On top of being involved in US Drift, Geoff has his hands in the Midwest Drift Union (MDU). This past weekend (9/20-21), Geoff and the GS Drifting crew took off to Xenia, OH to participate at the final Midwest Drift Union event of the season at the Kilkare Speedway.
Prior to this event, the last event held on the Streets of Detroit was a fun, albeit disappointing result for Geoff. Not that they didn’t place well, but just that some judging calls weren’t as scrutinized as they should have been. Anyway, not one to let the second place finish from that event put Geoff and the team down, they’ve since won the US Drift championship for 2013, took the win for the Formula Drift Pro-Am series at Texas, and were looking forward to finishing the Midwest Drift Union series.
Here’s Geoff’s feedback of the final round of MDU:
“Streetlife Tour is always a big turnout. Some of the best names on the East coast and Midwest come out to battle for first place, cash and bragging rights. It also happens to be the final round of the Midwest Drift Union series.
In 2012 we went to the finals and faced the 2012 MDU champ “Magic” Mike Pollard. In the final battle during his lead run, mike debeaded a tire which sent him into the wall, spinning out back into the bank and hitting me into a wall. We were both okay, which was great, but we never got to finish the battle because his car couldn’t make it back out. I Did a Bi run and got the win!
So fast forward a year, we’ve just won the US DRIFT 2013 series, 2nd at Holley LS fest and a first place finish at Formula Drift Pro am series at Texas Motor Speedway. We had an amazing finish and we knew that coming into the final round of the Midwest drift union there was going to be a lot of pressure. Not only were we second in points (at 107 points), 13 behind the leader Brian Peters (at 120 points), but we also had to try and repeat another first place finish. Mike Skudlerack wasn’t far behind in points with 105 and Andrew Lewis with 102.
The competition was fierce. “Rapper” Dan Savage, Dave Bellemo and James Evans came from the the VA/MD area. I faced them a bunch of times during US drift series. So, with the knowledge of how each driver was this season, I knew this weekend was no joke. All of the Midwest Drift Union dudes were there, as well. Mike Skudlerack, Andrew Lewis, Jake Mautren, and Shane Whalley, just to name a few.
We came to the track Friday afternoon only to see a huge overcast right above the oval track. We went through tech, had a small drivers meeting and got into our groups. Group A hit the track. Within 15 minutes someone in a red FC hit the wall HARD and the track went cold for a while. Then it started to rain. “No big deal” I thought as the rain would stop. A couple minutes later a monsoon came through and you couldn’t even see 3 feet in front of you. The staff called it in for the day and we went back to our hotel to catch up on some much needed sleep.
On Saturday the rain continued to come down until lunch time. The staff decided to break practice sessions up to 20 minutes each. The course was still wet so every run group first runs were on ice. I think we had a total of 4 practice laps until we had another drivers meeting. We were supposed to go into qualifying, but since it rained they gave us an extra practice session.
We were pumped! we only linked the course maybe twice and knew we needed to do more before we felt really comfortable and gave it our all. So we went out for our first practice run before qualifying, entered hard into the bank and halfway through the bank, BOOM, we blow up another differential. That put a quick end to getting another practice run before qualifying!
We tried our best and swapped the diff in about 10 minutes trying to get back out to feel the new differential out, but our time was up. We stressed hard going into qualifying. While going onto grid to qualify Brian Peters came up to me and told me about his car. His trans blew up and he couldn’t compete today. He is a great driver so I was bummed that he couldn’t come out and battle, but it was a little stress reliever and we didn’t have enough already!
On our first run, we gave little angle into the bank and hit it pretty hard, but I was about 5 feet coming off of the inner clip before the infield. I knew what I had to do for the second run! I launched hard and entered higher, but had a bobble on the bank and was still 3 feet off of the same inner clip. Happy we put points on the board, but upset because we knew that was not a top qualifying run. At the meeting we found out we qualified 7th and our first battle was up against Shane Whaley.
I’ve faced Shane before at round 3 The streets of Detroit. We got the win there and Shane is a competitive driver, so we knew he was out for blood. During our follow run, Shane drove off track in the infield giving us the win.
Our next battle was against our good friend “Rapper” Dan Savage. We have faced “Rapper” a bunch of times this season, with the last battle at Holley LS fest. We both made it to the finals where Rapper took the win and I placed second. This knew it would be a tough battle. However, during our lead run, “Rapper” broke an axle near the end of the course and couldn’t get his car fixed in the 5 minute time period.
here it was, the Most anticipated battle of the night and possibly year in the Pro Am series. “Magic” Mike Pollard vs. Geoff Stoneback. We followed first laying down a solid follow run, but a slight bobble in the bank gave mike the advantage. During our lead run mike sucked into us during the bank and was very aggressive . Maybe too aggressive because in the infield he followed real close and dropped 2 front tires in the dirt. I had no idea so when they called for a OMT I thought to myself, “here goes nothing leave it all on the table!”
We followed Pollard again and laid down a pretty sick follow run. On our lead run mike came in to hard and spun on the bank. I had no idea until the end of the course when I already saw him at starting grid! after our battle we hugged as good friends that we are and went to change tires. During that period we hard Mike Skudlerack smacked the wall hard. His car wasn’t as bad as James Evans but he couldn’t fix it in time and we were up against Jake Maturen.
Jake has always been solid driver and we haven’t faced him all season. We just had to do what we kept doing. Our front tires were loosing grip so on our lead run we e-braked hard into the bank to set the car up properly so we wouldn’t have a bobble like the previous runs. We laid down good lead and we were anxious to follow. We Followed Jake fast aggressive throughout the track.
When we pulled up to the ceremony, I was pumped. Previously Mike Skudlerack Crashed, having him finish in 4th wasn’t enough points to beat us. Brian Peter’s car broke so we were sitting on top of another 2013 Pro Am championship!”
Looks like Geoff did more than finish the MDU 2013 season. He finished the season at the top of the charts!
There has never been a dull moment at any of the events this past year. This final round of MDU wasn’t going to be any different. Qualifying at a low 7th place, Geoff had quite a task ahead of himself, and he achieved a great feat to get the overall win!
Once again, our most sincere congratulations to Geoff and the GS Drifting team on what has been a stellar year. We look forward to seeing Geoff continue to grow in 2014 as we’re sure his schedule will be jam-packed with events! Keep on the lookout for this guy!
Also, here’s a great write-up on Geoff from Wrecked Magazine
http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/blog/2013/10/01/geoff-stoneback-new-fd-driver-and-pro-am-champion/
