Michael Essa’s old ride, an E46 M3 packing a 2JZ engine.

Approaching the last week of February means that the Formula Drift season opener at the Streets of Long Beach is less than two months away.

Every year after the season is over, teams tinker with their cars, try new setups, and even build on the current setup to make the car perform better than the previous season. This season for Michael Essa will be different, as he isn’t going to be in a BMW chassis. Instead, Essa will be piloting a Chevrolet Camaro for the 2015 season and it’s going to be a complete beast.

The red Camaro SS you see in the photos is the car Essa is currently outfitting for the 2015 season, but before that it was a demo car for SLP performance, and you can bet it had some of their goodies on it when he received it. While a complete mods list is still unknown at this point, we do know KW Suspension is going to supply the coilovers for the car and BMR Suspension is going to supply some suspension components and chassis-stiffening goodies.

Essa’s big plan for the Camaro is to have it weigh in at under 2,800 pounds and produce a stout 1,000 horsepower. “I’m trying to make over 1,000 horsepower, or as close as I can get to that at the wheels and I think that might be a little bit of a stretch for that supercharger. I’m thinking normally-aspirated with some nitrous,” Essa stated. “No intercoolers, charge coolers, plumbing, or any of that stuff, so we can get rid of all that extra weight.”

A Formula Drift-spec roll cage and some weight reduction is inevitable.

Again for 2015, Essa will be running Yokohama Advan Neova tires on his ride. He’s also got a new teammate as well, and that would be Justin “JTP” Pawlak. With his own campaign this year, Pawlak will still be in a Mustang, but with backing from ROUSH (who also owns the SLP Performance brand). Yes, you read that right – Essa and Pawlak will be on the same team, promoting the worlds biggest automotive rivalry – the Camaro versus Mustang. “We’re on the same team, but we both want to win. We’re looking forward to all the drama that will come along with that,” Essa added.

Another shot of the roll cage in progress.

The 2015 Formula Drift season is going to be one hell of a ride. There are so many changes going on within the series, we can’t wait to see how it all pans out. We’ll be at the season opener at the Streets of Long beach to cover all of the crazy action, but for now we’ll just wait patiently and count the days until the weekend of April 10th. We want to thank Michael Essa for sitting down with us to talk about his new ride and the plans he has for it. It’s going to be weird not seeing him in a BMW this year, but we’re always down for a change, because, you know, change is good every once in a while.