2009 Mazda RX-8 R3 - Nitto Tires - Super Street Magazine

The biggest problem with drifting is that we know the car is prone to damage at any given time, especially the rear. My experience with the A'PEXi FD resulted in pulling quarter panels at almost every event. Bash upon bash. There had to be a clearer solution to address this ongoing problem. On top of that, judges promoted the drivers in scraping the walls. After studying several drift videos, I realized that in drift, the driver would lightly scrape the wall for points. If the driver were to push the drift further into the wall, he would run the risk of disrupting the drift. The quarter panel can only absorb so much impact before there would be no give at all, roughly two inches (at most) of travel into the wall with a stock car. If the drift would go further than the two inches, the impact would force the front end to go into the wall, especially on banks. Another saying goes: "With every action there is a direct proportional reaction." Much like the metal balls suspended by fishing wire on everyone's desk. You move one ball to the side and let go so it results in the opposing ball being banged up. The wall has now become the road below the car but turned sideways. That's how we saw it. I have a lot of pride for the vehicles Bergenholtz Racing produces and it hurts me to see any of them get damaged in any way. We had to come up with a solution, so Gary Steen and I came up with the spring/shock-loaded bash bar. Instead of scraping the paint and ruining the body we engineered a bar that would scrape the wall and help absorb the impact. We wanted to absorb riding the wall. I spent countless hours drawing at night how I wanted to construct this absorber drifting concoction. Nevertheless, Gary and I came up with a solid design and started fabricating away. The invention is able to absorb roughly three inches of wall before scrubbing paint. If the driver wants to move in a little further there is another 2.5 inches of travel available. All of this travel will absorb impact without disturbing drift. The quarter panels as well as bumper are allowed to flex. Nothing is rigidly mounted. This was going to be our "wheelie bar invention" but for drifting. Bergenholtz Racing has always prided itself as an innovator and this invention was going to do just that.

The flexible quarter panels were just the start. Troy Sumitomo was able to create these fiberglass quarter-panels from the existing stock RX-8 units. He even widened them an additional inch to provide some clearance for wider Nitto NT05 rubber. The car is extremely modular and much like a big "Snap-Tite Model Kit". It makes it extremely easy to work on and most of all makes all the panels replaceable. With the nature of drifting this was a must. I did not want to constantly put layer upon layer of Bondo over the quarter-panel for repairs. If it's broke simply replace the panel. All exterior panels are removable including the roof. Once it is completely apart, the car looks very much like a dune buggy. The quarter panels and body kit were all made by Troy Sumitomo of Five:Axis; all the doors and trunk lid were provided by Seibon fiberglass.

In addition to the bumper bars, we had to construct mounts for the custom APR wing. Most wings are mounted to the trunk via bracket. We felt that the trunk had too much flex in it to provide any downforce so we felt the best way to connect the wing was to the chassis. Again, it had to look cool considering the wing not only provided performance value but had to look really cool. We opted to use streamline tubing. The tubing looks just as aerodynamic as the wing and is attached directly to the chassis right at the rear-most part of the crossmember. The amount of direct down force to the chassis is second to none.