Track Events

Well I'm sure most of you have seen the results for Formula D this year, unfortunately due to a spill that wasn't cleaned up properly some of the competitors (Ian included) spun coming through the course and therefore did not qualify. A sad day for all of us here at Drift Safari.....

Anyway, onto happier things!  By the end of friday the guys had moved their cars over to the fatlace show to support their new sponsor and show off their beautiful cars.  I snapped a few pictures before they left for the show as I still had a whole event to cover on the track.  Check out Ians "new" (a few months old now) turbo setup!  Making 500+whp, it's quite the ride and still responsive!

One of the firs things I saw as I walked into the pits this year was Kohei's car... It's kind of hard to missa and has been nicknamed the "Zombie" for good reason!  With the amount of battle damge on this car you can tell Kohei gives it 120% at every event, leaving nothing to regret and nothing to think back on later is the attitude that has brought him to win the 3/8's competition and the last pro-am competition all within a month.  The Pro-Am event at this years Formula D was no exception, after a few hard battles Kohei landed 3rd place!

Next on the list of events for the weekend was the drivers signing... Ian was at that table for a solid hour (I'm not sure how his hand still moved after all that writing), but he stuck it out and supported the people that came to see him! Unfortunately his markers all ran dry before he could sign my new FD hat, but lucky for me I can get him to do that at any time.   And of course, being the awesome guy that he is, Ian had to rep his new sponsor, FATLACE! 

All in all we had a fantastic weekend and could not have asked for better weather, or better people in the community.  I have to hand out props to my fellow media people for sticking out the rediculous track temperatures and making sure they got all these amazing shots floating around.  I'm waiting for some more videos to pop up and I will be sure to share them with all you.

And one last image for our adoring fans and supporters....

Hey guys,

I headed out to the latest round of Prodrift, the Irish drift cahmpionship this past weekend, and thought I would throw up some pictures.

The two NEXEN tyres sponsord cars. James Dean in the SR powered FD, and Christy Carpenter in the 1JZ powered S15. Pimp cars.

Check the lock on this S15 from the UK! He was almost getting backwards entries.

This S15 is driven by one of the dudes from Boyzone, the Irish boyband. It has a twin turbo V8 from the nissan president.

This is a gangster AE86 driven by Alan Sinnott. SR powered.

Massive first corner entry....super dangerous too. Claimed about 6 cars during the day.

Alan doing some gardening on the entry to turn 1:

James getting so close to the wall and clipping point that the banners are flying up over his huge GT wing!

Christy's S15 is uber gangster:

Two lads form the team drift having a ball

Thats it for this round.....more to come from Mondello in early September.

Spud

I thought I would share a little more on my trip out to Wall Speedway in NJ.

I met up with Eric and Karl at the track on Thursday morning as they were unloading the cars.

Hankook have a pretty massive set up, but since it is being shared by 4 cars, it gets a little crowded. Especially when you have two cars break like they did, there are a very limited amount of resources to go around. 

Luckily Eric is a mechanic by trade and can wrench on his own car, or his blown axle shaft would not have been fixed in time..........time for them to realise that the car has some severe electrical problems too!

Once Ron and Ed from team Bergenholtz arrived, I spent the majority of my time hanging with them and getting a feel for how they operate. It was quite an eye opening experience having such access to two different FD teams during the weekend, and I have to say that the smaller team of the Full Tilt Mazda are far more organised and skilled than their much larger counterparts!

During Thursday practice, Joon blew an axle shaft, but the boys just replaced them with spares they have on hand in the truck. Ron was telling me that they carry spares of every part of the car, apart from an engine.........but he is working on that now.

After replacing the axle shaft, Ron's skills were tested again by the harsh track conditions at Wall, when the output shaft on the HKS sequential gearbox sheered in half (2nd time this season). I watched in awe as Ron replaced the gearbox, along with a softer clutch and driveshaft in record time to allow Joon to get back out on the track for some more practice.

Finally, with the car all back in one piece, Joon headed out for a couple of late practice runs, then it was time to qualify. A high five for the crew, then we jump in the golf cart and head to the top of the track to watch the runs:

Both Joon and the car looked 'all business' in the line up waiting to head out, but it just wasnt his weekend. The lack of practice time on the adjusted track due to the breakages, mixed with nerves, led to a couple of unforced errors which led to Joon not qualifying for the top 32.

With the day on Saturday free, all that was left to do was sit around, talk sh!t and ponder 'what ifs'.

Check out the pics I took of the on track action on my flickr page at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spud_photography/sets/72157624134028487/

Cheers for now,

Spud

Next Irish Prodrift event is next weekend, so will be shooting that event too.