JUMANJI NIGHTS

I’m not going to lie, when I first heard there was going to be a drifting event named “Jumanji nights” in deepest, darkest Fife I imagined some strange adaptation of the movie. However I’m happy to say I was wrong and that Jeek and Kyle from Chizfab did a great job of organising the whole event, Robin Williams would be proud!

The name of the event was a complete accident and was made up on a whim. The story behind it was that at an NDC round last year one of the slide motorsport guys was “manji-ing” the whole straight. When he got out the car he said “hey I just did like 7 jumanji’s there!”. The Chizfab boys found it hilarious and it has stuck ever since!

Arriving at the car park of Thunder Valley raceway there was already a good feeling about the event, I was 2 hours early than when the gates were open to the general public but already there was a mass of cool looking cars being prepared by the drivers for a day of mass carnage and smoke!

There were many cool cars in the spectator car park too!

Thunder valley raceway in Lochgelly, Fife first opened its gates in April 2010. The original use was for stock car racing (and still is used for stock cars) however it now looks like this will be the regular venue for amateur and professional drifters alike to go out on track to practice their sideways skills! The idea behind Jumanji nights was to give drivers another course in Scotland to have fun on and also to be able to practice twinning and wall runs, a great idea if you ask me!

The track itself is an oval shape with walls surrounding the whole course. There are several places for the crowd to sit to seek refuge from the rain, these were put into good use yesterday! The weather however didn’t dampen the spirits of anyone, and with drivers going on track and still giving it all out it made for an exciting show for the crowd. The slippy surface was a bit too much for this S15 owner, binning his car early on in the day. That must have been an unpleasant journey all the way back home to England!

The weather eventually dried up, meaning I could finally get some pictures with a bit more smoke. And the drivers could go even harder than what they were in the rain.  This E30 sounded like hell, but in a good way!

The hat surprised everyone with his N/A FC3S RX-7. Even although the car had little power, Stu still managed to give it mega death and get it sideways! Stu was trying all day to get a lot of twinning on the go along with some big wall runs, and no surprise he managed both!

One car that really, really stood out to me on the day was Dunkz Type-X inspired 200SX. This car is equipped with Work VS-KF’s, full Type-X aero and a fancy java black type paint job.  The car not only looks incredible, but gets pretty sideways too! Hopefully sometime in the future I’ll be able to fully feature this car!

There were also a couple of the pro drifters out, Steven Donnelly in his BDC spec Soarer and Martin Mucha attended in his Supra.

These guys were on form 100% and the main reason my eyes were constantly being attacked by tiny little bits of rubber!

Team Chizfab of course had a few of their cars out, this 6 series BMW is something different but it worked well!

Dunkz was going so hard a tyre flew off of one of his rear wheels. This could have damaged one of his VS-KF’s, hopefully it didn’t!

The day was coming to an end. I had to leave early but as I was leaving the omega taxi’s were out in force still providing some great action!

Over all I’d say the day was a roaring success. Hopefully with more coverage and a variation of cars going on track it will pull more and more people in. Well done to the Chizfab guys for organising such a great day. And thank you to the marshalls and other staff at Thunder Valley for ensuring everyone stayed safe and for providing some quality burgers!

In the future the track will have some changes to it to make it more drift friendly. I can’t wait to see that! I hope to attend the next Jumanji nights whenever that may be as I’m sure many, many other people will too!

RC