The Thrill and Agony of a High-Speed Crash: A Look Back at Adam's Racing Experience

As I sit here reflecting on my recent racing experience, I'm still trying to process the emotions that came with it. The rush of adrenaline, the fear of losing control, and the crushing disappointment when things didn't go as planned. It was a high-speed crash that left me feeling defeated, but also determined to learn from my mistakes.

I remember the moment it happened like it was yesterday. I was going at an incredible 100 plus miles per hour, with different grip changes between cars making it even harder to slow down. The pressure was mounting, and I knew I had to make a move if I wanted to stay in contention. But as I approached the front corner, something just went wrong. I couldn't slow down, and before I knew it, I was nose-first into the barrier.

The aftermath was chaotic, with my car sustaining significant damage. The door was dented, and there were bruises all over the rear end. It was a sobering reminder of the risks involved in racing, and the importance of being in control at high speeds. Despite the setbacks, I knew that I had to pick myself up and move on. After all, as they say, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

As I assessed the damage, I couldn't help but think about my team's efforts to keep me on track. They had worked tirelessly to fine-tune my car, and it was clear that we were ready for battle. The front corner change was a testament to their hard work, taking just five minutes to complete. It was a small comfort, but one that reminded me of the power of teamwork in racing.

However, as I stood there amidst the wreckage, I couldn't shake off the feeling of disappointment. I had come so close to winning, only to see it slip through my fingers. The pressure to perform had been immense, and I knew that I would have to live with this defeat for a long time. But even in the midst of adversity, there was something about this experience that felt... right.

Perhaps it was the rush of adrenaline still coursing through my veins, or maybe it was the sense of camaraderie with my fellow drivers who had also experienced setbacks on the track. Whatever it was, I knew that I would bounce back from this disappointment, stronger and more determined than ever.

As I looked around at the crowd, I saw a sea of faces eager for photographs and autographs. It was a bittersweet moment, knowing that I wouldn't be able to make it to everyone on my list. But my team had anticipated this, and they were prepared with enough merchandise to go around. Despite the setbacks, we had managed to connect with our fans, and that meant the world.

The experience had also given me a newfound appreciation for the track itself. I had competed in Orlando before, but never as a professional driver. Now, I was excited to get back behind the wheel and give it another shot. The thought of pushing myself to new limits on the track was exhilarating, and I knew that this crash would be just a stepping stone on my journey.

As we packed up our gear and headed home, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride. We may not have won the battle, but we had certainly given it our all. And in the world of racing, that's all you can ask for. The memories of this experience would stay with me forever, serving as a reminder of what it takes to be a true champion.

And so, I'll take a moment to reflect on the lessons learned from this crash. How to slow down when needed, how to communicate with my team, and most importantly, how to bounce back from adversity. These are the qualities that will define me as a driver, both on and off the track. Bring it on, Orlando. I'm ready for you.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign welcome to today's video guys being joined by my two cute funny little friends as we roll up to road atlanta for the very first round of formula draft pro one let's drive in the pamonera also known as the marinara the pomodera pamela anderson panorama you know a little bit of a bummer i was hoping to drive the turbo up here but we got to put miles on the loaner instead so i guess like that's okay this thing is pretty nice honestly but we're rolling up the road atlanta uh a little tired it's a really i won't say really early morning but practice and qualifying are actually pretty late at night so it's not like a early type fd event most of the stuff is done at night so in the earlier part of the day we've got some photo shoots i'll show you guys a pit space we'll go over some kind of i don't know little fd things you didn't tell them that you got a modeling gig as a nitto boy we're heading to your nitto boy photo shoot what your nino boy photo shoot i get an umbrella you're an official nino boy so we're heading over to a photo shoot got some umbrellas got the car ready oh you can show them your new uh photo shoot right height yeah so i don't know how i feel about it because it's kind of a tease chris was like oh i lowered your car for you just for the photo shoot i'm like cool so i could look cool and then instantly tighten it back up well that's a long life or we'll call we're gonna be late tell you what oh you're calling my wine did a little photo shoot with the nitto team man what an honor it is to be with these guys we did a small meet greet of our own earlier today uh fd has a formal one that they do with all the drivers lined up so i'm gonna go do that now and it's right to practice hello all right we're about to go for practice feeling a little nervous it's been a while since i've driven this track one thing that i haven't shown you guys yet pvk last minute was able to do a pretty sweet fade paint job on my helmet came out super sick kind of ties in with the car last year i just had a basic carbon looking helmet he smashed it even did a fade on translucent carbon so i'm not in the car do my best i watched some video clips from last year to kind of give myself a reminder what to expect but i'm excited first time driving here on the nitto tire i've heard this thing's wild um man i forgot how crazy this track is uh definitely not building 100 but my first stops out were a lot better than i expected um just trying to figure out the car figure how much grip to run in it these tires feel insane and they let you get away with a lot but i don't want to let that kind of me from choosing the right fury because i can get away with you know doing things that i normally couldn't um but anyway i'm gonna go out just try to keep doing my best focus on those points and it decides we want to do it uh i'm having a hard time slowing down after entry i know part of it is just uh my line's a bit weird but what's funny is in the very beginning i was actually doing much better than now i think i'm just overthinking a little bit so i'm going to try to go back to how i was driving in the beginning and then just work on the other parts ah so we're having some binding issues it's not really the main problem i think a large part of the issue is just uh not having a grip in the car so we're gonna try adding a grip playing around and making the nicest engage a little sooner which will help with some of the bogging i'm seeing um but yeah i just gotta learn the track a lot all right before you guys watch this next run um we made a change with the car and i want you guys to watch and comment below if you can notice the difference with what you physically see in the clip hmm mmm all right now that you've seen that run um what we did made the car feel a million times better um i don't want to get into too much specifics just because of the fact that other teams do kind of watch our videos and stuff i don't want to give away too much um but what we were trying to accomplish before with tire pressure we accomplished mechanically and it made the car way easier for me to drive um it actually made it so much faster that i went flying off on top and still didn't miss that inner clip that i've been struggling to hit the entire time um so the car feels way more in control now and less like kind of floaty so i'm super excited it kind of sucked it took a whole practice to figure that out but um if you guys watched the video last year and compared at least this year's runs to last year at road atlanta or sorry two years ago road atlanta was the last time i drove here even though i feel like i'm one of the worst drivers out here right now in practice i'm still like 50 times better than i was uh my first time driving this track so i'm happy i feel a lot better we have one more like little warm-up where i get three more laps and then after that uh we have qualifying um they changed up qualifying and how it works this year so basically you get one run if you qualify in the top 22 or i guess it would be top 24 then you don't have to do another run you're not allowed to do another run but if you're above 24 basically the bottom eight you have to do another run and then that just determines your placement in the top eight so if you don't get within the top 22 or whatever in the first it's very confusing no one really understands it but it encourages people to do good on their first run so that's what i'm gonna try to do look at me and my beautiful girlfriend right here stop guys the car like you know that was really a development practice i don't know if you could tell too we were having a little bit of weird like verbally stuff going on with the tune in the very beginning freddie got that sorted just kind of comes with you know we haven't really opened this thing up in fourth gear yet we just had testing on the compound just like second but i'm feeling way better now it's so beautiful these hills here are so fun in these golf carts uh also kind of fun fact this is my golf cart how cool is it that i have golf carts now i forget about that it's like probably the best thing about the compound is that it came with golf carts so i'm ripping my electric beast around ready to go for a warm up feel way better about the car it's feeling rough in practice my confidence is much higher now the boys stopped by nitto and got the fresh 555 g2s look at these bad boys we've got plenty of tread life left on a lot of our scrubs and we're just starting with freshies just to keep it consistent look at all that goodness i'm so sick of those um oh um oh um wow hmm so i'm pretty ready to rip uh there's a little bit of tactic because if you get in the bottom eight you get a second run but if you're not in the bottom eight you'll get your first run i'm gonna try to do my best run yet and try to flick it a little bit more aggressively because i know if i did my same conservative run i'd probably wind up in the bottom eight so i might as well go for broke and if i end up in the bottom eight then i get a chance if i can serve with the run so we're trying to do a bigger flick initiate a little bit later the rest of the course i feel pretty confident on seems like it's gripped up a little bit watching the livestream and seeing other people kind of missing certain zones so try to use that to my advantage go to the best run that i can oh my god always a fan favorite uh just you know bought his compound if you don't know who he is if you're just familiar formula drift competition really made a name for himself last year i think i think he even shocked himself so it's great to see him back here as you know he was just going to do what we called pro 2 last year prospect this year but with the doubleheader weekend says i'm going to be there anyways let's go ahead and enter pro because he did earn his license and now here he is back at it again and uh you know what he sponsors his own program lz mfg lz manufacturing adam lz one of the fans favorites great looking car always has great looking deliveries oh but wrong side of that front flip what happened there adam and this is i believe it is his first time driving as a pro whoa buddy so adam lz going absolutely rogue on the track wonder what's going on here with adam lz and his great-looking s15 i mean oh what a bummer wonder what's going on yeah it comes very unsettled there on stuck in two different places i've seen the judges give incompletes for for less or something right around there but i think it's really going to come down to how far off course he was let's take a look at this first mistake here by lz and unfortunate just comes up on the line a little bit too tight drops two tires takes out the inside clip tries to get it back together you can see the car was a little bit unsettled there and this is not the driving that we're used to seeing from adam lz and then going up the hill again another timing issue goes completely off course wow look at that look how far he shot that that inside clip you see that that was crazy so like i said this uh way that they're doing qualifying definitely rewards going crazy on your first run and i knew that my conservative run would probably put me in the bottom eight so i figured i might as well go for broke try to get really good qualifying score and if it didn't work out i get another chance in the uh bottom eight but unfortunately it definitely isn't the best look and i'm definitely a little embarrassed especially reading comments on the live stream it does get to me i can live on and say that it doesn't but um yeah i've i felt really good in practice but i think the car is just a little bit too hooked up especially with the cooler track and i'm just initiating a little bit too early um i don't really drive stuff this fast that often and it's very hard to visually time where to enter when you're going so fast it is clear that that's something i gotta work on and get better at but yeah i got my next run i'm gonna go get some points on the board hmm here we go great looking car but let's see if it's great looking in the competition and head to head adam lz and the lz manufacturing nitto tires s15 sylvia coming down the mountain past that front clip flirt with the dirt and comes on bound saves it wow that could have been very ugly now coming into the keyhole that second outside zone the attitude of the vehicle you see it just kind of lunging forward and rocking back and forth man that kitty litter could have really sucked him in he could have got fitted but no comes out unscathed that will be a score he is wiping his brow the lz lizards are going nuts what do you think brian well you know like had a bit of a conservative initiation from the beginning but then he really puts a lot of angle in the car and good thing that he does because he narrowly goes off course and a beautiful save there by adam lz i mean that was very close to an incomplete if he would have gotten into the kitty litter would have been game over so that is a good bit of defensive driving there from him still making it look good looking for the best positioning that he can get but also taking this opportunity to get one final run in the books for tomorrow and as long as he gets a score he's going to be in competition you got to give it up to him this is a a very pressure filled moment for these drivers that have these incompletes knowing that if i go out i'm just giving away a spot as well as himself i'd have to imagine and uh there he goes he's gonna be oh that's good going into 26 position there that's good all right so lz is in he will be seen head-to-head competition at 84. i i did not i thought i was going off man on that entry i've never entered that late and it was terrifying and i almost went off i think i dropped like one wheel but i felt like i pretty much almost backed it in i'm watching it right now i'm so excited so glad it didn't go off it was definitely the classroom that's what did it think good math video wide angle let me and pizza look like a jeep that's our boss high quality all right guys so it's day two it's official practice oh actually just kidding it's official uh competition day and after reviewing the footage from the other day one of the things i realized was that i was entering a little bit too early so uh going into practice today the goal is to try to enter at the two cone instead of the three cone since i was kind of doing that last night so we'll see how that works out hmm hmm so the changing track conditions you can kind of tell even though i pushed my initiation back to where i would have made sense last night now i'm winding up going flying off track again uh but one thing that i did notice watching like the footage and i'll include another little clip in case you guys didn't notice it um i'm going to add more angle after i initiate to try to pitch the back of the car so when i get on throttle i can use the tire to slow myself down um and it's just straight under steering so we're going to add more grip to the front there's a lot of compiling factors that will result in this part of it is again just my my timing of my initiation that's affecting it um but it will be helpful to have a little bit more front grip so i can steer in and add angle to adjust uh that way there's not just one perfect line that i can do and then if i do make a little mistake in timing or when i follow people i have the front end to control what's going on but uh not stoked that i had two kind of trash runs and practice i got the keyhole a lot better but going off both times and initiation doesn't leave me feeling the best so i'm chasing first so that's cool but i have zero chase practice so that's not so cool but fallen red dan he's a great driver it's always fun driving him i'm excited to go up against him his new super looks sick i'm gonna do my best hang in there and then when it comes time for my lead run i just gotta slow the down hmm adam lz rookie of the year in 2020. i didn't want to call him roy dan burkett leading up front rat industries gear wrench toyota super versus adam lz look at this dan burkett initiates adam lc right there one of the best looking cars in fd actually two of the best looking cars in ft love both of these things come to that second outside zone let's see how they manage dan burkett gets out there adam lz he needs to close that gap he might be putting the car in the right places as the oh dan burkett shuts her down oh what a bummer for briquettes oh man so let's take a look here i i mean it was definitely blinded by the smoke but i believe there was i don't think there was any contact what do you think roy yeah no i think that was just a mechanical for for dan burkett uh he his approach into that inside clip was a little bit slower and i think it might have caught adam off guard a little bit even though that dan burkett is fully within his right to do what he did there he's able to pull a gap on lz looks like he's starting to get away and elsie is not able to close the gap but after this section right here he unwinds the car and shuts it down completely here it is massive amount of smoke he's not able to finish the run and that right there will shut down the run for lz which means that dan burkett would be sitting on incomplete probably from a mechanical hmm down so lz with the advantage lz will lead let's see if we can keep it together and if we get an advancement it keeps it where the rubber meets the road we will have a winner as adam lz rips up oh and dan burkett shuts it down once again but oh adam elsie wings wide as long as he keeps it like i said rubbery throat that will be a deduction but not an incomplete so adam lz making his way through the course as long as he crosses the finish line and adam lz that what are you doing bro zero chill how do the kids say wow adam dude what is your zero chill all right let's explain this jared so we we know that dan burkett has an incomplete on his lead run he also has an incomplete on his chase run from what we see here now adam lz had to shut down his run because dan burkett in front of him had an incomplete but then lz does the same thing because he is well let's clarify is that a spin through the finish line is that is that what the judges are saying i'm assuming that that's what it's gonna be and uh ryan ryan lantane can we open up your mic and let's talk through this a little bit just so we can explain it to the fans yeah it looked like um ben yeah dan had some problems with uh boost turbo boost it comes down to if he did spin that would give him an incomplete dan and the chase also had an incomplete and then dan had an incomplete on his lead run so even if that was considered an incomplete adam lz still gets the win because he got three incompletes to one kind of thing so he he just made us and all his fans very nervous there at the end yeah very very nervous he probably got excited maybe he realized that dan had problems behind him and uh it just gave him a little bit of uh brain fog there a little excited you know that happens it does but he managed to hold it together and get through so he will be going to brian ryan and ryan thank you so much so we got super super lucky um i did a chase that i'm actually like pretty happy with but it reminded me of a problem that i faced once in practice and the front end kind of binds and i wait too long to get on throttle because i'm trying to get the steering wheel unstuck so we're going to try to address that now i'll be lucked out unfortunately brad dan seems to have had some engine issues and uh now we got to use this hour to get the car figured out before top 16 but lucky boy um so uh we narrowed it down to think what's happening on the downhill there's compression zone and i guess other people are having an issue too and on top of that we went to a bigger power steering pulley and there's so little power steering and the car's not moving like i can't physically turn the wheel unless the car's rolling um so even though we have a setup now that shouldn't fail it needs more power so we'll see if we can implement something otherwise i might have to try to get on throttle to loosen the wheel and then it'll be okay because it's but it's just on that d cell and going down the hill but i think all the weight's over that front and it's just getting stuck and then it's making me hesitate to get on throttle and then i'm like getting gap so i'm gonna work on that you friendly gotta go go against castro awesome dude i think we figured out part of the issue i'm gonna have to sacrifice some front grip but i think it'll help all right here we go back to the action jonathan castro adam lz jonathan castro will lead lz give a chase we got a clean start castro comes in across the nose of lz's s15 down to that front flip oh lc great composure there no nervousness whatsoever as castro now comes in that first outside zone and the second of the keyhole both of them fill in that second outside zone oh man lz being absolutely soaked in smoke but still so from whatever happened to 32 to now here in all right you know what i said he was nervous not not whatsoever no signs of nervousness now ryan hmm through that star chicane no codes were hit and there it is quite a better view with that long camera and now adam lz into that first fret massive angle there running a backy into that front clip castro gets thrown off line lz with the s15 into that second outside zone castro making it a bit of a shallower line adam lc showing you why he's 20 20 rookie of the year and one more clip nasty snapped by lz a little more comfortable yeah a lot more comfortable and i think the fans would agree even his fans i think it looked great really good run there by adam lz i think castro might have gotten shocked some of that initiation some real points of differentiation right you have big angle initiation through that first inside clip back on throttle and then aggressively moves up the hill here getting to that outside zone one and two and you can see he was on throttle right there at the beginning of outside zone two castro struggled a little bit coming up the hill with lz now he's starting to close the door a little bit but lz throws big angle through the touch and go and then a nasty flick back around which he throws right at that at that angle holds it through the finish line and see right here he could have totally flubbed that right and we we saw that with the denofa battle where big angle can be a very risky maneuver but lz was able to pull it off pretty well there and then he had some other strong points throughout this run especially things like this coming down the touch and go snapping it back around man these guys are laying it down all right so it looks like edgar says adam lz ryland adam lz gets the win now yeah castro was going really slow on his initiation i actually hit him yo castro thank you so much if he was playing dirty he could have spun there and he would have got the win but he stayed in it and because of that i ended up getting the win so that in my opinion is good sportsmanship there was light contact not enough to spit him out but he stayed in it we finished the run uh my clutch started slipping really bad after initiation and it kind of caused me to um have a little bobble going up the hill we got the job done we moved on to the grade 8. there's a lot of talk about items and royal purple has its proprietary cinderella technology kind of got into it in their battle we are now going to be taking a look first at adam lz and odie bakshi's so odi bakshi's animal z and ryan you you talked about this earlier similar scenarios about texas lz and jones but here we go right back jumping into it odie bakshi's and adam lz 2 s15s two very different builds oh boy look at that we got door to door wheel to wheel and lz just absolutely slamming into the side of od bakshi's let's take a look at this as a so let's see who's at fault here i want to take a look at the instant replay saw a bit of an exchange there of adam going up to the door of him i don't know if it was a asari or what the heck or didn't see the uh now i think this is lz getting maybe a little bit overzealous here and we know how challenging getting the timing right on initiation is this is all a momentum zone here right the contact is made 25 feet 20 feet before so od is allowed to basically slow down there in order to get ready and be back on throttle by inside clip number one i love the aggression here from adam lz but you can see he's moving at a much quicker rate after initiation than od bhaktis and and od really just had to buckle up and take that one yeah 100 my fault on that one i uh i kind of slept a little bit at the light and got a little bit carried away kind of had a little bit too much closing speed which on a lot of lower speed driving i do i can get away with it but with this um a little bit of closing speed when you're going like 100 plus miles an hour makes it really hard to slow down especially with different grip changes between cars and stuff and uh i just couldn't slow down and make contact and unfortunately i'll be judging that run being an incomplete so he would need to do an enormous mistake um for me to continue on to the next round i'm sorry od he has a car how does my car look collapse did i just hit the front corner put it on there so like the door's fine the rear i mean it's i wouldn't say that's fine it's it's it's not some bruises right there ready to go drop it down i'm so sorry adam sheesh i mean my guys like so close we we had maybe like two seconds to go really i i didn't know i had to have the car running before i was out so even if even if we made those pins um the car wasn't running so we would have lost anyway this was a great display i mean my team got the a front corner changed in five minutes um not the best display of driving i kind of went a little too fast i should probably should have not done that i don't know if you want to win you got to go big right absolutely adam thank you so much thank you all killed it i wish i got to see it from outside the car we almost did it i'm super happy i don't know about you guys but i felt like rolling up into the battle with odie um wait no not od the battle before odi castro i was like i was not having the best time and i was ready to go home defeated and it felt really good to get one solid battle and you know we we proved that we could be here yeah so i'm shaking so much can someone hold this camera that's not we all oh yeah it's a bummer hopefully his car is okay in my car check out the damage it holds up pretty decent i'm gonna lie the door honestly is the thing that i didn't want to hurt the most and that's pretty all right we're gonna have to better than your last one so what we were just talking about unfortunately with stuff like this there was so much of a of a gap that had i not tried to dive in a little bit even if i did the best run ever there probably would have been a couple car lengths and that would be greatly weighed against me so um in situations like this you kind of have to go for broke and unfortunately i broke and i broke him that's sad and i feel bad but um part of the game uh it's always been an issue for me to slow down with this car and i kind of had a similar issue with castro too but we're learning we were able to finish the weekend a lot better than i thought we were gonna be able to i was bumming i was a slum dog sad boy in there and now i'm uh less sad boy and uh yeah we have an indoor hot tub at our airbnb so honestly like it's pretty cool i wanted to thank everyone here because there was so many people that came by for like photographs or signatures and stuff and i'm sorry if we didn't get to you what happened was we did like one meet and greet like early in the day and i thought we'd be able to do a bunch but we had to cap the line and i didn't get to finish everybody like i wanted to so we gave them stuff so they could come back later and even then we still didn't have enough jobs we can add them thank you man i appreciate it and unfortunately i didn't have time to do any other people on top of that but the amount of support here and the amount of like people in the crowd both on the internet and here i know there's a lot of people that didn't believe in me including myself for a large portion of time um but at least we showed that we belong here and i'm excited for orlando i love that track when i drove it in pro 2 i had no idea what the i was doing now i'm like i'm like pretty confident in that track and it's fun um yeah so it's really hard it's a great round proud of me but i'm even more proud of the team couldn't do without you guys couldn't do it without all my amazing sponsors you guys know him all over the car which by the way uh the scaling of the hood wasn't right so we were actually going to redo this and the hood will look a bit better and some of the stickers we still got to modify but overall the car looked amazing performed amazing i'm excited for orlando in two weeks uh now we're going to pack up we're back home and start going through this thing back at the shop thank you guys so much i'll see you soon when you say\n"