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Kyle Mohan, Drifter By Danny Simon, Special to Random Lengths News
Editors Note: Kyle Mohan will race in the drifting competition on Saturday April 7 and drive a pace car for Indie car events April 13 through 15.
During his second run at the 2011 Formula
April 7
The Cerny Brothers Robert and Scott Cerny are scheduled to perform April 7 at Alvas Showroom. The Cerny Brothers self-released their album in 2011. Ticket price is $20. Details: (800) 403-3447 Venue: Alvas Showroom Location: 1417 W. 8th St., San Pedro
April 14
Ernie Watts Two-time Grammy Award winner Ernie Watts, is scheduled to perform April 14 at Alvas Showroom. Watts is one of the most versatile and prolific saxophone players in music. It has been more than 50 years since he first picked up a saxophone, and from age 16 on he has been playing professionally, initially while still attending school. Watts has been featured on more than 500 recordings by artists ranging from Cannonball Adderley to Frank Zappa, always exhibiting his unforgettable trademark sound. Bubba Jackson from KJZZ will be the MC for the evening. Ticket price is $20. Details: (800) 403-3447 Venue: Alvas Showroom Location: 1417 W. 8th St., San Pedro Disney in Concert: Tale as Old as Time The Golden State Pops Orchestra performs Disney music at 7 p.m. April 14, at the El Segundo Performing Arts Center. As the 10-year-old nonprofit orchestra sought new spaces to produce their unique brand of entertainment, the city of El Segundo emerged as a perfect match with GSPO’s family-friendly approach to accessible orchestra music. Details: (310) 433 8774; www.gspo.com Venue: El Segundo Performing Arts Center Location: 640 Main St., El Segundo
April 15
Richard Smith & Julie Adams From Bach to Beatles and barn-burners to ballads, passion is guaranteed, when world renowned fingerstyle guitarist Richard Smith and cellist Julie Adams join forces, April 15 at Alvas Showroom in San Pedro. Ticket price is $20. Details: (800) 403-3447 Venue: Alvas Showroom Location: 1417 W. 8th St., San Pedro
Community/Family April 6
QSpeak Series Launches with Sister Spit The Center Long Beach presents the 2012 QSpeak Series, the only speaker series devoted to showcasing LGBTQ-focused artistic content in Long Beach, at 7 p.m. April 6, at the Art Theatre. Venue: Art Theatre Location: 2025 E. 4th St., Long Beach
April 8
Meet the Grunion The Aquarium will open at 8 p.m. and a film on grunion begins at 9 p.m. April 8 in the John M. Olguin Auditorium. Prior to the predicted run, everyone will gather on the beach to await the grunion. The program cost is $5 for adults and $1 for seniors, students and children. Details: (310) 548-7562; www.cabrillomarineaquarium.org Venue: Cabrillo Marine Aquarium Location: 3720 Stephen M. White Dr., San Pedro
April 13
Celebrating Women’s History Month The Center Long Beach is proud to present and host the 2012 Women’s History Month Speakers’ Series featuring Jeanne Córdova, a pioneering LGBTQ activist, organizer and writer at 6:30 p.m. April 13. She will be discussing her latest book, When We Were Outlaws: a Memoir of Love & Revolution. Details: www.centerlb.org Venue: The Center Long Beach Location: 2017 E. 4th St., Long Beach
April 14
Chandler Preserve Nature Walk Admire the flourishing 28-acre Chandler Preserve, from 9 to 11 a.m., featuring restored habitat for endangered blue butterflies and look for special native wildflowers. Details: (310) 541-7613 Community/Family Calendar to page 16.
April 6 – 19, 2012
Drift in Las Vegas, Kyle Mohan discovered that his car’s break lines had failed. “I thought about the car,” says Mohan of the seconds before the crash, “Oh, this isn’t gonna be good.” He slide sideways to avoid totaling the car and possibly killing himself. Mohan hit the wall at 100 mph. Not surprisingly, Mohan doesn’t remember the crash, but as doctors checked him out in a hospital trauma bay, he watched it again and again on his phone as videos poured in from friends and his support team. He’s thankful for his luck, but the experience didn’t dissuade him one iota from getting back in the driver’s seat. Crashing is a simply a reality of the sport that he’s dedicated himself to for a decade.
“The crowd gets going when they see the sparks, the billowing smoke, the burn outs, the almost crashes,” says Mohan with a mischievous grin, “The crashes are only part of it.” Mohan’s star has risen with the young sport popularized by the Fast and Furious film series — he performed as a stunt driver in one of the films — and he seems to have all the requisite qualities of a star; the good looks, an unflinching bravado and a mature media savvy, which he may have picked up on previous failed ascents toward fame. Before drifting, Mohan was a sponsored skate boarder and amateur musician poised for success until his band split up and he shattered his ankle. During his 8-month convalescence, Mohan attended the Long Beach City College studying fine arts and following in the footsteps of his grandmother, but he soon became frustrated with the high emphasis placed on computer graphics. Sensing that a career teaching high school art classes would be unsatisfying, Mohan left school and decided that whatever his fate, he would be in control.
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Photo by Danny Simon
Through his father’s automotive industry connections, Mohan found a paid internship at Mazdatrix, an elite engine shop owned by retired racer, Dave Lemon. Initially, Mohan did office work and swept floors and eventually proved his worth to Lemon who offered the him a career saying, “We’ll make you into an engine builder.” Under the watchful eye of master motor builder John Kepler, Mohan learned every step of car mechanics and manufacturing, from molding fiberglass to building motors. And in the process, he realized that he wanted to be a race car driver. “My boss laughed at me, my boss’s wife laughed at me... Everybody laughed at me.” While he had always been a loyal fan of the sport, Mohan hadn’t shown interest in professional racing previously; he didn’t get his drivers license until he was 18 and he hadn’t studied or trained as a driver. But after placing fourth in his first event, people quickly changed their minds about his prospects. However, there was still a question of financing, because racing is an incredibly expensive sport often dominated by wealthy drivers. Mohan describes himself as middle class, meaning he has big dreams and a strong work ethic with which to realize them. It took a bit of time, but he eventually found solid sponsorship from his employer, Mazda and Nexen Performance Tires. Producing sensational sparks and smoke, drifters slide around the track holding their cars at the breaking point and literally burn rubber. “I’ll go through 30 tires in a weekend,” says Mohan pointing to Mazdatrix’s white trailer which transports the car, the tires and everything else needed for an event. In a few weeks, Mohan will make his fifth trip to China to compete amongst the world’s elite racers. But there’s much to do before he leaves the country. At the Long Beach Grand Prix, Mohan will drive a pace car and perform a drifting demo. In the time between the events, Mohan and his team will work around the clock to prepare his vehicles. “It takes about 300 hours to get a car ready to go,” says Joe Mohan showing me around one of his son’s purple Mazda RX-8 race cars; purple is the color of Nexen Performance Tires. Between races, the cars are stripped down and rebuilt in a garage located on Signal Hill in Long Beach. Including his father, Mohan leads a dedicated support team and he averages 14hour days, seven days a week, working by day at Mazdatrix and by night on his cars. Enthusiastic and energized like Thumper on Red Bull, he has a rare focus and it’s hard to picture him ever powering down. Once a year, he unplugs entirely for a week and escapes with his long term girlfriend and recent fiancee, Adrienne. At home he researches mechanics and racing and watches the Simpsons, “Growing up, it was the show. The father and son relationship … I caused my fair share of trouble” Like anything else worth doing well, racing takes a tremendous amount of practice. Occasionally, Mohan teaches at racing schools and the students that put in the time do progress, but beyond craft, racing requires an instinctual intelligence that’s comically referred to amongst drivers as the “pucker factor.” “You feel it in your ass,” laughs Mohan, “The seat of your pants tells you how close you are to the wall and the breaking point of the car.”
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