Luke Fink – Gripshiftslide

ADGP Rnd 2 :: Day Two At The Thunder Dome

Grant — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 10:55:10 +0000

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.

ADGP :: Round Two, Day 2.

Grant — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:33:39 +0000

Well back for another day! “Thank-you baby jesus” I uttered as I approached the entry gates for the sunshine bestowed on us. Already you can probably sympathise with the stupidity in that statement once we all left the track after 4pm with a tan line for life. I decided to kick my morning off in the pits, mainly because it was the least distance to walk (come on who wasn’t hung over?)

Jerome’s S15 had quite a presence.

It’s all business in here, rocking a quick-release and shift light.

Jake ‘Drift Squid’ Jones Onevia looking tough in the pits.

Under the hood of the time Attack S15.

I have a slight infatuation with S15’s!

I’ve never really been a huge fan of aftermarket bonnets, but I do like this, one tough R33.

Always better to stand out, I could spot this a mile away.

I’m sorry, but if you can’t get an erection or lady wood over this, that’s your problem, not the cars.

Hacketts machine, put in a solid effort all weekend!

I had a good chat with Levi Clarke during the lunch break, seriously amazing car!

Wagg’s S15

Another car park treasure, I love the rear diffuser.

Fink’s 2nd beast.

“She’s all good mate”.

A few drivers having a chat before the battles.

Fink passing on some info to Levi.

Yep, I’ve been there before.

Tony giving his media spin.

Squidy’s baby before it hits the track.

From the pits I decided to venture to the other side of the track, and caught a few of the nice rides to grace the show & shine.
The colour on this 32 was gorgeous!

The vertex soarer, I remember photographing this back at stadium drift at Parklands a few years ago. Great to see it’s still in immaculate condition!

Adzy’s Sooby and his Cube in the back-ground. Both made appearances at Jamboree.

A very respectable S14. Seems today ‘less is more’ is here to stay.

The wide S15, seen this around the local circuit, never gets old.

A perfectly presented Evo. Much love.

This sprinter was tucking nicely!

Here are some shots of the drivers heading out.

Now back to the drifting!

Aggy tearing it up.

A well executed tandem entry from Tony.

To wrap up, Track Battle put on a fantastic event with world class drifters & drivers combating the elements of the weather over the course of the 3 days. I’d like to extend a big thanks to Amy Boatwright and Yoshi Abey and the rest of the ADGP Crew for allowing Gripshiftslide to get nice and close to the action over the weekend.
Podium finishes and pics will be up soon.
Thanks for looking.
P.S. Western Australia, you’ve got a great few days of drifting coming your way!
-David

ADGP :: Round Two, Day 1.

Grant — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:58:38 +0000

Well it’s been quite a long time between drinks for me I must admit. But when Gwyn from Gripshiftslide asked me to go out and have a look at the new competition in Australian professional drifting, well that’s as good excuse as any to come out of retirement. Although mother-nature decided she would throw a few curve balls my way with ominous rain and intermittent cloud cover just to make it that little bit harder.

Arriving at the track by 0800 I was able to get an idea of the layout by panning across the open and flat course that is QR. In the past I’ve covered Stadium Drift which substituted more turns for less straights. However at QR the back straight (commonly utilised in the Sprint Series, Powercruise & now Time Attack) would be used as the entry point for maximum speed leading into the dipper followed by a sweeping left back to the northern end of the track. This in a sense really leveled out the playing field, as even the QLD drivers were unfamiliar with this course, so to say I was excited was a fairly large understatement. To couple this excitement I decided to familiarize myself with the pit layout.

The first car I noticed was 50MAN, a very nicely presented Nissan 180sx with an aggressive S14 front.

After no more than 10 seconds, the driver Tony Harrison introduced himself, asked if I wanted to see under the bonnet, inside the boot for the fuel setup etc, just an all round nice guy to talk with.

The motor setup seemed very familiar, and then I remembered Tony ran an LS1 VN for a number of years, and now seems said motor has made its way into the 180. The only other cars that could match this thing for noise and pure obnoxiousness were the two 350z’s.

Tony completing a reenactment of a 360 spin.

Parked just opposite Tony was ‘The Boss Hog’ Danny Kenneally and his renowned Hogs Breathe Café Silvia Ute. Danny’s record over the last few years in Australian drifting is impressive in itself, notching up well over the 50 mark in podium finishes.

Pit lane in itself obviously has the cream of the crop, but you can’t forget about what lurks in the adjacent car park. I managed to find a few beauties on my walks.

Luke Finks daily S14 – Exceptionally tidy!

Dru’s daily R35 GTR. Also worth noting his track car will be competing in the Time Attack series, pictures of that jizz machine later!

A nicely presented FD RX7 from Stiff-Diff.com

Tina’s 02JAP 350z.

Jerome Kennedy’s S15, 530bhp SR20 running a TD06 built by Ivan at Hi-Power Racing.

I managed to catch up with Ivan on the weekend, he also did a lot of work on my own car.

Joe Waghorn’s Nissan S15…

Punching out a healthy 480bhp.

Don’t we all?

Robert Turner in his incredibly clean time attack S15.

Chris Coroneos in staging for his first time attack practice session.

James Willard’s ballistic EVO 6.5. The noise this thing made was beyond belief.

Dru Schull’s Nissan R35 GTR , also a competitor in this years WTAC.

By this time most of the clouds had partially vanished, but due to the previous nights weather events, the schedules had been delayed slightly. Practice sessions began with the Track Battle Time Attack.

By now, it’s out with the grip and in with the slide, the drifters began their staging. Fink preparing for his first run.

Anthony Bilic – Much like Tony Harrison, Anthony was more than happy discussing his car, the track and overall competition with not only media, but the general public as well. He always gives something to the cameras!

Fink giving us the salute, legend.

Some final words of encouragement.

Ryan Cummings S13.5 – I will echo what Gwyn said previously, “this car is by far the best looking in the drift competition”.

Rob Whyte – The sound Bullet and Motul created was pure Armageddon!

This 180SX making a perfect entry to the ‘dipper’.

Fink – What can I say, I really don’t want to sound like a sack-rider, but when someone can throw their car into the entry being full perpendicular to the direction of the track, they get my vote.

Unfortunately for Jake Jones, this did not end so well. Over-corrected during practice, at least he tapped the wall!

Even great drivers like Jake even get a little bit too close at times.

Jerome Kennedy Linked this perfectly through the ‘dipper’, doesn’t look like much of a pig, it’s to clean!

As previously mentioned due to the new track layout and previous nights rain events, delays were to be expected naturally, but eventually the top 32 were qualified . check the Australian Drift GP website for the results.
Day two’s coverage will be up soon, until than…
Thanks for looking.
– David.