photo of Vaughn Gittin Jr. I had taken, turned into vector art.

Vaughn was pulling quadruple duty; he had so many demo cars outside and was jumping from one to another burning rubber each and every way he could.

At the end of the day, his brothers from other mothers, Justin Pawlak and Chelsea DeNofa, joined in on the fun with some epic triple-car drift trains. With all three of them out there it was absolutely insane.

Mornings were the best time for me to shoot as it was really the only time the place was empty. Media are are allowed in a little bit earlier than most of the attendees, which allows for some nice clean backgrounds.

I always hustled my hardest in the morning to go from one hall to the next, but it’s easy to get caught up when you see someone you know, or come across a car you really like.

I always say that the SEMA Show is basically an annual class reunion for the aftermarket and tuner industry. It seemed like that again this year.

As it was on Tuesday, my first stop of the day was the Ford booth.

I took my time to shoot some of my favorite cars on display, which of course included the ’67 Le Mans-winning GT40.

The new car, which was parked opposite, wasn’t so bad either. Lucky for me, I recently had a one-on-one experience with the Ford GT.

The peace and quiet didn’t last long, though. Before I knew it the halls were packed with people and my press conference tour had resumed. The Ring Brothers always build amazing cars, but this was the first time they had unveiled a truck at the SEMA Show.

You might remember Dino’s feature on their amazing 1,000hp Recoil Chevelle; the same attention to detail has been carried over to this Ford pickup. I’m really looking forward to shooting their AMC Javelin AMX later this month.

As always, Sidney Hoffmann was around to provide some comic relief. It was really fun to work with him on the Kaido House 260Z shoot; he and his crew filmed a great behind the scenes video plus a vlog episode for his YouTube channel.

All of the press conferences I attended were completely packed out. I could barely raise my camera at the Speedkore booth, but luckily the nice people in the booth next door allowed me to get up to the top level of their structure.

I didn’t help that Sammy Hagar was pouring shots of his signature tequila right in the middle of the Speedkore booth as a celebration of some sort. What a way to enjoy the SEMA Show.

My life at SEMA has gone from shooting a few photos of every single car, to pretty much attending press conferences and meetings. Of course, I always look forward to the Formula Drift new season announcement.

It’s always nice to be able to say hello to the teams and drivers and see how their off seasons are going.

I don’t think anyone has made a name for themselves in the industry quicker than Magnus Walker. The first time I met him he had snuck into the SEMA Show with someone else’s pass; now just a few years later he’s an official keynote speaker.

Magnus seems to have made quite a few friends over the past few years, including the guys from the Red Bull Formula One team. In case you didn’t know, that is Max Verstappen, one of F1’s rising stars. He is only 20, which means he can’t even have a beer in Las Vegas.

I always find it interesting that people skip out on the final day of the show. Traditionally, it’s the busiest of them all, although not for me. Friday is my day to walk around the event and look at the interesting cars I may have only caught fleeting glimpses of throughout the week.

I love it when cars come straight from the street to the show floor, and this Audi TT Clubsport was one of those. Featuring a 600hp engine and 6-speed manual transmission, everything about it is perfect. Oh yeah, and it’s all-wheel drive to top it all off.

It’s so cool to see a company like Rotiform making wheels for automotive applications you might not associate the brand with at first. Brian from Rotiform built this Impala Cadillac for his wife, and it’s an absolute beauty. Stay tuned for a full feature.

I expected to see this Dean Kearney creation last year, and Louis actually went to shoot it while it was still under construction.

What you are looking at is probably the most powerful drift car in the world. We already know that Dean is insane, but the fact that he wants to unleash this 1,500hp beast on the track is next level.

It’s no secret that I’m big into off-road now, so I wasn’t going to miss the truck hall at SEMA.

I’ve always been a big fan of these gigantic Toyota Land Cruisers, and seeing this sort of build gives me an idea for the perfect family wagon. I would never be caught dead in a minivan.

I can honestly say this was the first year I actually enjoyed shooting a few photos in the off-road area; there was just so much eye candy. I know these Defenders are a dime a dozen in the UK and pretty much the rest of the world, but they are so sought after in the US.

Prior to this year I’d never shot SEMA Ignited, the official SEMA Show after-party held on Friday night, where the public can pay $20 to watch drifting and all of the drivable show cars roll out into a big carpark. One of the highlights was Max Verstappen doing donuts in a 2011 F1 car. Jay Leno decided to stop by to check out what all the fuss was about.

Jay was not the only one that was curious; a few professional drifters decided to make an appearance too. Formula Drift and Formula One, under one roof – how amazing is this?!

The only time I’ve shot anything related to Formula One was earlier this year when I went to the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

You are never prepared for how loud these things are. I could not imagine two dozen of them on the track at once. V8-powered revving out to 18,000rpm; they even played the The Star-Spangled Banner for us.

In between Max’s donut sessions, the drifters came out and put on a smoke show for the crowd.

I love these sort of events as it allows a new audience to enjoy the sport that I love so much.

While the track itself was small, Max made the most of it. It’s amazing how much car control he had, even when spinning around doing donuts.

After each of his runs the team had to come in with fire extinguishers to cool down the body panels; the vinyl wrap was already getting charred from the heat. Usually there would be airflow to cool the exhaust down.

While most SEMA Show attendees were either on their way home or already there, Louis and I kicked into high gear for just one more day.

Once again, I started off my morning 5:00am. I was suffering greatly, but after I laid eyes on the Liberty Walk NSX all my worries went away.

I had a great chat with the owner, JJ, who is a doctor from Vancouver, about cars and the culture surrounding them. My favorite part of my job is meeting people who are just as passionate about cars as I am.

This BMW E9 3.0 CSL Batmobile replica was designed by Jon Sibal and built by my buddy Willy Izaguirre.

The car is absolutely stunning and made a huge impact at the show. Unsurprisingly, many people asked Willy to have the exclusive on the shoot, but he let me photograph it first, which I’m very grateful for. His SR20DET-swapped Datsun Roadster was one of the first feature cars I shot for Speedhunters way back in 2013.

It’s all about working with your friends and making new ones along the way. I won’t give away too much about the car, but I wanted to show you one of my favorite parts; check out that shift knob!

Willy custom-makes all of those knobs, and the one in this car was made out of real shredded currency he buys from the US Treasury. How cool is that? In fact, this is what he does for a living full-time now after quitting his engineering job. Do what you love, right?

Louis took point on this really awesome Subaru Impreza build with Nissan Skyline GT-R running gear. That includes the AWD system, but with a flick of a switch it can be made RWD with the racing center diff.

After hours upon hours of meetings and press conferences, not to mention a boatload of shooting in between, it was finally time to relax and take in some sand therapy.

This of course brings me to my final shoot of SEMA 2017, which I didn’t actually shoot. I was the one behind the wheel for once, and it was so refreshing. I definitely put the Safari 4 911 through its paces, so stay tuned for the full feature, along with all the other cars that Louis and I shot from the 2017 SEMA Show.

I am still digging sand out of my ears now, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Chapter One: Car Culture, The Cuban Way

I’d always wanted to visit Cuba. For such a long time I was envious of photographers from outside of the United States who were given relatively free reign to shoot on the island, as they had the chance to capture this living time capsule.

The street photography that came from the streets of Havana had me dreaming of doing something similar, but with a focus on the classic cars.

So when I heard that there might be a chance that BJ Baldwin’s latest Recoil short film would be filmed in Cuba now that its borders with the US have been opened up, I was ecstatic to say the least.

I made it a point to find some time to go out and to some car-spotting, but I wanted to shoot it like any other street photographer roaming the streets of Havana. There was no plan – it was just a case of capturing whatever ended up in front of me.

In case you’re wondering, the reason why there are so many American classics on the roads of Cuba is because of a ban on foreign vehicle imports that the country’s late leader, Fidel Castro, imposed in 1959. It lasted for four decades, and during this time it was almost impossible to buy a new vehicle, or even car parts for that matter. What this has resulted in almost 60 years after the fact is a totally unique automotive landscape.

Right away I fell in love with the beauty of the city. The textures, the patina, it’s so hard to explain what it felt like. I guess the closest thing I can think of is stepping into a time machine and being transported back to a bygone era of motoring.

This is a place where ’50s-era buildings and cars mix with technology from the ’90s. Even though my home country was just 90 miles away, I never felt further away from the United States.

There were cars that I wouldn’t mind driving myself littered among the bunch.

I was in car-spotting heaven, just constantly chasing that sliver of light from street to street.

No matter where I ventured in Havana, I never had to wait more than a minute before something cool and colorful drove right into my frame. I’d never seen anything like it.

But the truth is, while there are many classic cars on the streets, they’re definitely outnumbered by more modern cars, usually in the form of Russian and other foreign makes and models, that are driven by Cuban residents. While these can be cool in their own right, the American classic are what really piqued my interest.

Chapter Two: The Cars Of Havana

Early mornings on the set of Recoil 4 meant the team and production crew needed time setting up.

I used these downtimes as opportunities to do a bit of car spotting around the shooting locations.

Just like all other automotive enthusiasts, Cubans absolutely adore their cars.

Pretty much any taxi we got into, including the more modern variants, had drivers who were very proud of their rides. It was their way of making a living, but at the same time they loved fixing up their cars and making them their own.

Check out this police van I spotted near the beach scene. How cool is that?

Wherever we were on the island there was always something cool driving by. This was the same street that BJ wheelied down.

And I found these cars parked up outside where the final scene of the video was shot.

While being set was cool, what I really wanted to do was go out and do some real car spotting. So I hooked up with one of the local fixers who was working on the production, and he agreed to take myself and a few friends out.

Chapter Three: Ozzy & Betsy

My chariot for the day was this 1955 Ford Fairlane named Betsy.

This car sees regular duty as a taxi, but the owner even went out of his way to fit an air conditioning system, which is invaluable for the hot Cuban summers.

Who knows how many motors this has gone through in its lifetime, but right now it’s powered by a 5.0-liter Toyota diesel. It’s important that a car like this stays on the road, because it costs more to buy a car than to buy a house. Cars are a great money earner in Cuba; a house not so much.

My driver was a hard-working, sharp-talking fellow named Ozzy. I found it curious that his English was absolutely perfect, but it turned out he grew up in Florida. He was smuggled out of the country by his family at a young age, but for whatever reason his parents remained in Cuba.

As an adult, Ozzy returned to Cuba in an attempt to illegally bring his parents to the United States, but he was caught and ended up in a Cuban prison for 10 years. Now he finds life behind the wheel of this Ford Fairlane, working 12 hour shifts seven days a week to earn a living.

It’s stories like Ozzy’s that really put things into perspective for me. He has to work all day to earn the equivalent of $100 US, but he has to give 70 percent of that to the owner of the car, and then pay for all the diesel fuel from the balance. Whatever is left over is his wage.

In order to save money, Ozzy doesn’t even fill up his tank at a petrol station – he buys fuel off the black market. It’s a tough life for him, but better than making a living as a normal Cuban worker who might only earn $15 US in an entire month.

That is pretty much why these classic cars used as taxis are so decked out. Generally speaking, the nicer your car the more you can charge tourists for tours and rides around the city.

Ozzy took me all over Havana; we’d drive around until I found something cool to photograph, and then he would circle the block or find a parking spot while I shot away at everything cool in sight.

He then drove me to an area where there were a large amount of trucks parked up.

It’s where I found one of my favorite trucks; this Toyota Land Cruiser was so unbelievably clean.

It was really cool to come across something like this in Cuba. It’s hard to find an old Land Cruiser in this condition in the US, so to see one being used as a taxi in Havana just blew my mind.

If I had the chance I would totally drive this thing right now in Los Angeles.

While there were plenty of amazing builds driving around, there were a fair share of bad apples, although I’m sure they get the job done.

What do you know about this Fast and the Furious-inspired VW Evo 2?

The old cars of Havana are surely one of the most common things photographed by tourists, which is why the locals didn’t even bat an eyelid at me standing on the side of the road with a camera on each shoulder and snapping away feverishly whenever anything cool drove by.

It’s normal to love cars on the island. This guy loved showing off his V8 motor, which of course is very rare in a sea of diesel-powered vehicles.

One thing is for certain, I had a constant headache the entire time I was out there due to the terrible exhaust fumes and smog. I don’t think any cars had emission controls or catalytic converters.

It really gave me a new appreciation for all the emission laws we have in California.

The worst part is that the locals didn’t even seem to notice. It was so bad, the taxis we rode in had visible black diesel smoke coming out from the vents, and the drivers seem to be totally oblivious to the fact.

Meanwhile, I was sitting in the back seat gasping for fresh air. I was only on the island for eight days, but the exposure to all the smog probably shortened my life by a few weeks.

As I was shooting my buddy was flying his drone to get some B-roll for Recoil 4. We had a permit, but a police officer stopped us anyways and forced us to follow him to station so his supervisor could make sure we were telling the truth.

I’m not sure what I expected the police station to look like, but it wasn’t a castle-like building. Knowing that it would at least take a few hours for them to sort things out inside, I continued on with my car spotting adventure.

There are pretty much no new cars on the island that belong to locals; everything that is new or extremely late-model is most likely a foreign government’s vehicle. I saw a fleet of brand new Mercedes S Class sedans parked in front of the Russian Embassy.

The sun was beginning to set when my buddies were finally let go from the police station, permit having been verified. It still made everyone’s hearts skip a beat; in fact my buddy slipped me all of his memory cards just in case, right before he had gone inside.

Pretty much wherever you go in Havana, you find parking areas filled to the brim with beautiful classic cars. Since I looked like tourist, I was heckled for taxi services every time I got near them.

By this time there was barely enough light left so Ozzy took us to an outlook where you can see all of old town Havana as well as the cruise ships that anchor in the harbor.

With the capital building in the background and the light almost completely faded, the view in front of me was absolutely incredible.

It was a popular spot for locals and tourists alike too, so there was a constant flow of cool cars coming in and out of the area.

With the sun dipped below the horizon it was time to head back to the hotel and refresh before another Speedhunting adventure the following day.

The car sights continued though; I captured this scene was right in front of our hotel as we pulled up.

Every night, the production crew loaded up in a few taxis and hit up a local hotspot for dinner.

Of course we had to egg on the drivers, but pitting an overloaded Russian-built Moskvitch against an overloaded Daewoo Tico on Havana roads probably wasn’t the greatest idea. It was fun, though.

The next day I had a chance to check out a few spots, but I really wanted to visit at least one local tuning shop before I left. I hooked up with Ozzy again, our first stop being Plaza de la Revolución, or Revolution Square.

If you’ve not noticed already, pretty much every car seat in Cuba has a layer of clear plastic on top. While this made them terribly uncomfortable to sit on in the hot weather, it vastly improves the durability. In convertibles, these covers also serve another purpose.

One of the main highways in Havana runs along a sea wall, and these cars get blasted with so much salt water from the ocean that they would rot away pretty quickly without preservation measures.

Chapter Four: An Unexpected Shop Tour

At this point it was almost time for me to fly out, but Ozzy had one final stop for me – his buddy’s nondescript workshop in a residential neighborhood.

There was no way I could have ever known that this regular house was a place where hotrods are born.

On this particular day an inline eight-cylinder engine was in the middle of a rebuild.

Nothing gets thrown away in Cuba as everything is repurposed for something. I forgot this guy’s name, but he was so happy to show me what he was working on.

This 1947 Chevy is the current shop project, and it’s destined for the quarter mile. They actually drag race on the streets and on air strips here, and recently the pastime was the subject of a documentary.

While many parts are smuggled into the country, others are custom made from scrap parts. For example, new bushings are made out of used tires.

While it may not look like much, but so much heart and soul goes into keep these classics alive.

Outside, I was shown the body of the ’47 Chevy which eventually will be chopped.

But Ozzy’s friend’s pride and joy was this 1927 Ford Model T. It spent 40 years parked up on a porch in Cuba before it was rescued and put back on the road.

I don’t know much about these old jalopies, but supposedly this one is all original.

He even started it up, and we took a quick ride. It’s just so cool to see something like this exists in Cuba, and more so that it’s driven on the streets and enjoyed.

While I only scratched the surface of Cuban car culture I am glad that I met the people that I did. I’m definitely set up for many more adventures the next time I step foot on the island.

In the meantime, where in the world should I do some car spotting next?

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Chapter Five: Cutting Room Floor

Chapter One: Practice Makes Perfect

In the eight years that I’ve been involved with Speedhunters, I’ve noticed the average reader becoming less interested in racing and more interested in car culture they can relate to themselves.

I guess I’m stuck in my old ways; as much as I love travelling the world shooting street cars and the lifestyle that surrounds them, I still find myself having the time of my life covering motorsport events.

I kind of understand the disconnect though, because looking in from the outside, racing at the highest level is beyond reach for most. I think Ken Block understands it too, which is why outside of competition he puts so much effort into entertaining those with different interests in cars with his Gymkhana videos.

I’ve followed Ken and the gang many times before, but for the Portuguese round of the FIA World Rallycross Championship I wanted to take a different approach with my coverage.

For Ken, teammate Andreas Bakkerud, and the Hoonigan Racing Division crew, testing started a few days prior to the main event at the Lousada rallycross circuit.

Portugal is rallycross crazy, and as soon as testing started a small crowd gathered out of nowhere. A few of the locals brought out some clean cars themselves, including this Ford Escort Mk1.

With the exception of the livery, which is the Felipe Pantone style from 2016, the Ford Focus RSRX practice car is exactly the same as the M-Sport machines used by Ken and Andreas in competition this year.

I thought I would never see this livery again, but it was a welcomed sight, even if the car has seen some battle action. It’s really interesting to see what sort of damage a World RX Supercar sustains, so I made a point of capturing the details and textures. You can check out many more in the Cutting Room Floor chapter.

The Lousada track is very historic and previously was used as part of a WRC stage. It’s literally in the middle of a city too; those are apartment buildings in the background.

The reason why the Hoonigan team bring out a practice car all comes down to the lack of test time before qualifying at a World RX round. Even if everything goes to plan, you may only get eight practice laps in; if something breaks it will be even less. Either way, it’s not much seat time, especially if it’s an unfamiliar track.

Andreas went first and got a number of crucial practice laps in to collect data and whatever else the team needs to make adjustments before the weekend.

Then Ken jumped in, but driving a 600hp beast after travelling across the world and not sleeping for 30 hours made it tough for him to push out perfect laps. He powered through it though, and before we knew it the test day was over.

Chapter Two: Race Weekend

The actual Portuguese round was held at Montalégre, another one of the country’s dedicated rallycross circuits. Since I was traveling with the drivers I did miss out on a few behind-the-scenes activities, like pit setup and the pre-event car prep.

The crew have a laundry list of maintenance and preparation jobs to take care of before and during a World RX round, but just like WRC only a set number of mechanics can work on a car at any given time. It helps bring parity between the major and minor teams. Yellow arm/foot bands allow officials to do a quick head count and ensure everyone is playing by the rules.

Mr. Comic Relief is always on hand to prolong the process. Andreas’s story may be familiar to some of you long-time Speedhunters readers: a young Norwegian boy with dreams of becoming a professional racing driver; pushes harder than you could ever imagine; ends up in a factory-backed team. Sounds like Fredric Aasbø’s story, doesn’t it?

While everyone on the team is there because of their extreme technical skills and racing experience, they are such a blast to be around. I see the same guys at all of Ken’s races and his short film shoots.

A World RX round takes in two days; the first day is practice and qualifying and the first set of heats, and the second consists of a quick two-lap warm-up, two more qualifying races, the semi-finals and of course the main event. It may sound like it has a long run time, but in the grand scheme of things it’s not. Compared to sports car racing or even drifting the laps are few and far between.

The access in and around this particular race track was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in rallycross. Because it was designed specifically for this motorsport, there were an unlimited number of photographer vantage points to shoot from.

Every competitor has to make the most out of each session, but because the Focus RSRX is still relatively new, both Ken and Andreas had to push their cars to the limit in different ways to find the best time.

I was surprised that the Montalégre course didn’t feature any jumps, but what it lacked there it made up for with some of the meanest curbs I’ve ever seen.

Prior to this I’d only been to one World RX event before, and I was quickly reminded of just how much harder it is to get a large number of good shots compared to Red Bull Global Rallycross in the US. It all comes down to that aforementioned lack of practice and run time.

The dirt section was very smooth, and because it was a permanent track it did not need to be groomed as much. There were water sprinklers all around the course that would wet the track in between heats.

But regardless of whether it was tarmac, which made up 60 percent of the course, or dirt for the remaining 40 percent, every inch of the 0.95km (0.6mi) long track was used to advantage.

The background was absolutely stunning too.

Once again, it was so awesome to see Petter Solberg behind the wheel, but this time in a Volkswagen. He was literally sideways around every corner, even when it was only the slightest of bends.

And it’s always great to see Sébastien Loeb drive. I was lucky enough to follow him during his record-breaking Pikes Peak run and I’ve looked forward to shooting him on the dirt ever since.

Chapter Three: Fan Mail

In between runs there’s a huge scramble in the pits to get the cars ready for the next race.

While that’s happening, the drivers are doing one of three things. Firstly, there’s interaction with the fans, and both Ken and Andreas have large followings. In fact, last year Andreas’s hometown fans hired a Boeing 737 to fly them from Norway to Latvia so they could watch him race.

When they’re not meeting fans in between racing sessions, you’ll find both drivers inside the rig. Sometimes it’s studying replay footage and taking mental notes on their next race, while others times it’s meeting with spotters, engineers and the crew chief.

On top of the mental preparation, there’s physical preparation too. For warm-up and hand/eye coordination, the guys hit this rubber ball on a string, which is a whole lot of fun. Check out this great video Hoonigan’s Ron Zaras made.

Chapter Four: Maximum Attack

Although there are less cars on track and less laps compared to Global Rallycross, the action was super-close from the fast guys down to the lower end. Making it to the finals was a big challenge for everyone.

The cars look absolutely amazing though. Ken’s new livery is out-of-this-world cool to look at in person and in pictures; I really wonder how they always come up with new and interesting designs.

The only time Ken and Andreas met during competition was in one of the heats, where they finished first and second, but there wasn’t a lot else for the Hoonigan team to celebrate at World RX Portugal.

During one of Andreas’s qualifying races he lost a tire; even after so much planning and analyzing of sector times and car setup there are still things that you can’t predict. Then in his semi-final, he failed to run his mandatory ‘Joker’ lap – a longer lap that every driver must complete once during a race – which resulted in 30-second penalty. It was an honest mistake that came about after a radio malfunction.

Ken also dipped out of final contention after finishing 5th in his semi-final (only the top three went through). It was Mattias Ekström who ultimately took the round win and the points to maintain his #1 ranking in the 2017 World RX championship standings.

Regardless of the outcome, I’m on cloud nine every time I get to shoot with the Hoonigan team. I really hope you enjoyed the behind-the-scenes look at the Portugal event, and don’t forget to check out the massive gallery chapter below.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Chapter Five: Cutting Room Floor

Chapter One: Becoming Official

When I first stepped foot on Pikes Peak back in 2011, I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams that I would eventually become the official photographer for the historic hill climb.

The conversation came up with Mitch Snow, the event’s Director of Promotions & Legacy, during the filming of Ken Block’s Climbkhana last summer. The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is actually a non-profit organization, and seeing as the race is now over 100 years old, they are very focused on preserving its history as well as documenting each hill climb for generations to come. Being the official photographer is an important job.

I didn’t really know what to say at first; there was so much responsibility with such a title. But in a way, I’ve been documenting the race since 2011 anyways.

I shoot everything I see, as I’m always trying my best to tell the story through my pictures. If I don’t shoot everything, then my story won’t be complete.

When covering Pikes Peak, I’m usually seven days on the ground. There’s two days for travel, three for practice, one for rest before race day, and of course the actual main race.

This time I was on the ground for nine days, having one extra day of practice to shoot motorcycles and another for tech inspection.

It was grueling to say the least; there were 2:30am wake-up calls each day and a 1:30am wake-up call on race day.

On top of that, dealing with the altitude at 14,000ft takes quite the toll on your body if you live near sea level like I do.

Mitch and the rest of the PPIHC organizers entrusted me with this very important task, so I set out to do my best. Here are 100 of my favorite photos from the 95th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

Chapter Two: 95th Running

One of my favorite moments is always when the drivers come back down from the mountain and the fans are there to give them a cheer.

We’ve actually featured this pro touring Camaro known as Big Red before. It’s so cool to see something like this on Pikes Peak.

As always, there were quite a few red flags this year, which led to many delays.

It was really fun to follow the motorcycle guys; it’s always interesting to shoot something different.

Rhys Millen and his daughter having a moment right before his climb on race day. I remember when she was just a newborn.

Scenes like this are what keep me coming back year after year. You simply cannot shoot a boring picture on this mountain, even if you tried.

I shot this around first light at Devil’s Playground, which was where the motorcycle guys were pitted on one of the mornings.

This was the first time I’ve ever shot above the clouds. According to some of the veterans, this spectacle happens about once every 10 years.

I said it before and I’ll say it again – the mountain doesn’t lie.

Sunrise during one of the practice days; there was no sunrise, but the clouds made for an awesome backdrop.

Peter Cunningham is always the jokester, and it was super cool to see such a seasoned racing driver at Pikes Peak.

The clouds rolled in on the last practice day cutting it short to just a single run up the mountain on the middle section, which starts at around 12,000ft.

The motorcyclists do this awesome recon lap in the morning with all of the riders at the same time. They go at a pretty good pace too.

This is the infamous corner where a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo went off back in 2012.

As always, I tried my best to catch another photographer’s flash; this time it was Rupert Berrington behind the lens.

Tech day is a great time to just relax and capture a few special moments, like this one.

White-out at Devil’s Playground. I actually had to drive back down the mountain in these conditions.

Unloading during blue hour. The pits are so fun to shoot around this time, and lucky for me it was not freezing cold with the temperature hovering around 32℉ (0℃) at the top. The first year I went I think it went down to 10℉ (-12℃) at the same location.

Paul Gerrard was the pilot of the Enviate Hypercar, but I first met him on a BMW Performance driver school, where he was one of the instructors.

It was cool to see him behind the wheel of such a crazy machine.

Even racing drivers need cheer squads.

Roll out. The car guys usually coast back down the hill after practice at a gingerly pace, but the motorcycle guys make the most of it.

Chapter Three: The Mountain Doesn’t Lie

It’s insane to see how much air the Norma piloted by Romain Dumas moves. That glow behind the car is a giant dust cloud lit up by the sunrise.

On race day I spend my entire time at the start line for shots like this.

Jeff Zwart didn’t drive this year, but he did stop by to check out some action before catching a flight. It’s always good to see the legendary photographer/racing driver/Porsche enthusiast.

In an effort to improve safety, rookie motorcycle riders have to follow an instructor’s line during practice day to get the hang of the corners.

Robb Holland of Rotek Racing piloted this salvaged Chevy Corvette Z06. We’ve actually featured his old race car before here on Speedhunters.

Rhys Millen was back in his drift car that held the overall Pikes Peak record for one year in 2012. Unfortunately, he was unable to break the time attack record that is held by his buddy Paul Dallenbach driving the same car.

Although he did break the qualifying record by a significant amount, which is something to be proud of.

Chapter Four: 14,000ft

Despite having shot the same race for so many years, there are always new spots to be explored. I never even realized this angle existed till I hiked up a quarter mile up the road, however not picture is me doubled over in pain from doing so close to 13,500ft.

Talk about bringing the power of the sun with you.

Rhys’ daughter giving him a flower before he headed to the starting line. These are the moments that I live to capture.

While I only had one year to shoot the dirt before the entire mountain was paved, I can say that I definitely miss it. The look of a giant dust roost just doesn’t get old.

Acura brought out a few cars to compete, but not its all-electric monster NSX this time around.

Even though it’s all paved, it’s still cool to see rally cars on Pikes Peak, like this super clean Audi Quattro.

I’m not sure whose bright idea it was to bring a standing-mile ’69 Camaro to Pikes Peak, but I love it.

I have to hand it to the motorcycle riders – serious balls are required to go 10 tenths around these corners. Especially the ones with no guardrails.

Life on the edge. At many of the shooting locations death is just a slip away.

I hope you enjoyed my photos. Helping me during the wheel was Speedhunters’ own Louis Yio and my buddy and off-road photographer extraordinaire, Jason Zindroski. You can see his photos from PPIHC 2017 here.

After Pikes Peak I went straight to Goodwood Festival of Speed, which is also a hill climb, but a completely different type, in a much different setting. Stay tuned for more from my month of binge traveling.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Chapter One: Luftgekühlt

It’s no secret that I am not big on car shows. If it’s not moving at a high rate of speed or producing massive amounts of tire smoke, I usually don’t want anything to do with it. But every now and then I make exceptions, and seeing as I am a big Porsche guy, I could not resist the draw of what has become a car culture phenomenon.

For Luftgekühlt events 2 and 3, I just stopped by with my family, casually taking photos as cars were pulling out of the show. I came at the last hour because I was lazy.

Little did I know then, though, that just strolling around taking snaps would ultimately see me involved in the event itself. First, my shots ended up in the Luft coffee book; then the brains behind the operation, Patrick Long and Howie Idelson, asked me to help document some behind the scenes activities during the load-in the day before this year’s event.

Of course, I could not have said yes any faster; I really love what Luftgekühlt is doing for Southern California’s car community.

To say Luft 4 was a success would be a massive understatement. Although, that was not the feeling we had the night before.

While load-in was dry as a bone with amazing SoCal weather, the night before and the morning of the event had serious downpour conditions.

I had perfect weather and perfect natural light to shoot all the main cars loading in; while rain would normally spell disaster for any other car event involving millions of dollars’ worth of cars it was not the case for Luft 4.

Howie told me that he slept in a motor coach nearby the event location, and that it was beaten on by the rain. The team were very worried that no one would show up.

A year of planning felt like it was about to go down the drain.

Of course, that did not happen. In fact, it turned out to be the most successful Luftgekühlt event yet, with people from all over the world attending. That’s a pretty amazing for a little air-cooled car show.

Part of the reason of Luft’s continued success is the quality of car that shows up.

For those of you who don’t know, Luftgekühlt actually translates to ‘air-cooled,’ and that sets the tone for the Porsche models on show.

The selection of cars is highly curated by the organisers, and once again it did not disappoint this year. The centerpiece of the display was the 1951 356 SL Gmund Coupe.

Chapter Two: Loading Dock

Load-in day was much like any other car show that I’ve shot.

This aspect of an event is my favorite to shoot, because you can actually hear the cars run and smell the exhaust fumes. It really is a treat for me as most of these race cars were active before my time.

The venue itself was amazing too. Located near the Port of Los Angeles, this massive warehouse is home to swap meets, art-related shops and even a craft brewery.

It’s the perfect backdrop for the event, a relaxing environment outside of the normal parking lot-type show that we’re all used to.

While the majority of cars were driven into the venue, there was a constant stream of dream cars being unloaded from transporters, most of which were either not street legal or had been brought to the show from afar. Often it was a case of both.

Of course, the Singers get trailered. It’s a shame in some ways as they are such amazing driver’s cars.

One by one, Jeff Zwart and other the organisers would pull the cars up on the dock or place them in areas where I could photograph them before they were loaded into position.

It was a ballet of sorts, but it was fun for me as I got to see each car up close and personal. Check out how dirty this 911 that had just finished the Mexican 1000 was.

I also had a chance to check out this really awesome 356 built by Rod Emory. The car has 964 running gear and to top it all off is all-wheel drive.

It’s going to be a blast to drive on the dirt, and you can bet I will be featuring it sooner rather than later. I also had a chance to stop by Rod’s shop recently, so expect that story soon, too.

Art and air-cooled Porsches – what more could you want? It was honestly hard not to make amazing photos at Luftgekühlt.

I wasn’t the only one taking advantage of the opportunity; inside the venue another photographer had set up a massive light.

The load-in slowed down a little around midday, which allowed me to catch up with a few friends and refuel. How cool is it that they made custom cups for the nitro brew coffee on offer? This is my kind of car show!

The slower pace also gave me a chance to do a few spotlights, one of which centered on this immaculately built 959 by Bruce Canepa.

The slower pace also gave me a chance to do a few spotlights, one of which centered on this immaculately built 959 by Bruce Canepa.

This thing was absolutely stunning inside and out, and easily ranked as one of my favorite cars at the show.

As far as a show-stopper, the Sunoco 917/30, which was also restored by Bruce Canepa, would be hard to beat.

There really is so much detail in this thing and I wish I could have heard it run.

With all the major showpieces loaded in and out of the impending rain, it was time for me to check out another aspect of Luftgekühlt.

Chapter Three: No Sleep

Not too far away from the show venue, RM Sotheby’s headquarters had been transformed into an event space for the Luftgekühlt book launch and social gathering.

The who’s who of the Porsche world were in attendance. The guy on the left is Kohey Takada from Motorhead magazine, and to the right is Pete Stout of 000 magazine.

I didn’t stay very long as my call time the next day was super early. So I stuffed my face with sausages and headed home for some sleep.

For how hard it was raining, it was amazing to see how many people brought out their classic air-cooled machines.

But everyone on the Luft 4 crew helped load-in the hundreds of cars waiting to enter.

As I mentioned earlier, the entire event and project that is Luftgekühlt was a massive success.

Even the line to get inside the venue was huge.

I was so glad I did the majority of my shooting before the crowd arrived as it quickly became impossible to get a clear shot. My attention was turned to the people in attendance.

Everyone’s favorite Urban Outlaw showed up with autograph pen in hand. I said hello, and came back an hour later to find that he’d only moved a few meters from his starting position. Talk about getting mobbed.

I keep hearing that car manufacturers are worried about millennials not buying cars and not being into car culture. This may become true in the far future when less and less internal combustion cars become readily available, but if you were to look at a snapshot of what car culture is like as a whole today, you will find a different picture.

It’s safe to say that car culture is more popular than ever before. Thanks to the internet and passionate people like Pat Long and Howie Idelson, the general public can enjoy very rare, multi-million dollar dream cars in our own way.

Luftgekühlt is thriving because of readers like you guys and regular car fanatics like myself. When Luft 5 comes around, maybe it’ll be worth your while to check flights or go on an epic road trip to see what all the buzz is about. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Chapter Four: Cutting Room Floor

Chapter One: Drive All Day

I guess you could say that I’ve just been on a Speedhunters world tour.

I jumped straight from Formula Drift New Jersey to Gridlife Midwest; joined the Hot Rod Power Tour and then hit up Pikes Peak; jetted over to the UK for the Goodwood Festival of Speed, and then onto Continental Europe for the Gumball 3000. The weekend past I was in Montreal for Formula Drift Canada.

I met up with many old friends and made new ones along the way, but more important was the chance I had to hang out with a few of the Speedhunters crew. Paddy McGrath, Jordan Butters, and Mark Riccioni were all at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. It’s been so long since a large group of us were shooting together, and it was beyond fun.

I’ve attended so many motoring festivals and racing gatherings all over the world, but looking back at the past couple of months got me thinking about what makes an event ‘fun’ for me nowadays.

The answer is fairly simple: my favorite events are the ones that my friends attend.

Today I want to talk about Gridlife Midwest, which I attended last month. If you caught my stories from last year’s event, you might remember me comparing Gridlife to Gatebil. This time around I wanted to find out whether the American festival has become more relevant in the car culture world than the Scandinavian original.

I set out to put together this event story plus shoot three completely different cars for features. Stay tuned for these!

I hit the ground running, as did the Donut Media guys who came out in force to capture what Gridlife is all about by video. At the far right of this line-up is Chris Forsberg’s VK56-powered Infiniti sedan, while the two Mercedes-Benzes were drafted in for chase car duties.

I was not at the event for five minutes before I strapped myself into the passenger seat of Mr. Toad’s wild ride.

I’d never actually ridden in this car before, but I had been looking forward to it since I featured it all those years ago.

Insane does not really describe this drift shuttle. Gatebil had a similar program with stock BMW M5 drift taxis, but this Infiniti can do full course drifting like you’ve never seen before.

This truly was the real Mr. Toad’s wild ride. I feel like the drift shuttle needs to become a movement.

Along with Chris Forsberg, Vaughn Gittin Jr. brought out one of his many demo cars.

We were initiating inches away from Vaughn going into the first corner, and at one point I even had to pull my camera in so it would not get crushed by a Mustang body panel. It was my highlight of the event.

The war stories that we traded afterwards will last for a lifetime.

One of the chase car wheel-men was James Kirkham from Donut Media. He used to be a racing driver so he is not afraid to get close to the action.

It was fun to see him on track getting those perfect stacked drift shots.

I went for a few rides with him as well and mounted my camera in front of the Mercedes to capture some chase shots.

Team Drift Alliance was not the only one scheming to get stacked drift trains; Team Falken Tire were out in force too.

While some drivers like Justin Pawlak brought out their current FD cars, the others put their previous competition drift machines to good use once more.

For Daijiro Yoshihara, Gridlife offered a chance for him to get behind the wheel of his 2011 championship-winning Nissan S13. It was so cool to be able to shoot this legendary car again, especially as it’s still in the original livery.

I don’t know about you guys, but I really want historic drifting to become a thing. We cover so many historic race cars on Speedhunters, and I feel like in a few more years old drift cars will become cooler than ever.

One of the reasons I think Gridlife is becoming so big is because of how the owner, Chris Stewart, talks one on one with the teams about what he can do to ensure the best time is had by all.

On top of that, Gridlife invites the right influencers from all over to compete and have a good time on and off track.

This becomes very evident as you walk the paddock through the hot pits and the car show areas.

The variety of cars that turn up is awesome, plus the quality and style of the builds surpasses all expectations.

Quite simply, Gridlife has become a staple event of midwest car culture. If you needed proof, the line just to get in was over a mile long.

I don’t know what the small town where GingerMan Raceway is located thinks about it, but I’m sure they don’t mind the area doubling or even tripling in population for the weekend.

The Hoonigan gang came out in numbers with their female driver search program.

These Fiat 124 Spiders are such cool builds. There needs to be more new rear-wheel drive rally cars.

Even the kids who attend show up with modified cars.

Just check out this scale Hoonicorn with working all-wheel drive and an e-brake.

Chapter Two: Party All Night

Without a doubt, one of the biggest draws of Gridlife is the party scene, and this year the after hours atmosphere did not disappoint.

Not only did our good friend Rob ‘Chairslayer’ Parsons crowd surf, but Chris Forsberg also found himself being carried away.

After the lights went out and the concert was over, the pro and amateur drivers went from pit to pit hanging out with all the people who made it along for the crazy weekend.

Where else can you party with your drifting idols?

Even Gandalf The Drunk made an appearance again, although this year there were no unregulated burnouts.

Gridlife after hours is an absolute blast, and it’s made even better by all the characters you love to hate.

So the question is, has Gridlife replaced Gatebil? The answer is that there is room for both events to exist. The reason why Gridlife is becoming so popular with the pro teams is because it’s much more accessible than Gatebil. Before Norway and Sweden had the biggest and best festivals surrounding drifting, awesome car builds and music; but now that there is a similar type of event in North America, and I’m pretty happy about that.

The next Gridlife event will be held at Road Atlanta in around a month’s time, so if you’re within driving distance it’ll definitely be worth checking out.

Larry Chen
Instagram: larry_chen_foto

Chapter Three: Cutting Room Floor

Chapter One: Shakedown

I’ve heard it so many times, and if you’re into car culture chances are you’ve heard it to. I’m talking about excuses: “My car is not ready for the track,” or the ever-so-worthless “I need to upgrade my [insert part name/s here] before I go to the track.”

If you’re anything like me, there will always be something to do, but that shouldn’t be a reason to not take your car to the track and put it through its paces, unless deep down you don’t really want to do it. For me, when an opportunity comes along to get behind the wheel at a place like Willow Springs International Motorsport Park, I’m going to take it.

Which brings me to the track day I recently attended, hosted by our good friends at KW Suspensions.

The event was an opportunity for friends of KW to come along and shakedown their cars with experts on hand to make suspension setup changes and tweaks if needed.

Even though Project 996 Turbo is in far from what I’d call a ‘finished’ state, I could not have said yes any quicker. Driving fast is what got me into this whole mess in the first place.

I never get photos of myself driving, but lucky for me, my buddy from Clarion USA was on hand to do so.

He actually brought out a car that Clarion built and I’ve previously featured on Speedhunters. The idea behind this build was to bring some modern touches to the original NSX without losing any of the character that made it so special in the first place.

The Clarion car wasn’t the only former Speedhunters feature car in attendance either. In fact, the event turned out to be a Speedhunters feature car reunion of sorts.

It’s a large but tight-knit car tuning community here in Southern California, so there were plenty of familiar faces. The Spoon Sports USA FD2 Civic Type R, as recently featured by Louis and Justin is another high profile car running KWs.

To continue the Speedhunters feature car theme, one of my favorite air-cooled Porsches also showed up.

Joey Seely from Emotion Engineering works on Project 996 Turbo, but also built this awesome track rat of a 911.

I had previously not seen this thing in action, so it was cool to watch him rip it around the track. It’s actually too bad I was busy driving, otherwise I would have loved to get a ride. Maybe next time…

Our good friend Bisi Ezerioha of Bisimoto Engineering brought out one of his many fun project cars. His twin turbo Cayman has an exhaust note to die for.

I also picked up a quick car spotlight while I was at it; I’d previously never seen a BMW M4 GTS, and this is pretty much the closest thing to a BMW GT3 car on the street it seems.

Speaking of friends of Speedhunters, Michael Essa was also out at Willow Springs shaking down a Porsche 996 GT3. I followed him a few years back while he was building his BMW drift car.

Mike Kojima, legendary chassis engineer and creator of MotoIQ came out to play with one of his toys too.

I’ve followed Mike for a long time as he’s worked on various media projects, but in the last few years have been able to catch up with him more regularly in the Formula Drift paddock where he’s helped Daijiro Yoshihara out with car set up.

Chapter Two: Track Rats

Since I started this German muscle car project I haven’t been able to take it to a proper track day, mostly because work always seems to get in the way of having any sort of fun. My track-focused car has always been Ole Orange Bang, but since that is currently out of action while some major upgrades are made, I decided to give the twin turbo beast a bit of a work out.

It felt so good to stretch its legs too. There was so much for me to learn driving a rear-engine turbo car, and right off the bat I noticed that the handling was super balanced everywhere except corner exits. It felt like I had to wait forever before I could plant my foot down.

In my last Project 996 Turbo update I covered off swapping out the aggressive track pads for a Brembo street compound, but for just a short track session I didn’t feel any difference in stopping power.

Granted, running the Streets of Willow Springs circuit clockwise does not allow for insane triple-digit speeds, but I still found myself well into 4th gear and close to 140mph (225km/h).

I decided against having a transponder for the day, because as fun as timing can be, pushing the limit was not my goal for the day. I just wanted to have fun. I also drove 100 miles to the track and I intended on driving back.

It was good to see Vinny and a few of the other Hoonigan guys out in full force with some of their project cars.

Vinny brought out his super-clean E46 M3, and straight after this event took it all the way up to Laguna Seca for another track day and time attack competition. Laguna Seca is definitely a bucket list track for me; maybe one day I will get to drive the corkscrew.

Hoonigan also had one of their Fiat 124 Abarth rally cars out for a thrash, and I was lucky enough to take it for a spin around the track. Despite having to drive it foot to the floor and work really hard to get the most out of it, it was an absolute blast to drive.