Papadakis Racing and their crew did exactly what they trained for and swapped a new engine in when Aasbo’s blew within 40 minutes and stilled qualified.

Papadakis Racing managed to swap in a fresh engine for Fredric Aasbo, after his original boosted 2AR-FE blew its guts out on the tracks, within 40 minutes. Thanks to just how prepared Papadakis Racing is, Fredric Aasbo still managed to make it out on the track and completed a second qualifying run, good enough for the big dance earlier today.

Check out the moment during his first qualifying run when things under the hood went terribly wrong. FF to 1:13:00 if the stream doesn’t FF for you.

As his first qualifying run shows, his engine didn’t literally quit without warning. As the announcers point out, it looks like something caused his engine to suddenly lose lots of power.

Later on the next day we learned that an oil line blew off and Aasbo, being the experienced driver that he is, tried to eke out a full run even with power slipping out of his fingers by the second. But, an engine without oil soon seizes and that’s exactly what happened.

Earlier last year I blogged about how spectators at Streets of Long Beach caught Papdakis Racing doing a full engine swap on a practice day. Initially, people thought he had problems with his Corolla but nope, they were just practicing.

Papadakis Racing swaps engines in the pits for Formula Drift practice

It looks like that practice finally paid off.

Papadakis started his second qualifying run last, managed an 18th place finish, and made it into the big dance earlier today.

Those who watched the competition saw Aasbo make it past Top 32 but rammed into James Deane from Worthouse Racing past the finishing line, knocking himself out of contention for a podium.

Aasbo was first overall in the Pro standings so this latest hiccup will knock him off the leaderboard. But, there are three more rounds to get points so he can still finish first only after some flawless runs.

But, the real story yesterday was Papdakis Racing and their mechanics. Well done, guys.

-Hat tip to Peter

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