Stephan Verdier. Global RallyCross Championship – Round 2. My Comments.

Stephan Verdier – My Life at Speed. Stephan is one of my good friends. Check out his website and like him on Facebook! GT.

Global RallyCross Championship – Round 2

Round 2 was at Seattle last Friday and Saturday. As you can imagine it was a mud fest. April in Seattle is not really dry. Cool track with the big jump again but we also had to drive at 100 mph in a warehouse, pretty fun. (Dirtfish Rally School)

Friday went really good, qualify 7th and finished 3rd for that event behind the 2 Ford again. I had an awesome battle with Dave Mirra in the factory Subaru and end up winning it. Got a good battle with Tanner, I was leading when I got a brain fart and stop 1 lap short thinking it was over. Tanner passed me back and won. Yep getting old is a drag!!!

Saturday started really good. I qualify 1st, first pole position of the season, that was a great improvement from 7th the day before. I made it straight to the A final.

A final with 6 cars, I got a descent start and was 4th after the first turn, I managed to gain 1 position by the end of the first lap, but also got a puncture in the left rear tire. With the track going clockwise, not the tire you want to loose. I keep going, the tire left the wheel by the end of lap 2 and I drove it like a mad man to the end. I finished 4th, not bad considering.

I’m now 2nd in point in the championship behind Tanner Foust and in front of Rhys Millen.

Me vs mirra, we raced a 3 rd time and I won.

Stephan

Since his teenage years, Stephan has been involved in the racing world. At the young age of 17 in his birth country of France, he competed in a go-kart championship finishing 8th in the nation. In 1993 stephan came out on top after competing against 1200 applicants in the Brigdeston Driver search, then went on to compete in various formula races, winning nothing less than 5th place. Rally came next, beginning at CRS championships in 2001. Driving a 1988 323 GTX, stephan ended up placing 2nd in the PGT class. A few years later in a 2002 Subaru WRX, he began to compete in the SCCA Werstern State Rally Championship’s PGT class. After numerous podium finishes and being the first PGT team to ever win an event overall, Verdier and his team took home the championship win. The following year, he was again the domineer in his class with 4 wins. In 2005, stephan ran Pikes Peak Hill Climb in the Autosport Engineering’s 2005 WRX STI, winning the open class, overall in the rally competition and the hill climb. Starting in 2006, Stephan jumped into drifting with a brand new Nissan s14, he battle amongst many drivers and performed great for his first year. In 2008, Verdier finished 13th in the formula Drift championship and 13th at the Red Bull World Championship. In the 2009 season, Stephan his in the top 16 drifters in USA and won his first event overall at round 6 Sonoma. As now in the 2010 Formula Drift season, Stephan is 13th in the championship with 4 events to go. He also competed at the 2010 X-Games 16 in the SuperRally event. Aside from the racing Stephan is also a precision/stunt driver for commercial and movie. He has worked with Audi, Porches, Ford, Dodge, Subaru, Hyundai, Mitsubishi for TV commercial and as an instructors and professional driver for launch of new models.