Will Roegge loves clouds and gave me a good appreciation for clouds too. Because of this, I tend to take photos of them now again. Luckily I started noticing the cool clouds around halfway through the Formula DRIFT qualifying session today at Wall Stadium.
The weather app on my phone predicted lightning for today, so I wasn’t surprised to see the clouds start to turn more ominous toward the end of qualifying.
Soon enough it started sprinkling and then raining. And then the thunder and lightning started. All the Garage Boso guys were running around shirtless like they were back in Hawaii. People were getting pretty excited!
As the post-qualifying drivers’ meeting was about to begin, the rain continued to get heavier and the wind started picking up, but the Hankook models stuck to their posts and continued to sign posters!
Before I knew it the rain was going sideways and our awning started to lift up. I ran to the truck to unhook all my video gear just in case the awning collapsed. When I got back out I saw that the Need for Speed tent had flipped over and was mangled, resting on the power lines! Crazy! Because of the danger, the FD officials sent all the fans home.
Matt Powers’s car sustained minor damage but it’ll be okay. Nothing worse than what Matt does while he’s driving it!
Fredric Aasbø’s section of the tent collapsed as well, but not as spectacularly as Matt’s. I didn’t hear whether his car was damaged or not.
The really amazing thing is that the part of the tent that is hanging from the power lines originally sat between the two end sections and housed the Need for Speed Electro Lounge with its DJ booth and Xbox stations. All of the electronics were ruined.
Spirits lightened once it was known that no one was was injured. Linhbergh Nguyen announced that he had won the wet t-shirt contest!
This was because Larry Chen’s shirt was black and Justin Shreeve and Joe Ayala weren’t even wearing shirts at all. Take notes from Lin, he knows how to do it right!
The production crew had Matt interview Fredric about the storm. Expect to see the interview on Livestream tomorrow.
The track got completely flooded, adding to the reasons why evening practice was canceled.
A large forklift was brought in to clear the tent off the power lines and carry away debris.
Matt Powers gave it a big thumbs up.
Formula DRIFT president Jim Liaw observed the cleanup process while a very busy director of operations Andy Luk came to report on the progress. I’d say they did a fantastic job at crowd control and keeping everyone safe while still allowing enough people to work on the cleanup for it to go quickly.
They were even nice enough to go out later and buy ten new TV’s and four new Xboxes for Need for Speed so they can continue to entertain the fans tomorrow! Is that love or what?
.:Bohan
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