Australia – Gripshiftslide

Drift Cadet :: Bringing Drifting To The Masses

Grant — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 12:54:50 +0000

The popularity of drift within Australia has gone through many phases and the ability to get into the sport has changed. Despite the national drifting series dwindling, statewide competitive drifting has increased, so the question is what is being done to further the culture of drift?

How should the sport foster talent of newcomers? Or even inspire the younger generation? Those kids who haven’t even got their licence yet! How often do you see drifting of any kind on TV? Yes it’s easy to find on the internet, but only really if you go looking for it, and especially Australian drifting.

The culture of drift in Australia is missing some vital things to increase the popularity of drift as a whole. Where is the Auskick for drift? Where are the heroes of the sport and what are the incentives?

The barrier of entry is too large in Australia. There is no easy way to go to a track, acquire a drift car and test
your ability against others; especially if you’re just trying out the sport. Not to mention the now infamous “drift tax”
stopping people from affording cars that were once cheap and capable.

Therefore the amount of drifters are low relative to other countries. The reason being accessibility to the sport and equipment.

Thankfully Drift Cadet has created an entry point into the sport of drift. Not only do they provide the car, they also have Victoria’s best competitive drifters as coaches! With three different levels- beginner, intermediate, advanced. From skid pan to the track, nothing is left out.

One of the greatest features of Drift Cadet is the ability to just arrive and drive. This really puts Drift Cadet on the map as one of the best drift schools in Australia. Better yet there is no cost of owning a car, maintenance, or repairs and no towing the car back and forth from the track.

From viewing drifting through the lens for so long I thought it was time to actually get in there and have a go.
To say I was excited is an understatement! My only drifting experience thus far was wet roads and an over boosted MR2 Sw20 or doing roundabouts in a Honda Beat with over-cambered rear wheels and cheese cutters showing wire on the outer edges.

The Subaru BRZ’s are the cars we were learning in. So why did Drift Cadet choose this platform? Because with the number of BRZ/86s manufactured in the last five years you can most definitely speculate that they will become the new S13 in the local drift scene. So what mods are they running? Well here is the kicker! Basically nothing!

The setups run on both cars are as follows; Kaaz 2 way LSD, Shockworks coilovers, bucket seats, lock spacers and tyres matched to the wet surface of Winton skidpan. If you’ve ever heard the saying “keep it simple stupid”
then you will understand the philosophy of Drift Cadet.

I was so suprised on how well a standard car puts up with such punishment. The BRZ/86 is such an underrated car and the fact is that most people never get to test the full potential of these great cars. The first lesson we had was to perform donuts around a cone on the skid pan. We were instructed to get the car in the high revs then dump the clutch and keep the car in a controlled donut without losing drift.

All the hours on Assetto Corsa drifting on the online GripShiftSlide server helped out and the donut came with ease, yet mastering the figure eight did not come easy. I found out quickly that speed and weight transition are things that translate very differently in the real world. They say that with time you are able to feel what is happening with the car using your bum?

Quickly I went from doing well to constantly spinning out and it was a combination of things I was doing wrong.
Both instructors gave me plenty of pointers yet I was too pig headed and excited to fully implement their instructions.

After learning how to implement the clutch kick and handbrake into the mix I successfully
pulled off a couple of figure eights but often built up too much speed and would spin out.

Breaks in between sessions gave me and the students time to watch others on the skid pan. This also gave us the opportunity to sample the great coffee and snacks on offer from Amabelle Patisserie.

Time went so fast and before I knew it the day was over. I learnt so much yet the surprise of the group was a fifteen year old that made us all look like amateurs! He was cutting figure eights straight out the gate!

Drift Cadet is really the only independent group teaching drifting in Victoria and you also get a CAMS Speed Licence when you complete the beginners course.

When the lessons were over we were invited to go for a ride with the teachers. They didn’t hold back in pushing the BRZ’s to the limit at speed around the skid pan! It was a great way to leave us with a lasting smile.

I really admire Drift Cadet for putting it all out there and creating a platform for beginner drifters in Victoria.
Creating such a great day and driving experience has left me with skills that I will not forget.
If you would like to lean more about Drift Cadet check out their website or facebook page.
Thanks for reading,
Grant

MR35 :: Twin Turbo Gentleman

Grant — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 11:12:22 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen… Introducing Mr.35! He’s one mighty fine Nissan GTR from Melbourne.
Owner Charles has added some very subtle additions to the look of the car without messing up the original look, all the while making sure he stands out from the crowd.

This car is Charles’ second foray into the modified car scene. He started out with a bright orange Honda Civic coupe back in the old Autosalon car show days, but after a short break he came back bigger and stronger…

Charles’ right foot went from pushing a pedal and waiting a short eternity for petrol and air to mix, to create about 106db or 120kw (However you measure a Honda’s power) to Nissan’s fire breathing twin turbo V6 that seemingly bends the laws of physics with every press of the accelerator.

Funnily enough it wasn’t the power/performance that attracted Charles to the mighty GTR. As he recalls he was initially drawn to the look of the car and it is not hard to see why with the muscular arches and sharp lines flowing from front to back – each serving a specific purpose… Grip! This car was designed from every angle to maximize down force. Nissan left no stone unturned when designing the long awaited successor to the infamous R34 GTR.

When it came to wheels, Charles had made his mind up on a set of Advan GT Premium’s and widened the footprint of the car by an extra few inches in the process. The front measuring up at 20 x 10.5″ while the rear sits on an impressive 20 x 12″.

Running a wheel this wide has proven to be an issue when needing a quick tyre change. Interestingly, one of the only cars that run this size is actually a Lamborghini Aventador! Charles’ rubber of choice is Michelin Pilot Super Sports.
Incidentally he got a flat tyre a few days before the shoot and had a pair of stock Aventador tyres fitted to the rear, these have a chunky/bigger sidewall so he wasn’t too happy about it. Having happened a few times, Charles has found it is best to keep a complete set of spare tyres at home.

Some wheels make or break a car and we have to admit while they are not our first choice, these certainly look the part and don’t take away from the performance look of the car at all. After looking at these photos for hours on end, we can confirm these wheels have now been bumped right to the top of our list of wheels we’d have on a GTR if we could be so lucky.

Poking out through the rear diffuser are the burnt tips of the exhaust, hinting that this car has a bit more going on than just clean paint. All the pipes that help the hefty GTR exhale are 90 spec titanium from Amuse with an AMS de-catted dump pipe to keep everything flowing when push comes to shove, or just when the lights go green.

Inside the car things are as you would find them fresh out of the dealership, minus the Cobb V3 access port hand controller and Mines leather steering wheel, there really isn’t much that can be improved on here. Nissan have done an outstanding job creating this space. It is comfortable without putting you to sleep, and is a perfect blend between form and function that would suit almost anyone looking for a sports car you can live with everyday. Just don’t have more than one friend. The back ‘seat’ is best reserved for those of us who are vertically challenged or missing a few limbs.

The premium red/black seats are surprisingly comfy and even have a heater element inside for those cold mornings. It is a bit like strapping a back massager to the end of a bungee cord! How warm someones buttocks are surely is not exactly very high on their list of priorities in a car like this.

The illusive little red ‘start’ button, it’s almost a shame it only turns the car on… It looks like fun to press!!

Like any premium performance car out of Japan in the last decade, you’ll find electronic controls that can change exactly how the car behaves at the flick of a switch. The three centre switches change the 4WD system, suspension and traction control. Now the GTR isn’t just any old premium performance car is it?..

Atop the centre console, you’ll find Nissan’s latest incarnation of the multifunction display that was first found in the R34 GTR Skyline. Here you’ll find a multitude of live stats ranging from various temps, to steering angle and g-force! If you think that all seems like something from a Playstation game, you’d be right! Kazunori Yamachi of Polyphony Digital fame (Gran Tourismo game series) was enlisted to help Nissan design the GUI as they wanted it to be as easy as possible to access.

Having done the bold look with his previous car, Charles concentrated only on enhancing what was already there. Some of the first things added to the car were from the Revosport catalogue.
First in was the carbon fibre boot lid and dry carbon front lip and diffuser.

The Revosport boot lid really changes up the rear end dramatically, the hard lines of the factory spoiler are all but gone and instead this smooth flowing replacement looks like the air just slides away like water off a ducks back.

To tie in the rear of the car, Charles picked up a Top racing dry carbon rear diffuser with mesh delete, this was only fitted a few weeks before the shoot.

Take a step back and admire the simple little touches that all come together to make this such an exciting looking car.

The GTR wears its’ badge of honor everywhere you look.

Brakes to match the brawn.

Another hidden gem thanks to Revosport, these little carbon air ducts direct cold air directly into the vented brake discs… Now that’s cool! (sorry).

After his time with the car Charles says he cannot go back to a naturally aspirated car again, turbo for life he says with a grin.

We’re not really sure what Charles could ‘upgrade’ to after he’s done with the GTR… Nothing else comes close to matching the GTR’s performance in the sub $200k price bracket.

The sign of a spotlessly maintained car that is actually driven? A worn out keyring of course!!

If you aren’t green with envy already, wait until you find out how Charles affords to put petrol in every week… He owns and runs his own Mexican restaurant!! Now throw in a house on an island and that’s pretty much the best life we could hope for.
Charles’ next project on the GTR will be an e85 fuel conversion, the parts are starting to pile up and we cannot wait to see the results.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this feature and we would like to thank Charles for sharing both his car and time with us.
Thanks for reading,
– Gwyn.

MINI_DOCO#1 :: Jason Ferron – The art of persistence

Grant — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 23:38:39 +0000

Jason Ferron – The art of persistence from grip shift slide on Vimeo.

This is the first episode in our MINI_DOCO series featuring our good friend Jason Ferron. He has been in the drift scene for the last four years but has only been seriously competing for the last 2 years. This video is just a small incite into Jason’s world and chronicles some of his experiences up until now.

ADGP :: Australia Day Drift Festival

Grant — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 05:23:17 +0000

Australia Day, a day usually reserved for groups of mates to get together and have a few drinks, eat copious amounts of burnt meat and listen to the radio.
What more could anyone want you might ask?

Well 2013 would be the first year I broke this long lived tradition and as it turns out, I couldn’t have been happier!!
Sydney Motorsport Park has just undergone an upgrade and with construction now complete of the brand new south circuit section it was time to celebrate the opening of track! The Australian Drifting Grand Prix team was invited to host a drift festival on Australia Day 2013 to do the honours.

Delighted by the idea of a brand new circuit, 16 of Australia’s best drifters. guest judge Matt Powers (Formula Drift USA) and truck loads of Sydney’s locals coming out to destroy some tyres on the track. So we booked our flights and in the blink of an eye the date was upon us!
*Note how rich we are by our choice of airline… No expense spared!
When you buy GSS merchandise you help pay for our flights and rental cars when we travel to events all over Australia, so next time you’re thinking about grabbing a sticker etc from our store, remember that every bit counts!!

We arrived at Sydney Motorsport Park bright and early at around 8am Saturday. There is never any time to ease into it, so Grant and I began snapping away and filming the moment our feet hit the ground.

Some of the first cars we saw in the pits were the Hit and Run boys of NSW drift club fame and as you can see these cars are always a sight for sore eyes.
With some of the best wheels and kit choices, every car is finished in amazing detail and the boys in true drifter fashion have that unique ‘no care’ attitude with one goal in mind…
Drive hard, drive very hard!
By the end of the day the cars end up looking a little tired but that is all part of the fun and the team get busy making them all shiny before the next event again.

One of the overseas competitors in the top 16 was Andy Gray from Powervehicles.com in Japan. Andy had Australian drifter Christian Pickering oversee the Toyota Chaser’s build while he was still at home in Japan.
The finishing touch to this car was the very same graphics that Andy uses on his Chaser in Japan, confusing many thinking he had just shipped the whole car over…
Check out that lock! Andy has his finger on the pulse in regards to drifting in Japan so we were excited to see what he and the car would have to offer!

Heading team Melbourne was John from the Insane Drifters crew. Agges was M.I.A thanks to being invited to compete in the New Zealand D1NZ next month.

John was applying some new graphics and the car was looking immaculate!!

Coming all the way from South Australia and looking stunning was this Nissan Laurel, hands down the best looking one in the country and it’s a drift car!!!!!!!!!

A sad, sad day for QLD driver Ryan ‘Slide’ Cummings…
On his way to the start line for the very first practice session of the day the timing belt idler bolt sheared and the timing belt skipped.
The team thinks there may be some serious damage and wont know until they pull the engine apart. This is a true shame for someone who has dedicated a lot to the sport and traveled so far to be part of it.

Before the action kicked off the drivers had their morning assembly. Yoshi from Vicdrift helped keep the wild crowd under control so the meeting went smoothly and was very quick in the end!

With all the formalities done and dusted, we setup a whole heap of on-car camera’s thanks to the guys from ION. We had 6 ION Air Pro’s capturing some of the excitement and hope to have a pretty cool video for you guys to enjoy very soon! So keep your eyes out for that!

Without any warning at all, the cars started flying off the starting grid and began punishing those tyres!

Right from the start we could tell this is the course for tight battles here in Australia. The layout ensures that it is very hard for the lead car to race away and we were rewarded with some close door-to-door action even in the early morning practice sessions.

The course is short and looks rather simple at first with only four corners. With the majority set uphill, it meant a lot of smoke, even from underpowered cars as they raced up the incline.

Drivers took a ‘no fear’ approach and went flat out into the second corner knowing that further up the hill a lot of their speed would be washed off. This made for some hairy moments when the lead car would spin and the approaching driver had already committed to the corner and could not brake in time.
Thankfully though there were no major impacts over the day.

If the lead car wasn’t fast enough, the follow car caught up very quickly. I would not want to see that in my rear view mirror!!

At the top of the hill the course had a long sweeping corner and then it dipped back down which made for some dramatic images of the cars disappearing over the hill.

There were so many highlights throughout the day, with every practice session turning into a battle with drivers pairing up and testing each others skills.
Rob Whyte was king of the proximity and emulation card, shown here following Danny Williamson.

One of the most exciting pairs to watch was Christian Pickering and Andy Gray. They appeared like long lost brothers reunited and they clearly had a blast playing together.
The two have spent a lot of time driving together in Japan and it showed on the day. They were the most exciting to watch and I would have been happy if they were the only two drivers competing!!

Andy’s Chaser always made the most exciting exits over the hill!

One of the most photogenic cars on track was Levi Clarke’s fluro Toyota Soarer and he seemed to team up with Beau Yates in his AE86 with countless runs together in the practice sessions.

Levi has always had crazy colour schemes and graphics. His previous cars have had Ed Hardy inspired designs… I much prefer this one though personally.

The big wigs at Toyota probably never expected to see their two creations ever meet in such a way. The variety of cars competing is probably one of the biggest attractions to the sport in all honesty.
You can buy the majority of these cars for $20k or less and drive them on the street and enter the odd drift day or two in your local area, making it more accessible to just about anyone.

The only professional female driver in the ADGP series was Kelly Wong from South Australia.
It is always a pleasure to see Kelly roughing it with the boys out on track and we hope Kelly inspires more female drivers to pursue the sport as it’s probably one the most open and friendly forms of motor sport around!

I’ve managed to not mention the weather so far but it was horrible!
The humidity was obscene and had us drinking around 15 bottles of water between the two of us!!

Here we see Brett chucking his new 180SX over the hill. The car had a few teething issues but we expect some big things from Brett and his evil looking S-chassis later this year.

This was the last event the Insane Drifters will be using their current suspension setups at, as the team has been picked up by Shockworks and we are very excited by that here at GSS!!

ION sponsored SA driver Simon Michelmore was putting his S14 through its paces after installing a brand new gearbox and GKtech knuckle setup.

As the day went on, drivers were getting more comfortable with the new track and we saw more and more ‘dirt drops’ as each driver went for bigger and bigger entries into the first corner.
Sometimes with disastrous results…

This entry saw Jabbit from Blaze Unit mount a stack of tyres which meant the only way off was with a tow. Thankfully nothing was damaged and the Blaze Unit boys went on to become the crowd favorite between battles.
Instead of staring at an empty track while drivers changed tyres or waited for scores from the judges, the crowd was treated to an all out smoke show thanks to the boys tearing up the track in a 3 way drift train!

Mitch Bunney had made the trip over from Western Australia with his R32 Skyline and Mitch ended up qualifying 3rd with only one point between him and Andy Gray!

This S13 reminds me of Ender’s white beast back here in Melbourne. It is refreshing to see so many good looking cars in the sport!

Another from team Melbourne!!
Michael Prosenik in the Supreme Caravan’s V8 powered S13.

Michael was having a few fun battles with John and both cars were baking hard up the hill!

Everyone’s favorite V6 powered 86!!
That’s right, this little guy is powered by one of the newer Toyota V6 engines!

Some of the NSW drift crews were loving the new track although it really suited the higher powered cars with the uphill section. However, this S14 was putting out a healthy amount of power with around 400hp so it was lapping it up!

Levi was pushing hard in his Soarer until this happened…

The drivers side rear tyre came off the rim mid corner and sent him off track. Levi missed out on making it into the top 16 by only one spot, so sadly this was the end of the day for him.
Levi and the car will be competing at every round of the ADGP series this year so expect to see a lot more of him and his bright Soarer!

The stand out local car had to be Harry’s DR30 Skyline!

This thing looked, sounded and drove amazingly all day!

The engine is a combination of an RB30 with a 26 head for good measure.

The day was soon coming to an end which meant it was time to kick off the top 16 battles!!

During one of Andy’s ridiculous backwards entries he over shot it and went into the run off section.

The whole time Andy did not take his foot off the power and kept drifting through rest of the track!

Now Simon is known for having some over the top entries so all of the Media guys track side held their breath when they heard the announcement that Simon and Andy would go head to head…
Two of the wildest drivers in regards to top speed entries going against each other!

Hands down this was one of the best battles we have ever witnessed!!
Andy took the win but it was honestly very close and we would have loved to have seen a re-run.

Scott from Blaze Unit was drifting in true Australian spirit with one hand out the window flipping the bird!!

Later we saw him go head to head with Luke Fink who had actually entered his daily driven 180SX!!
Luke is the driver for Holfords Motorsport and since they have sold Luke’s usual competition S14, he is currently without a car.
The team has an exciting 350Z build in the works but we are unsure if it will be ready for any events soon.

The light was soon gone and we had the last few battles to watch.
Nick Coulson took the win against Beau Yates.

Nick then took the win against Andy after a fierce battle, both drivers were not giving up easily!

The final battle was 2012 champion Rob Whyte against Christian Pickering. This was too close to call and required a re-run before the judges were happy to announce a winner.

Christian was beaten by Rob for 1st place but Christian didn’t seem to mind all that much.

The ‘Straya Day’ podium finishers!
Nick Coulson in 3rd.
Christian Pickering in 2nd.
Rob Whyte coming in 1st.
So how can I sum up my Australia day??
The crowd was massive, the amount of cars on track was insane and the vibe was just fantastic!!
We couldn’t possibly fit everything into one post so expect some extras with our coverage of the All Stars car show and of course our video of all the action that unfolded throughout the day.
Thanks for reading,
– Gwyn.