Yes we may have been a little bit sun blinded by the awesome weather, and the event may not have gone 100% smoothly, but there’s no taking anything away from these three things about this event!
Number 1: The awesome location. Literally in the shadow of the Olympic arena’s, and across the road from an awesome shopping centre (with some nice bars and perhaps more importantly a killer milkshake stand)
Number 2: The track itself. It was ridiculous. An extremely narrow uphill curved run up, cresting with a jump and completely blind entry into a track that starts with a massive wall, then combines six outside clipping zones and some of the biggest bumps on the planet.. It was REALLY challenging!
Number 3: The awesome drivers, and the even more awesome cars!. There seemed to be a similar power struggle to Formula D going on, with twin turbo’d LS engined BMWs and BMW powered Nissans alongside the slightly more normal, but still incredibly potent 2JZ powered cars.
By the end of the event there were more than a few cars not quite in full working order, and our own DW86 was amongst them.
We’d struggled with the ride height and hitting the floor through 90% of the course, so the unthinkable was done, and we raised it up! This improved the handling, and I was finally starting to push somewhere towards the correct line I’d been missing for entire rest of the day, when the rear axle decided it didn’t want to be a part of the car any more.
An original Nascar steel drop bracket had snapped as we initiated over one of the serious bumps. It was the end of our driving weekend as the part is under so much stress it just wasn’t worth the risk of welding it and potentially having the axle leave the car and hit the crowd.
But with a primo viewing spot on top of the Driftworks trailer, we were more than happy to stay and watch everyone else out on track, and our suspicions of this becoming an eventful first round were correct. It was fantastic to watch!
After some spectacular runs, mechanical failures and fires, the competition ended a little abruptly, as the turbo’d LS BMW E46 discarded it’s pistons all over the track as it crossed the line in it’s final run of the top 4 so the final couldn’t happen, and the guy that was supposed to be running for 3rd against Dan Chapman had also crashed his car too seriously to recover. I’ve never seen anything like that happen in competition, but this is after all motorsport, and as we know; pretty much anything can happen.
Qualification Results:
Q1: Piotr Wiecek
Q2: Dawid Karkosik
Q3: Janis Eglite
Finishing positions:
1.Piotr Wiecek Poland Budmat Auto
2.Janis Eglite Latvia Zeetex Tire
3.Dan Chapman UK CMR Altenzo Tires
What a great season opener for Drift Allstars, we really hope they can return to this venue next year. We look forward to being a part of it.
Phil
Photos by Rich Starkey.
Like it. I have been previously looking for this data. Great facts I will come back to get information regarding diets that work.
This can be great submit that people was waiting around for for this kind of write-up and therefore i have got purchased some helpful tips out of this site. Be grateful for discussing these specifics
Love it!