ADGP Rnd 2 :: Day Two At The Thunder Dome
Finally the wait is over!!
I present to you, our ADGP Round Two, day two coverage!
After a monstrous day of qualifying, the competition was going to be fierce. Speculation was that Fink might not be the sure thing like he has been for every other round, with some serious mechanical issues placing a cloud of doubt over Fink’s head for the remainder of the weekend.
So the top spot could really be up for grabs from anyone!
We hit the track at 7:30am sharp, with temperatures dropping the night before it was literally freezing!
The pit area was a sea of beanies and gloves.
Soon the sun cracked over the hill and things started to warm up… It was now a cozy 8 degrees!
Hands down, the Pidwell S13 has to be my favorite car at this round of the ADGP. With every panel showing some damage in true missile form, it doesn’t feel like your average track beater.
There is just something different about this car. It is a purposely built drifter that somewhere along the lines got a bit rough and never really recovered. After years of being truly driven it now looks like it sits here…
Absolutely perfect!
Homemade lip spoiler = Baller as fuck!
Adam’s V8 swapped 200SX was gaining a strong following after impressing a lot of people during the qualifying with some impressive driving and one hell of an exhaust note!
Adam finished half way up the field in 8th position. With more on the line today, we knew the car would not stay this pretty…
The run-off sections of Calder Park were set to claim a few victims.
9:30am hit and it was time for drivers to fill up the start grid.
After a few practice runs, the real competition got under way!
Danny “Denzo” Vahoumis was itching to get back out on the track first thing in the morning.
Danny managed to qualify 5th, so big things were expected from the RB powered S15. The Achilles S15 finished in the exact same position on Sunday ending up in 5th spot!!
Papa from the Insane Drifter has really stepped up in the competition game recently. John finished in the top 20 in 19th place!
It was great driving from one of the best looking S14’s going around!
Clint Cohen in the Team Chaulkin Sil80 was a force to be reckoned with on Sunday. With some insane power and fantastic sliding, he was a strong contender for 1st place.
One of the unfortunate interstate drivers to experience a few issues on the weekend was Ryan “Slide” Cummings, after a leaking radiator forced him to miss out on some vital practice during the morning sessions.
The team quickly got it sorted and the car was out and putting on the smoke show once again!
Ryan was knocked out early before the top 16, but still holds a tie for 10th place overall for both rounds so far.
Don’t worry about not seeing much of the car in these photos, soon we will have our full feature of this S13 live on the site!
This was the last lap where Adam’s S14 would look like this…
Adam came off the track and hit some nasty terrain, ripping both the front and rear bars apart!
Ben Purtell fought his way into the top 10. The bright yellow 180SX looked like it had come straight from Japan!
Ender Esenyel was showing us some of his best driving yet in this competition and on his home turf too!
It seems his new favorite number is 6…
Qualifying 6th on Saturday and finishing 6th place on Sunday!
It seems the walls had claimed another victim…
Anthony Cece’s Nissan Cefiro wasn’t looking as straight as it did the day before.
Peter Vouyoukas’s R33 seemed to have changed it’s steering components since the last event.
The car now has massive amounts of lock available!
However this didn’t help secure a poll position for Peter after a close battle with Clint Cohen.
We are big fans of this Skyline. The car doesn’t miss a beat at all and was back at Calder Park the following week frying more tyres at a practice day!
John Dreyer’s S13 was easily one of the most exciting cars at the round, with the finishing touches being completed the night before the practice day.
Inside the JDM-R S13 are some of the best details we have ever seen in a drift car here in Australia.
Believe it or not this car is running a stock standard gen 3 V8 and transmission!!
John piloted his way into 3rd place. So with a bit more money and fine tuning he plans to take on every competition he can get to!
We can’t wait to see more of this beast in action!!
Hayden Buckham was knocked out after contact with Pidwells S13 causing a spin, the judges gave Pidwell the win and Hayden went on to finish his tyres during the afternoons expression sessions.
In the street class it was the battle of the JZX Chasers, Nic Wilson hunting down Nathan Saunders.
Nic went on to take the win and had a very close battle for 1st place with Clint Cohen in the ‘Team Chaulkin’ 180SX.
With multiple contacts throughout the battle the judges awarded top spot to Nic!
Nic “Drift Kid” Coulson in VE ute was the runner up for round two, finishing in 4th place with a brand new car and being the youngest competitor, this is no ordinary achievement!
Stirling Wright was a brand new crowd favourite with a new theme and a strong following from driving at the South Australian Drift Super Cup. Stirling was consistent and pushing very hard all day.
Stirling was knocked out rather early in a battle against Nic Wilson in the white Chaser, after hitting the dirt and spinning right on the finish line the judges awarded Nic the win.
Brett “The Reaper” Reid was out having a blast after having several collisions with the wall he soon lost the fear of breaking his baby and just started blazing tyres!
The Reaper was knocked out very early on in the day but made an appearance in every open session just to make up for it!
People’s choice winners, Simon Michelmore and Nigel Petrie went head to head after receiving the most amount of votes.
After numerous reruns (simply because it was just that good watching the two bright red cars go door to door around the track) Andrew Hawkins announced Nigel as the winner.
After a two year long stint Nigel is planning to strip the 180SX and freshen up the car from top to bottom, front to back, the last outing will be the 2012 Tectalloy Drift Challenge at this years WTAC in Sydney.
Both drivers were just happy to have some private track time after being knocked out fairly early in the competition.
Simon was showing off his brand new ‘no hands’ trick high up on the bank. Since the event there has been about 7 million photos of Simon waving his hands in the air while nearly scraping the wall!!
Simon is set to compete alongside Nigel at the Tectalloy Drift Challenge as well, here’s hoping we can see the duo go head to head again later this year!
During the lunch break the pits went from the chaos of teams frantically changing wheels and fixing issues from blown turbos to even changing engine bearings, to a different kind of chaos…
The spectator ‘pit walk’ where fans can literally walk around the cars while teams are making repairs and they can even stop in for an autograph with their favorite driver!
Not long after lunch, Luke Fink got a chance to drive his S14.
First up was a battle with local mad man from the Insane Drifters, Andreas “Aggis” Paraskevas.
Luke took the win moving forward into the top 8.
Here is the battle between Pidwell and Buckham, coming into the first corner the VE clipped the S13’s rear bumper causing a spin.
The judges in accordance with the rules awarded Pidwell in the S13 the win.
Soon the track was getting damp from some light rain and the smoke show was over. Here the back of Fink’s S14 would normally be ablaze with smoke but a few puffs was all the wet tyres could muster.
The moment everyone had been waiting two days for…
The final battle, Whyte Vs Fink.
Both driver were the top qualifiers so the Judges had to work hard to determine the winner…
As the announcement was made, everyone was in shock because for the first time in the series Luke Fink came in second losing his winning streak to Rob Whyte in the Monster Energy 350Z.
After the award ceremony Luke quickly checked to see how much of the Holford Motors S14 was intact after some wall kissing action.
The winning car after some very intense battles!
Two of the best drifters this country has to offer, Fink and Whyte.
As the event wound up the track was hired till 5pm so many drivers turned the cars back on and headed out to make the most of one of Australia’s best drift circuits.
This post does not conclude our ADGP coverage, we still have a video in the works so you can see all the action unfold in motion!! What a crazy world we live in!
The full results can be found here ::
http://trackbattle.com.au/adgp/
We would like to quickly thank all the organisers for another massive event and each and every driver for getting their cars ready and destroying them like mad men purely for our entertainment!
Without you guys the world would be a boring place, just keep drifting!
– Gwyn.