Vicdrift x Road King Chassis :: Round 1 2013

Grant — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 10:48:01 +0000

The drift competition season has well and truly kicked off here in Victoria with round one of the VicDrift competition wrapping up just over a week ago at Melbourne’s Calder Park Raceway.
The track had been set on fire with non-stop drift action all weekend, starting with a full day of open practice on the Saturday and then the first of the three round competition on the Sunday.
There were plenty of familiar faces and also a whole heap of fresh cars thrown into the mix for Sunday’s competition.
(There’s load of extra pics hidden in this article, simply roll your pointer over a photo and chances are you’ll see another image load up… Magic!)

Arriving track-side bright and early, it was soon apparent just how wet the track was from the night of steady rain… this was going to make things interesting.

Khudar’s S14 was still wearing the FD banner from the Formula Drift Asia competition that was held here in Melbourne recently.

Justin’s R32 showing its’ battle scars with pride.

We were looking forward to seeing how Peter and his R33 would go as this is a driver that has really been killing it of late!

Drivers battled the freezing cold and wet conditions to get the finishing touches ready for the first practice session.

Interstate star and all round top bloke, Jake Jones, was revving the guts out of his RB powered Nissan Onevia in the early sessions. Some of the high powered cars struggled and the near stock ‘streeters’ seemed to flourish with the super wet conditions.

Some of the drivers got a little too excited with the instant horse power gained from the wet surface and found themselves a little too close to the wall.

The Insane Drifters are still one man down with Papa’s engine still being repaired after the ADGP/FD double header a couple of months ago.
Aggess stepped up to the challenge and was driving twice as hard in his proven and competition winning SR20 powered 180SX.

Things were starting to dry up but there were still plenty of wet spots with some huge puddles sitting close to the wall.
This caused some issues with cars going from dry to wet and back to dry, meaning we saw plenty of spins and near misses with the wall.

The award for the most interesting looking car certainly went to Scott and his Nissan Laurel. There’s more to this book than its’ cover or should I say camber”
The somewhat ‘missile’ like appearance hides a lot of ingenious and clever ideas on the inside. Everywhere you look there is something on this car that just works but looking at it your brain says it shouldn’t work at all!

Easily our highlight from the field was watching Chris chuck his Toyota Cressida into the wall all day. The expression session at the end of the day was quite an experience!

The biggest casualty of the morning was Adam’s S13, with a lock up sending him hard into the wall. After the impact, Adam managed to straighten everything up and make it back out on to the track but was plagued by issues all afternoon and eventually finished up the day early.

The still damp track made for some ridiculous entries into the huge sweeping last corner.

Matt Russel in his ‘little 86 that could’ was out in force and after finding his groove, qualified in 7th place.

The El Haouli brothers were setting the bar very high all day. As soon as the track started to dry out they were chalking up the track with a constant cloud of smoke trailing behind them.

Khudar started the day very strong after qualifying 2nd!!

After the practice sessions and qualifying rounds were done and dusted, it was time to check out the start line. Here the drivers were positioned in battle order and a quick drop of the arms sent the drivers flying down the straight towards the first corner.

The start line crew gave each driver some simple instructions before each warm up lap or battle.

All the while, they were paying close attention to the battle tree and making sure drivers were on time for each battle.

The energy from the start line was super exciting, waiting between each run there was this eerie silence that seemed to last forever and then bam! the radio would cut in “Send the next car”. Then an engine would fire up and the next car was waved through as it bounced off the limiter screaming up to a suitable speed to initiate into the first corner.

Jake’s Silvia – now available in ‘clean skin’. Jake is now a privateer driver and the car looks super clean without all the stickers, which is a welcome change.

Jake seems more determined than ever and we look forward to seeing him take on some of the biggest names in the sport later in the year at WTAC.

It’s the little details we love in some of these drift cars. Matt’s wheel of choice and signature finish to all his AE86’s… Impul Hoshino Racing <3

The Supreme Caravan Racing S13’s Nascar inspired theme always looks at home at Calder Park, given the brief history running Nascar in the Thunderdome next door.

Tension levels at the start line were very high at times. Here Scott can be seen taking a swig from his imaginary flask of whiskey. Everyone deals with the stress differently.

By now the battles were well and truly underway with the top 8 nearly over. After some fierce battles, we saw some big names knocked out early before the top 4.
Jake Jones and Khudar El Haouli were defeated in the top 8.

Aggess took the win against Russel leaving him in 4th place.

Prosenik took the win against Moe in the blue R32 which meant it was two of the home favourites going head to head. Prosenik and Aggess fought as hard as they could to win the top spot for round 1.

It was so tough to call that they ended up doing 3 re-runs!!! A total of 4 battles to decide the winner.

Aggess crept ahead taking the win by the narrowest of margins, it really could have gone either way.

The boys chuffed with their podium finishes. From left to right – Prosenik, Agges and Moe.

After the award ceremony there was a brief gap for drivers to re-fuel and change tyres so they could get the most out of their entry fee. It was of course time for a good ol’ fashioned expression session!

Cat used the last session of the day to shine, putting down some solid laps around the track.

Most drivers took it as a chance to drive until every panel came off!!

Every tyre was used to the raggered edge!

Everywhere you looked there was new damage after each and every lap.

The star of the day (well our favourite anyway) Chris kept coming in harder and harder..

Finally scraping the length of the wall sending sparks flying and then just drifting off like nothing had happened!

Pretty sure he started the expression session with two taillights and a bumper bar.

Prosenik even enjoyed a couple of quick celebration laps, planting the throttle causing many people to stick their fingers in their ears to block the deafening sound from the monstrous V8!

Loved the Mr Sparkle decal on the bonnet of this 180SX!

Most cars were already packed up by this stage and we were glad to be getting out of the cold.

Another massive weekend of driving and a great start to the VicDrift x Road King Chassis series. We will be following every round in detail this year and can’t wait for the next event.
Make sure you check out the VicDrift website and facebook page to stay up to date with all the latest and hopefully we’ll see you at the next round!
http://www.vicdrift.com/
https://www.facebook.com/vicdrift

The current standings after round 1 are as follows…

Thanks for reading, If you guys would like to see a bunch more photos then leave us a comment below and we might put the rest up on our FB page.
Gwyn.

Aggess – Gripshiftslide

Vicdrift x Road King Chassis :: Round 1 2013